Pine Needle Baskets

In the eastern USA and Canada it is traditional to make little baskets using fallen pine needles.There are many sorts of pine trees but the best for this purpose are those with the longest leaves such as the ponderosa pine and especially the longleaf pine.. The binding material used is usually raffia, although any strong thread or thin string could be used.

I had looked at some of the videos available on YouTube showing pine needle (or pine-straw) basket making and had realised that the technique is almost identical with straw bee skep making but on a smaller scale. I find Nancy Today amusing to watch but others give a clearer explanation of the process.

Whilst visiting the megalithic site at Carnac in Brittany recently I realised that I was walking on a bed of long pine needles, dropped by the pines that flank the long amazing rows of giant rocks that we had come to see.
I was reminded of the videos I had looked at. So I picked  up a plastic carrier bag and filled it with fallen pine leaves to bring home to England. My friends know that I do strange things so nobody questioned me about my addition to the luggage.

To make a basket all you need is a darning needle big enough to thread with raffia,enough raffia and a few handfulls of long pine needles soaked in water to soften them.
A short piece of tube acts as a guide and a gauge. I used a short piece of bamboo cane but any bit of tube of the right diameter will do. Look for something just wide enough to put a pencil through it.
The scale leaves at the base of each dwarf pine shoot are best removed, either by pulling them off with a damp cloth or by snipping off the butt end of each shoot completely. If you get ambitious and make larger fancier baskets the bases of the shoots can be left on to give a decorative effect, but for a plain basket they are best removed.

The technique is just as I have described in my skep making pages except no fid is needed - just sew with the darning neeedle and tie in new bits of raffia as required.  Keep adding new pine needles to the gauge to keep it full at all times and you can produce a smooth regular-looking finish. One problem is that the pine needles shrink slightly as they dry out so be sure to sew the raffia as tightly as possible to avoid having a floppy finished basket.

Here is a close-up of my first  pine straw basket (skep).  This one is 10 x 10 cm. 
Completely useless but fun to make.!