Basket classes weave it to the imagination
Potsdam — Shavings litter the floor Sunday as three women weave, bend and cut the uncooperative reeds into large Williamsburg baskets.
Two of the women are veteran basket-makers and have come for years to Willow Tree Florist and Landscaping, 7580 Route 11, to learn how to weave reeds and sea grass into different shapes and sizes. For the third, it could be the beginning of a new hobby.
“It’s fun,” said first-timer Lisa M. Smith, Canton. “I was just looking for something to do. I try. I’m not really the most (crafty).”
By the end of the morning class at the flower shop, Miss Smith and her classmates had molded scores of reed strips into a big open basket, to be given as a gift or destined to be put in a corner and filled with old magazines, towels or other household items.
“I give a lot of them away or sell a lot. Every corner of our house pretty much has a basket in it,” said Jennifer L. Blanchard, who teaches the classes and owns the shop with her husband, Kevin J. “There are hundreds of kinds. You can keep varying them. Sometimes when we leave, everybody’s looks the same. Sometimes people choose to put colored reed in or sea grass, and everyone’s is different.”
