"A Tisket, A Tasket"
"Basketry in Human Culture"
Good news is here for all of you Southerners who live in fear of the dreaded KUDZU finding your property!!
In the seminar I recently attended, we were instructed on a very enlightened use of the kudzu vine - BASKETS...and quite attractive baskets, I might add. This picture shows the fruits of our labors for the week of the seminar - but there were many experiences in getting to this point. The first thing that we had to do, was gather the kudzu - a new and unique experience for all of these Southern "ladies" as you can guess - but we were troopers, one and all, and donned our jeans and work gloves and 
jumped into the kudzu patch with our knives flailing!(Not without some degree of trepidation, however, for all the snakes and other varmints who might be finding their homes within the tangled mess of kudzu which covered this huge hill.)Here we are, loading the truck with all the vines that we have cut.....incidentally, we all survived the kudzu patch experience without snake bites.
The next step was to take all the vines back to our workplace to be cut, soaked, and painstakingly
woven into baskets....no small task for someone who had never woven anything but paper strips with her kindergarten classes! SO MUCH to remember! SO MANY decisions to be made! But we were being ably led by two distinctive instructors - Doug Elliot, a basket weaver, educator, naturalist, storyteller and author from Union Mills, NC and Cyndi Rapenske, an experiential educator and ancient skills technologist from Boone, NC.
Kudzu was not the only natural material that we worked with during that week. We also used cat-tail leaves to weave baskets, hats, or 
mats...again led with great patience and skill by Doug and Cyndi. Thankfully we didn't have to venture into the swamps to gather the leaves - but only because they required a long drying time which would not fit into our schedule. So Doug brought these leaves which were ready for our use. Now, we only thought that working with the kudzu was tough! We soon learned that it had been a breeze compared to cat-tail leaves, which although had to be dried, required constant "watering" while being woven. Most of us decided to make hats from our cat-tails and I, for one, will proudly wear my hat next summer when walking on my beach!!
Click on little picture to see ALL the BASKET CASES.
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