Basket 3: Eastern White Pine

Cross-posted at The Wildwood Path

It was just one line in the monthly email about the Wildwood Path, indicating the plan for Sunday afternoon, but I couldn't stop thinking about it:

Learning another fun hand craft: Pine Needle Baskets!

Finally, I would have a chance to learn this craft that had been picked up and practiced with varying amounts of commitment, at different times, by several of my female relatives. On my ancestors altar I have a beautiful flat piece with black stitching that was made by my Cousin Dorothy (more accurately my paternal grandfather's cousin).

I take particular interest in the unmarried and/or childless branches of my family tree, and Dorothy is one of these, married but without children.

She filled her life with creative pursuits, including pine needle basketry, fused glass, and scratch art. She lived to the age of 103 and died in 2015.

The few things that I know about her echo some of my hopes and fears for my own life. Will I find a partner and/or have children? How will I take full advantage of the opportunities that I have to live a fulfilling life? As a woman who will potentially never have children, what is my role in the community? And the scarier parts: what will happen to me when I grow old? Will I have a support system?

The small basket in the front of the photo was made by my mother many years ago. Despite what must have been an often discouraging lack of enthusiasm on my part and my sister's, my mom always found ways to express her love of nature, and it has shaped me in a significant (if slow-simmering) way. As kids we were sometimes given the honor of arranging the centerpiece for Thanksgiving, which in my memory involved consolidating my mom's vast collection of seed pods and artfully distributing them amongst warmly colored squash and pomegranates. She was the one who planned our annual backpacking trips, and the one who forced me to go outside in the summer when all I wanted to do was lie in bed and read one book after another (I did not appreciate this at the time).

When I return from traveling with sweet gum and wisteria seed pods in my luggage (to admire, not to plant), when I use my broken Spanish to encourage a curious neighbor child to touch the earthworm that I'm holding, when I look in the mirror and see that intimidating but harmless furrow in my brow that is shared by my mother and her sisters, I feel affection and gratitude for all of the ways in which I'm becoming—and already am—my mother.

I came home from the February Wildwood Path weekend with this sweet little embryo of a basket. The number and evenness (or not) of my stitches at this stage would carry through to the end of the basket. It had been set in motion. For the next several nights, I sat next to the wood stove with candles lit on my ancestors altar, inviting the guidance of hands more experienced than mine. The basket grew, and as it did, a challenge arose: without adding stitches, the spaces between stitches would continue to widen, allowing the tips of pine needles to poke out. Eastern White Pine needles are approximately 4-5" long, and relatively slender, and in order to maintain coils of consistent thickness, I had to anchor several bundles of needles with each stitch. In contrast, Cousin Dorothy (who lived in Washington state) ordered her pine needles from Georgia:

Everywhere I have lived, with one possible exception, has had pine trees. Pine trees never seemed special; just neutral background scenery. Hmm. Judging even by this one photo, all species of pine are not created equal. Setting aside the tree, and looking just at these two types of needles, I can see at least four differences very relevant to a person trying to make a basket:

• length
• thickness
• size of sheath
• number of needles per bundle

My mom used different pine needles in her basket, not as long as the ones from Georgia, but still quite distinct from Eastern White Pine:

Can you see how I'm anchoring four or five bundles per stitch, while she only had to anchor one? As you can see in this photo, I did decide to add more stitches. First I doubled my stitches with the white waxed twine. A few coils later, wanting a less visually obtrusive stitch, I doubled them again, but this time used red thread, ending up with four times as many stitches as I started with: half in red, and half in white. My mom's basket, in contrast, maintained the same number of stitches throughout, creating a different effect.

I chose to use dry, brown pine needles instead of gathering green ones from the tree. I did this based on the understanding that dry basketry materials, even if they are soaked for pliability, will shrink less than fresh materials. I've learned that the needles persist on the tree for 18 months, emerging in the spring, spending two summers on the tree, and dropping in the fall. So most of the needles included in this basket had just emerged in the spring of 2015, when I had some special visitors.

Nearly two years ago, I received a glorious one-week June visit from my mom, my sister, and my niece and nephew. We had brilliant adventures all week, and I saw my land with new eyes as they climbed trees, learned about edible plants, and "fished" in the stream. Pine trees wouldn't be my first choice for climbing, as they tend to be a bit sticky, but there happens to be a very welcoming pine in my yard that has grown into a low branching shape due to the abundance of space surrounding it. Under my mom's initiative, lower dead branches were pruned so that there were clearer paths for climbing, and she and the kids all spent time exploring the tree.

My nephew and I wandered around the garden talking about all of the plants as he selected some to use for a special birthday tea: pine needles, red clover, lemon balm, spruce.

After my sister and the kids flew home, my mom stayed on for a few days and helped with me with projects in the home and garden. She (and I, but mostly she) snapped all of the pruned pine branches into kindling and tied them in bundles that made fire-starting a joy in the winter that followed.

I'm grateful to be forming a relationship with this giving tree.

This basket is still in progress, to be picked up again when time allows.