It is suitable for beginners as well as those with experience wishing to refresh or expand their skills.

The posts, framework and feet are made of solid willow rods, the body is made of very fine willow skeins worked into a damask motif. The bottom and the lid are of skeins sur champ (ribbon like split willow woven flat to make a dense structure) The rush we are using is a member of the Scirpus family, a tall slender plant growing in the river water. It has a little flower head at the top of the leaf and the leaf is whole without any nodes or breaks. It is harvested in summer when green and then kept to dry out in a cool dark place. It is damped down for use. Thursday 13th and Friday 14th June. Decorative Trays with Kirk and Multi-Strand Weave Baskets with SueAlongside the exhibition there will be a series of events including Dr Stephanie Bunn’s Forces in Translation project which looks at basketry, social anthropology and mathematics, and the group will be in residence at Ruthin for several days in October. There will also be an area in Gallery 2 focussing on several of the Heritage Crafts Association’s endangered and critically endangered baskets. This year was good for vegetative growth because of the wet, mild spring we had, so reed mace was healthy and abundant in the ditch. I could cut armfuls, leaving plenty behind, including the ones which had wainscot moth larvae burrowed in them. Separating out the reed mace leaves to set them out to dry, their clear, mucilaginous gloop covers my fingers. These are full size replicas of the work of Angus McPhee, grass weaver. He lived on South Uist, Scotland, but for 50 years of his life was an inpatient at Craig Dunain psychiatric hospital in Inverness. He chose not to speak, instead he made garments from grass and leaves growing in the hospital grounds, twisting the plants into a rope or simmans, a traditional technique he would have learnt at home as a young crofter. Joyce Laing championed his ‘outsider art’ and Joanne made replica garments for the production of ‘Angus’ by the Horse and Bamboo theatre group. In the enfolding landscape of Devon I spent those months learning to be still like the trees in the quiet wood; letting the wind play through my hair; walking barefoot on the flanks of the earth, rain on my face. I became more intimately acquainted with small woodland birds, tall trees on the hill, the waning moon behind bare ash branches. In time, at moments, I felt part of the weave, that I had a place amongst other things. Not foreground to them in the way we humans often behave…and not less important either.

Most workshops have 6 students. Some of our tutors have kindly offered to teach 8 students, this helps with the running costs of workshops, especially for tutors who have travelled long distances. We try to keep the cost of workshops affordable, but have had to increase our fees this year. The Tuesday classes offer a discount to students who book three classes in a row.TWINED SEED SOWING BASKET. Collection of Jenny Balfour Paul Sisal over twigs. Collected in the 1990s. Baskets like this are used for collecting and sowing seeds. Although I still make functional baskets and value repetition and the fluency it develops I have, over the past fifteen years or so, become increasingly interested in making non-functional or sculptural baskets. Many of these involve the use of tree holes or interesting marks on the surface of the bark of a tree. I also incorporate finds of bog wood from a wonderful area of wild isolated bog land near where I live. This work is prompted by a desire to develop a deeper connection to the natural world. My concern in this work is to reawaken a sense of wonder.