Being a dreary day, I decided to try a craft indoors. When the girls were out swimming yesterday, I got the great idea to try my hand at basket weaving, since we have no shortage of cattails here. I cut a couple plants and brought them up to the house. Today, since the reeds were already there, some of the kids and I looked up a couple videos on how to weave reeds into baskets.
I cut the reeds into lengths of about two feet, and then split them up. I gave half to #3 and I took the other half. She attempted a round basket, before scrapping it and just making a flat mat, followed by a smaller mat with her leftover pieces.
I decided on a square basket. Admittedly the base was fairly straight forward. The reeds were a little more round than the videos we watched portrayed, but I managed to get the base woven with little problem. But when it came to weaving the sides up... that's another story entirely. I'm sure practice would make the process much easier, or possibly having some kind of proper tool to hold things in place. I was trying to balance the edge pieces up with a milk jug, a laundry detergent jug, and a cereal bowl. I'd have probably given up except at some point #3 (frustrated that her round basket wasn't working properly), exclaimed, "This is so hard, we're probably both just going to quit!" - So of course, I had to give my best shot at showing her perseverance.
As a result we both finished our projects. They aren't perfect, but they're pretty nice for first tries.
The pieces #3 made looks much neater. She made a mat, and a smaller coaster sized piece. She wants to try the bigger one as a trivet once it's dried out. I think that would be really neat. And if it works, perhaps she could make some for her teachers or her grandparents for Christmas gifts.