Eryri - Snowdonia Baskets

These arrived in the post today.. A great birthday present 🎁

Update on my last post about the large willow hoops.. Here's them all dressed up with ivy, Hydrangeas, Allium seed heads, & ferns for Alex & Anya's wedding at last weekend 💚 I really enjoyed making & decorating these, they worked really well disguising the uninspiring ceiling fans!

I've been asked to do some flower arrangement's for 3 weddings, the first of the 3 is this weekend. I've been making these three woven wreaths to suspended & decorate with locally gathered & grown foliage & florals. I might've lost my groove with basketry but I've found another outlet for some creativity. I share my floral designs/arrangements over on

I genuinely thought I would throw myself into weaving & teaching as soon as my City & Guilds in Basketry finished. But in reality I just need to take a step back from it. The timing of the course couldn't have come at a worse time for me & even though I tried my best to 'let go' & just do what I could, I still felt & feel overwhelmed by everything that's happened over the last 4 years. I'm sure I will return to weaving & teaching (hopefully) but for the foreseeable I am stepping back until I get some enthusiasm back 🙏 lots of love ❤️

The final weekend of the Level 3 City & Guilds in Basketry was focused on bark. I made a small pouch, random weave & cross stitch on the sides with a cordage strap all from willow bark. I also made a tall container stitched with crocosmia cordage & decorated with haircap moss & white willow..

Been busy growing & not had much time for weaving, but at least I'm making use of my ever growing basket collection

I dropped off a few plants supports, mushrooms & bird feeders at Tywyn Foods this morning..

Phew 😅 I've been super distracted from weaving these past 8 weeks because we have been hosting our very first wwoofers who have been helping me catch up on some essential tasks.. Aside from basketry we have rather a lot jobs to do on the land which always slip down on the priority lists, so its been great to have a real push & focus my efforts back on the land again. Here's a random selection of whats been happening.. The first is my old hazel huglekultur bed in my polytunnel which we have added some of my wonky willow to fill in the shrinkage gaps & then packed with moss.. The basket featured in these pictures isn't one of mine, it's a beauty by ❤️ I was asked by MotoCamp Wales to run some foraging sessions for their recent festival & I used Jo's fantastic basket for gathering the ingredients for some wild recipes 🥗 I've been inspired by Pippa chapman & RHS Harlow Carr & started getting creative, using my willow to create some living archways & border edging in the orchard 🍏 We've sown lots of seeds, planted lots of trees & willow coppice beds & got on top of the brambles 😳If you want to see more about our land & what we're up to then Permaculture Orchard Penmaenpool is where I am at.. We are on the verge of applying for our One Planet Development so getting the land to a point where we can start to provide ourselves with as much of our own food & resources as possible is not only a good thing to do for the planet but our future home & livelihoods depend upon it 🌍

Grow my beauties GROW

Woohooo 🤩 after felling some diseased Ash & removing lots of pesky brambles I now have 2 lovely willow coppice beds planted & mulched ❤️ Many thanks once again to for supplying the willow cuttings 🙏 I have 13 different varieties here from 234 cuttings ❤️ Second picture has a strange looking human for scale 😉

Chuffed to bits to have planted up a mini willow coppice this week.. I still have another bed to plant up about the same size as this one but this feels like a huge achievement given my limited time constraints 👶🏼 This willow coppice is in my I don't use any of that horrible landscape plastic, I always use cardboard to sheet mulch straight over the ground & then cover it with a thick layer of bracken. I collected the cardboard from my local pub (out the recycling bins) & the bracken is plentiful in our 'paddock'. The only ground preparation I did was to remove the brambles 💪 Thanks so much to Old Hill Willow - Brigit Graham for supplying the fantastic range of willow cuttings & for all your guidance with planting suggestions 🙏💪🌱

I'm failing miserably at because of this tiny yet oh so powerful human who is currently snoring in my ear as I write this.. I have missed 3 prompts this week - can't remember what they are - but I know one of them is about what I have learnt. One of my biggest learnings over the past 20 months is how powerful a mothers love is.. I genuinely thought I would welcome one weekend per month focusing on basketry at Westhope College when I started the course back in October 2021.. I was like "yeah sure, i'll just pump a supply of breastmilk & leave my 4 month old at home with her daddy for the weekend" 😂 😂 Oh how wrong I was!! I didn't take into account the raging hormones, the absolute NEED to be less than 5mm away from my precious baby, the broken nights, fear, anxiety, insomnia, intrusive thoughts, blocked ducts & baby brain 🫣 Throughout year 1 of the course I tried to make it work taking my daughter with me 😂 turns out babies are not great companions at college either.. I thought by year 2 of the course I would definitely feel comfortable leaving my toddler at home with daddy, again how wrong I was 😂 I have tried to do homework, I have tried to be focused, run occasional workshop's & practice weaving techniques when the time has allowed, but it's unrealistic for me at this time in my life to be the weaver & student I know I am capable of being, its just not my time for all that yet.. I have been forced (kicking & screaming at times) to learn the subtle art of patience & letting go. I am slowly carving out some weaving time here & there as I navigate a new version of me & I'm positive I'll be a better basketmaker in the future because of all this. Thank you to my daughter for giving me the passion to make her proud one day..

Huge thank you to for your tuitions this weekend at I learnt a lot of new techniques making this tulip basket 🌷 Plenty to improve upon & I'm definitely going to improve the handle but overall i'm very pleased with how this basket turned out 🙏

Woohoo! Caught up! Day 2 of & this prompt is 'all about me' 😚 I'm Vikki, 39 & a bit & racing towards that 40 like a very fast fast thing 💨 I have a toddler, a husband, two dogs, a fluffy black cat & 3 chickens. Most of my time is spent with my little one, sorting endless piles of laundry, breastfeeding, cleaning, running our holiday let cottage & gardening 🌱 I'm also only a few months away from finishing up my Level 3 City & Guilds in Basketry 😮‍💨

Fashionably I'm late for the start of 😎 I'm telling you now i'll probably fail with this challenge but heyho, tis the way of things these days 🤷‍♀️ So yesterday's prompt was 'brand origins' which got me thinking about how I started playing with sticks. It was all the legend that is Ben Law's fault. He didn't teach me basketry though, he taught me about coppicing, sweet chestnut & hazel specifically. Through working alongside Ben as his apprentice in his famous Prickly Nut Wood I got the bug for off grid life & traditional (& sustainable) woodland management. However, it didn't take me long to realise that timber is HEAVY.. I know, shocker right.. My head was willing but my body told me otherwise.. So I started looking around for other crafts from the woods that were less painful & via a much longer winded story I found basketry.. Here are a few pictures of my time at Ben's back in 2017..

Trying to weave 'reasonably quick' things for a little sale in May

This looks great 👍

‘Mae 'Cerdded a Gwehyddu' yn weithgaredd awyr agored i wehyddu ym Mharc Cenedlaethol Eryri.

Rydym eisiau ennyn eich diddordeb i fwynhau’r awyr agored drwy wehyddu a cherdded i ysgogi eich creadigrwydd ac er eich lles corfforol.

Mwy o fanylion - https://bit.ly/3ZadPOn

Had a fantastic time at on Friday morning ❤️ Very inspired seeing how tightly the dogwood was woven around the border edges & really want to replicate the beautiful archways in our orchard I think i am a little way off weaving a gigantic honeybee sadly though 😂 🐝 I unfortunately cannot credit the talented weavers, I did try to find out but with no luck, does anyone know?!

I'm pleased with my first two attempts at willow sculpture.. Learnt an awful lot over the weekend thanks to .willow 🙏🍄❤️

2022 hasn't been a very productive year for me professionally, I've mostly felt torn between wanting to weave & throw myself at my basketry studies & spending every spare second with the tiny human I made. Florence wins every time & I know basketry will wait, unlike babies who grow up far too fast. Thank you to everyone who is supporting me on this journey, especially my husband & Happy New Year 🥳

Meh'ry Christmas 😒 Trying to catch up with the course work on xmas eve while the ever wonderful husband watches over our beautiful but full of cold toddler

Sharing this post from my Permaculture Orchard Penmaenpool page in case anyone would like some of my mistletoe 💋

Remember that MASSIVE wreath i made a few weeks ago? Well did a fantastic job of adding all the foliage & it's now hanging up in their window ❤️🎄🌟

A little post to explain I will soon be changing my business name from Snowdonia Baskets to Eryri Baskets. As an English woman, married to a Welshman, with a Welsh daughter, living in Eryri, North Wales it makes perfect sense to respect the original Welsh name for Snowdonia which is Eryri - (pronounced Eh ruh ree) I love this land & recognise it's rich heritage, culture & landscape & hope to be fluent (again) one day.
It will take a few weeks to make the switch but I wanted to announce it so folks can see I am fully supportive & standing in solidarity with the original Welsh names 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Should I change my name to Basgedi Eryri?