Thinking outside the box (basket).

 Several months ago, a basket-maker friend gave me the last of her supplies as she retired from basket making. Among the supplies were several unopened coils of seagrass. At that time I had only used a few strands of seagrass as fillers for the borders of market baskets. How was I to use this unexpected cache of seagrass?

 One use I made of this supply was in the hat stand shown above. The texture and colour of the seagrass works quite well.

 Today I am venturing into unknown territory for me. I have an eight foot piece of webbing that Anne sewed together in a loop to form the handles of an English Shopper. As you can see above I use that loop to go round the basket twice and then serve as the handles. Perhaps I can weave much of the body of a new basket with seagrass?

I found these "patterns" for an English Shopper as well as the model shown above. I pre-cut the stakes to the given dimensions. They are now in soak waiting for me to return to them later in the day. I will create more blogs as the work progresses. If the seagrass proves to be a good material for this kind of basket, I will be quite happy. If it does not, I will weave a similar shopper to the one shown.