August ends and September begins! Bring on the fall and those cooler temperatures!! And this time of the year, I catch myself looking for long leaf pine trees and their browning needles. I nearly stopped on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, yesterday to gather a few needles. But it was not the wisest thing to do; we do have rattlesnakes here and they love dense vegetation, like you find under young pine trees..... Always err on the side of caution!

I recently finished a commissioned basket for some friends and was pleased with the way the basket unfolded. I used some dyed needles, yellow and pale blue green, to blend with the naturally brown needles. The effect was very attractive and the friends quite pleased with their basket. The center of the basket was a sliced hickory nut but the shape triangular instead of the more typical round or oval. Adding in some halved nut slices changed the angles in the developing basket and made the overall shape more triangular. I used upholstery thread and artificial sinew for binders and kept the stitches fairly simple. What do you think?

With dyed needles, the colors stay, of course. But I recently saw on an Etsy site a basket maker that claimed by using green needles, the green color would remain. This is not true. Green needles do stay green for a while but even exposure to indirect light will cause their green to fade in time and turn the needles, eventually, brown. The only way to have green colored needles in a basket is to dye the needles.

Enjoy your weekend! And make a basket! :-)