Travel life has halted. Staying at home has allowed for some time to adventure into some new territory–basket making. I purchased some raffia at a craft store and then I became home-bound and ordered some more on Amazon. One of the mistakes I made right away as a new basket maker was not estimating accurately how much raffia I would need. It’s funny that I bought about 8 oz of pre-dyed raffia and thought I could make about 4 baskets! Ha! The most simple way of estimating how much you’ll need is to weigh a basket and assume you’ll need about that much raffia to make the same size basket. The one pictured here weights about 6 oz.

There’s several good youtube videos about making raffia baskets if you are interested. Mostly I looked at photos and just figured it out. Controlling the shape has been a challenge. The sides want to curl in as I build it up. I’m going to have to keep working at controlling that.