Burkina weave with Anne Mette

This last September I jumped at the chance to take a class in Burkina weave with Anne Mette. She was visiting Lene, at Lakeshore Willows. I was late to find out about Anne Mette’s classes so I quickly signed up for this opportunity to learn a weave that not many people have done.

Burkina weave comes from the country of Burkina Faso in Africa. A group of Danish basket weavers including Anne Mette traveled there to help teach and learn different weaving techniques. They learned this weave and brought it home to practice on willow. Only the nicest and finest willow will do as this technique is quite hard on your hands.

The first class we worked on learning the technique with two smaller baskets and the second day we took it further by making a larger purse.

I continue to love my last minute decisions to visit Lene, they always turn out to be so much fun. I drove 7 hours to get there on Saturday and 7 hours to get home on Sunday. I was tired but the trip was totally worth it.

I’ve been thinking about how many times I have visited Lene so far and I think this class was my 6th. This coming May I will be adding my 8th and 9th time, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve realized that I have a strong influence of Danish weavers in my overall learning, because I have had the great honor to get to work with so many wonderful teachers at Lakeshore Willows. Lene tells us that basket weaving is so much more popular in Denmark, much more than we have here in the USA. We are trying our best to grow our numbers here in the Northeast US and Canada, but in the meantime we will hopefully enjoy many more Danish teachers hosted at Lakeshore Willows in the future.

When I got home I immediately searched through my willow stash and pulled out some very fine willow to continue practicing. A few days soaking and I made another small piece and another purse.

This was the first time that I just had to work on a few more pieces after giving my hands a break for a few days.