Assembling material for my tray-making class

On Sunday November 15th I will be teaching four or more students how to make this tray or a similar one. At last night's Guild meeting I was told I have four students registered, with openings for two more to my maximum of six.





Today I began to assemble the material I will take to the Guild's classroom/weaving room in downtown Ottawa. Along with the verbal instruction and the demonstration as I show the students how to make the tray, I will also give each student a generic set of written instructions as shown here. Some students learn by seeing, others by doing, and others by reading.



Each student will have the materials and tools supplied. They will be able to choose the colour or colours they wish to weave with in the flat cane segments of the weaving. Choice may also be made as to the colour of the pony beads some may choose for added embellishment.





Students may also choose the size of the tray base. Some bases are square and others are rectangular. All have been pre-drilled, sanded and finished with a light coat of beeswax.

I look forward to a constructive afternoon of three hours or so in length where beautiful finished products will be made. I hope to show off the finished trays in my blog on the 15th or 16th.

For those of you unable to take part in my class, similar trays can be purchased through my Etsy shop. Alternatively, you could purchase a Tray Kit from me. Such kits include all the materails you need, written instructions as well as visual tutorials showing the various steps in the making of trays. These tutorials can be seen on the June 9th blog.

Making a rib basket

Today, for a change of pace, I began to make a rib basket. The first step was to choose the materials from which to make the "hoops" that form the basic outline of the basket. I chose two hoops of grapevine that I harvested from my garden in Kanata last fall. The first photograph shows examples of two grapevine hoops.

The next step was to join these two hoops together with God's eyes. Once these are completed, I then cut to size ribs from my homegrown willow. The second photograph shows the white willow in my store room from which I selected material for the ribs. White willow is willow that has been stripped of its bark in the springtime. The selected willow was soaked for thirty minutes or so to make it more supple.

In the third photograph, the joined hoops are shown, bound together with the God's eyes. Five ribs are on each lobe or cheek of the rib basket, held in place behind segments of the God's eyes and secured by two rows of weaving.

After several rows of weaving, more ribs are cut to size and placed in the basket shell. The larger the number of ribs, the better the basket. In this basket there are a total of twenty-four ribs. the fourth photograph shows these additional ribs in place before more weaving is done.

The last photograph shows the basket well on its way to completion. Infilling is begiining on one side of the basket. I will finish this basket over the weekend.

Tray making

Today I finished preparing the tray/trivet bases. The first photograph shows these after each had been cut to size, had holes drilled at one inch intervals around their perimiters, and after each had been sanded. The sanding blocks, numbered "1", "2" and "3", have sandpaper with finer and finer grits as one moves from 1 to 3.

Two potential trivets are also shown in this photograph with their marble tile inserts.

Photograph #2 shows one of the selected tray bases after it had been given a light coating of beeswax. This non-toxic finishing coat is widely used for finishing salad bowls and other wood products. It gives a nice sheen to the tray surface and brings out the grain. Its gives the tray base a warm feeling.

This particular tray base had forty holes drilled around its perimiter. Photograph #3 shows the tray with forty stakes placed through these holes in readiness for the weaving process. In photograph #4, the tray base is secured with these stakes by going "in front of one then behind one and over the previous stake end."

The last photograph shows the tray base in readiness for the weaving.

Photographs of the finished trays will come in the next blog. Be patient!

Victorian Shopping Basket: finished product

It took me about three hours this morning to finish this Victorian Shopping Basket, much less time than I expected.

This basket has a background of Earth Tones (natural, brown and tan) with highlights in blue and pink. Its Victorian character comes with the pink "flowers" and the blue "leaves" that decorate the body as well as the brown "scollops" that decorate the border. To see a close-up of these features, click on the photographs to enlarge them.

Another feature is the "Swing" handle. This is a hardwood handle finished with a light coating of beeswax to add to its luster.

It is a basket to place on display or one to use on those very special shopping excursions.

An English Shopper: Victorian style

Today I began work on a Victorian style English Shopping Basket. The first photograph shows the rounds of cane ready to be untied and then woven along with the cane I dyed earlier. The Book in the photograph is a basket-making book by Lyn Siler, one of a half-dozen or so I use.

In the second photograh, I have begun to weave the base, weaving natural and dyed cane together. The tile and green marble slab provide the weight to keep the horizontal weavers steady while I interweave the vertical strands. The tile and the marble will become inserts sometime in the future for trivets.

The third photograph show the base after it had been trued to size. The tape measure is a handy tool in this process. The ruler forms a straight edge against which I score the cane at the edges of the base. The pizza cutter is the scoring tool, with scoring done on both the top and bottom of the base.

Photograph #4 shows the basket with several rows of the vertical weavers in place. The open book shows the model I am embellishing. Again, you will note the high-tech handy-half-house brick used as a weight in the weaving process!

Photograph #5 show three rows of "curls" to give some of that Victorian feel to the basket. (Yesterday I visited an etsy forum where people promote their items. One promotion was for items as gifts for men. I do not think this basket with its pink or wine coloured curls would fit in that promotion.)

This basket to this stage took about four hours of work, interrupted by shopping, lunch, and an English Premier League soccer game between Liverpool and Arsenel (4 -4.)

Tomorrow I will continue working on this beautiful basket. Later in the week, I will begin working on two or three models of a hanging tray as propotypes for a custom order request I received today.

Two steps forward, one step back

Its very useful having an ex-programmer in the household. After my unsuccessful attempts to register for Google's Web Analytics, Anne succeeded. I can now see a range of data about the visits to my shop. What words did they use in their searches? Where did they come from? How long did they stay? How many pages of my shop did they look at? And so on. Since the data today only refers to one day's visit, I have not learned much about the traffic to my site. But as the weeks go on, I might learn enough to tweak elements to encourage more traffic, and, hopefully, sales.

Later today, I will also check to see if registering was successful on that Google shopping site.

We have been unsuccessful in registering this blog on the Technorati site. (When I say "We" this means Anne met and did not overcome the same roadblock that I encountered.) That roadlock seems to be one met by many people trying to register their blogs on this site according to a site forum. We might give up on this or continue to monitor the forum for any breakthroughs.

Another step back came with the news that my basket-making class next Saturday with the Ottawa Valley Weavers ' and Spinners' Guild has been cancelled due to insufficient registrants. That does free me to take Adrian to a huge garage sale. And, I will be able to attend the dress rehearsal for the upcoming Annual Church Show that celebrates 40 years of the church as well as 40 years of Seseme Street.

Google product search

Today I was browsing the Business Topics on Etsy's Forum pages when I came across: "Get into Google's "Shopping" search results - use Google Base." It went on to say "It only takes 10 minutes - so don't just bookmark this thread - try it now." I tried it, and 30 or so minutes later, with Anne's help, I succeeded. (Steps 1 to 10 went fine, but step 11 was a bummer.)

When you enter Google, you will notice the "shopping" link at the top of the Google search page. Have you noticed "Shopping results for XXXX" at the top of the Google search results? To have your shop items show up in these specialised results you need to upload your items to Google's free advertising program, called "Google Base." The article on the Business Topics Forum linked to the step-by-step process to get included in that "shopping" search base.

This base gets your items into their product search results, not their regular search results.