I went to a basket-weaving class a little while ago, though the teacher suggested we call it a 'fibre art' class if we thought we were talking to people old enough to remember when basket-weaving was used as therapy in mental institutions.
Hours passed, we wove, it was all new and about experimenting so no one really knew what they were making. We were using the coiling technique, which is exactly what it sounds like. You start off with a group of long strips of anything really and coil them, stitching as you go, as the strips run out you just add more to the bunch.
The shape depends on what you're using, how you hold it, how tight you make it, really it seems to come from your hands. At a certain point a few people tried to make decisions about what they were making. But in the end most just nodded and pretended to put their ear to the 'basket' to listen as it told us what it wanted to be or trusted that it would talk to our hands.
And then after hours hunched over we sort of all looked up fuzzy-eyed and the class was over.
Someone had a camera so we brought out our baskets to a table for a class photo. As we put our baskets down, the table turned into a miniature alien landscape of odd, organic shapes, wildly coloured from the recycled materials we'd used. I hadn't really looked closely at mine, I'd just really wanted to finish it so just went stitch-by-stitch-by-stitch. And when I did finally look at it properly on the table, I was sort of laughing and thinking, shit I can't believe I spent hours on that. But then I overheard one lady as she added her basket to the table, it was just as odd-shaped as mine, but she just nudged hers a little more upright, leaned close and said to it encouragingly, 'Do your best.'
