The start I am describing here is the simplest to do and makes a skep with a round hole in the top.
You can control how big the hole is by how you start  and you can later make a stopper for the hole so that the skep can be used for taking swarms.

First, read the main page about skepmaking and get your tools and materials together as shown there. You will need:
1. Some good straight straw, all  lined up the same way round. To finish a skep you will need about 1.5 kilos of straw, which is a bundle you can not quite get your fingers all the way round.
2.  Binder. The best is bramble but it's easier to buy some lapping cane or even, just for practice, use strong string. String will not last very long and is not worth all the effort if your skep is meant to be used a lot. A 500g reel of lapping cane costs about £10  UK and is enough for about 3 medium sized skeps.
I buy my cane from severall suppliers but Fred Aldous in Manchester ( www.fredaldous.co.uk ) is prompt and reliable. Run of the mill is lapping cane but a bit better looking though a shade more expensive is glossy cane, which is from the outside of the cane plant. I it costs a bit more - about £13 a 500g reel.
3  Tools. First find, buy or make a fid. You could get by with just a screwdriver to make the holes for the binder to poke through, but a real fid is better.  You might find a fid in a fishing shop for making nets, or in a ship's chandler's for working with ropes, but I make my own from bits of pipe. Secondly, cut the neck off a plastic drink bottle - this neck will be your sliding gauge for holding the straw together and keeping the thickness of straw the same all the time.
Chuck the rest of the bottle in the re-cycling.

Now get ready to start . Put some binder/cane in a bowl of water to soften for a few minutes and sprinkle water on a big handful of straw to make it damp and flexible. Leave the straw on the floor beside you ready to pick up as you need it.

A point for raw beginners:- we work with the skep uside down always, with the open end upwards. And I always work on the far edge, though it is possible to do good work on the near side. I just find this more awkward to handle. The idea is to add a spiral of straw to the edge of the work, gradually building the shape of the whole skep.

This is what to do:- (if you are right handed)

1. Pick up a small handful of straw in your left hand, with the thick butt ends pointing right.

2. Put the plastic bottle top over the bundle of straw and add enough straw to fill up the hole in the bottle top. Slide the plastic ring along leftwards ahead of your work from now on.

3. take a length of binder and poke the end into the middle of the butt end of the straw bundle.

4. pass the binder down and under the straw, coming up again behind the straw and over the top towards you. ( It's important from now on to keep the inside of the binder on the inside of every turn so that it does not kink and break.)  Do this several times, going leftwards, so you have a length of straw wrapped in a spiral of binder, going left and all pulled fairly tight. Maybe 25 turns for a fairly big opening 8 or 9 cm across. Don't try to make the hole too small - it gets harder to do the smaller it is.

5. Bend the wrapped part of the straw round clockwise into a circle so it touches and makes a straw ring. It helps if you twist the straw quite tightly a bit like a rope as you do this. This is where you decide how big the hole in the top of the skep will be. It's important to twist the straw rope the same way as the binder or you loosen things instead of tightening.

6. Wrap the binder a couple more times but now also wrapping the end of the straw onto the side of the bundle, making a big P shape.  Turn this P so that the long bunch of straw is coming in from your left and the loop of the P is nearest to you.

7. From now on start making standard skep stitches. Each time you make a stitch, poke a hole with the fid under the binder stitch in the previous row, put your binder through, going away from yourself, pull it tight and bring it up from behind the work, over the top, and ready for the next stitch, going left.  There are pictures of this on the other skep making page. It's quite important to avoid twists in the binder which weaken it, and to keep the binder with its outside surface on the outside of every bend. Bend it the other way and it may snap.
Keep the long straw sticking out to your left and add more straw at any time the plastic ring feels loose, so that you have a steady thickness of straw for your skep walls.  You will be working on the far side of the skep, and working towards the left all the time. (I have described it all for right handed people but it works just the same for left handers going the other way.)
It helps a lot with making smooth curves if you also twist the bundle of straw like a rope. I roll the bundle towards me to twist it. Always twist in the same direction as the spiral of binder or one will loosen the other.
If you don't twist the straw, you tend to get straights and sudden bends, so your skep is a polygon, not a circle. I tell you on another page how to join on new bits of binder.

Do please leave comments about this page so that I can improve it for you.
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