ARTHRITIS, CROCHET AND A DABBLE IN COIL BASKETRY

 Basketry...it all started because we had 11 for Christmas. We needed to make plenty of room for everyone to be seated comfortable.....moving the island [on wheels], out of the way a bit, gave me the idea to move the sideboard to the side of the fireplace and leave the island roughly where we'd put it for Christmas gave us a fabulous open space. 

It was now a space I loved for the first time in 4years, since we took the wall out to make a big open kitchen dining room space.

For a while now, I've been wanting to paint the purple fireplace wall, back to white again. A harder job than we had expected. TIP, stir the paint before you use it, 3 coats later we had a lovely white wall again. I added new antique star [paper] tiles to the fireplace and we moved the huge circular mirror above the sideboard...combination of white awl and the mirror has added a lot more light to the kitchen too.

I also tried the table around the3 other way, loving how its all come together with not too much work..

Love the shadows cast by the new string light...

Moving a few pieces of furniture around, cube unit back to my workroom, the small sideboard from the hall to the kitchen and found a solid pine chest of draws for the hallway.

Decided I loved the  Simple Boho look, white, wood, lots of plants, and some black and natural basket plates. 

found and printed out 2 tiles on an A4 sheet, and glued them over the blue paper tiles 

Before and after, blue to black and white...

b

Discovered basketry plates are really expensive, found a couple in B&M at a very reasonable price.....I take back all I said about basketry being expensive, after discovering the work involved in making a plate.

I wanted more of a divide between long and kitchen/diner so added a striped static film to the glass, took £3 of static film and less than an hour to do these doors.

BASKETRY.....LOVE You Tube, doesn't matter what you want to learn, its on You Tube.

I'd bought some raffia to try CROCHET, a couple of months back, too hard for my arthritic fingers, but using the simple coil, embroidered technique I was sure my weak fingers would manage.....The Basketry journey began

my first effort, using the blanket stitch join

                         took me quite a while to make, but no finger pain and I learnt a lot

couldn't work out how to do 2 colours so I fudged this one, but it sort of worked, I now know how to do 2 colours

Then I had a go at a tiny pot in Jute string, not raffia.

Next came a larger version of pot, make blanket stitch join, then a lid trying out the figure of 8 join, progress as I tried a more decorative pattern. 

But still need to complete the plate, I kept running out of Raffia, because you use so much it actually was quite expensive stuff.

WILD WEAVING

You Tube again told me all about wild weaving and foraging for your raw materials, something I will definitely be doing in the Summer, nettles, brambles, ivy, lavender and grasses, make great wearing materials.

SMALL END BITS OF RAFFIA

Turned into the start of a wall hanging and a larger decorative contemporary plate...still to be completed

A Large Plate in the making, thinking black raffia circles between the bound area....

Had no idea where this was going but it led to a small fish like motif swell as the plate centre

A basket stitch crochet cushion in the background, took me days to complete, so crochet time was limited because of the arthritis

This little motif gave me a couple of ideas, a large plate centre and a larger window or wall hanging. Depending on how they are joined together it looks like a flower or a row of fishes...

Loved the Little Fishes...

Loving this new hobby of simple coil basketry.

Although my passion is still crochet, when the fingers hurt too much I know there is something else I can be creative with