A Tisket

 

A Tasket

A Green and Yellow Basket

(Ella Fitzgerald)

I love baskets!

Since Easter is approaching,

I decided to play show and tell on my baskets.

Not Easter baskets, but baskets in general.

Did you know that early splint baskets

were made from either ash or oak?

These were formed in a woven fashion from

wet splint wood such as the above basket.

All three of these baskets are splint ones.

You can tell an early one from by a newer one

as the older ones are much heavier.

The older ones are all woven too.

I also loved how this one had a hand carved handle

which was also woven in to the top.

You wont see this in baskets today.

The next baskets I would like to talk about are

rye baskets.

Did you know these baskets were mostly used

in bread making?

Our foremothers would make their bread dough

by adding a linen piece to the rye baskets,

and let the dough rise.

All rye baskets were formed by coiling

wet rye grass around a strand of rye grass 

to form these baskets.

The coil would always start at the middle and

the weaver would work the coil around and around

until forming the basket of their choosing.

Some were deep, while others shallow.

This next basket is called a feather basket.

When collecting goose and duck feathers,

it was necessary to have a lidded basket

so your feathers would not fly away.

You would lift the top to add your feathers.

Gramma B had a basket like this one.

(this was not hers)

I helped collect feather for her so she

could make feather beds and pillows.

They were the best and warm in the Winter months.

In the early days our foremothers

used their aprons to collect eggs.

Vintage wire metal baskets were created to hold eggs.

It was thought that eggs would stay more fresh

if they had air circulation.

There are all types of sizes and shapes to these.

I dont really see the practicality of the chicken

 shaped one though.

Growing up on my grandparents farms,

one of my chores was to collect the eggs each day.

While at gramma B's I grabbed a large

enamelware bowl to collect the eggs.

She had about 50 hens.

Now at gramma H's, I used an egg basket

similar to the one above as she had about

250 hens.

Gramma always helped helped me and we needed 

a bigger basket.

This particular one one I use in my bathroom 

to hold our toilet paper rolls.

In other news,

we lost 6 treasures two days ago.

Back in the 1800's a club was built on one of our islands.

It was created for the doctors and lawyers

in the day to take their families to the island

from Detroit for weekends and vacations.

A steamer named the Tashmoo would set sail

from Detroit and make the trip to the island,

and then also stop at different ports along our 

mighty river before going back down.

The Tashmoo also stopped about a mile from our house.

Where I currently live was considered

a Summer home residence too.

The Old club itself was built on land, but the many

cottages to the South were all built on stilts.

Each cottage was painted a different 

color and it was the first thing folks saw

when entering the channel from Lake St Clair.

You could only access if you had your own boat

or travelled on the Tashmoo.

In the 1940's they built a bridge from

Harsen's Island to this private island,

however access is still only for members.

Since the cottages were built over water,

they also built wooden docks to get to them.

These were eventually replaced by steel ones.

I found this pic on the internet of the cottages.

Six of them burned and all that is left are

the docks. A total loss.

At least a few of the cottages were saved along

with the club itself.

The winds that day caused so much devastation.

Well it is snowing right now.

We might get another 6 inches.

Hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

Basket Blessings To All!

Janice