So, here’s (most of) what we came home from Orono with.
Apple basket, ash, made by Eldon Hanning, the man who was demonstrating splitting ash. He’s Micmac, from fairly far north in Maine. He set one of these baskets on the floor behind me and told me to sit down. The basket handle supports my weight. This style of basket has a double floor; it’s started with four splints, and then there are another four right on top of them. When you get out far enough from the center you start weaving around all sixteen ends. The people who make them think of them as potato baskets, (Maine potatoes? Aroostook County, remember?) but we’re thinking apples.
Bottom of apple basket:
Birchbark basket. The red color is a cambium layer that adheres to the outer bark in some seasons. The bark must be gathered at the correct time of the year to have that color. Then the artist etches the red layer away with a knife. This basket was made by Barry Dana.
Other side of the same basket:
Pincushion basket, ash and sweetgrass. That’s a big darning needle, suitable for weaving in the ends of knitting (which I was just doing with a pair of mittens, the gray and maroon Maplewood mittens from Favorite Mittens that I made at the end of last winter), for scale.
