My wife and I are visiting my parents at the beautiful lake Balaton in Révfülöp Hungary. Only a few miles to the north you can find the village of Kövágóörs, one of the stages for the so called Köfeszt (Stonefestival). No this is not a festival for stoners it is a folklore festival with music DIY courses and dance courses. Musicians from all over Europe gather to celebrate Hungarian folk music and traditional crafts and dances.
While I went about and photographed the people and the dances and the feel of the festival (subject of another post )my wife set herself a goal to weave a basket of her own. And of course I could not risk not documenting the stages as well. A professional basket weaving lady Éva held the course and mainly did help people to do small things like woven fishes or rabbits for the kids or a small soap holder. I did a soap holder myself so let us start with that one.
This was a rather easy task and it took me about 20-25 minutes to finish this little project. My wife spent a little longer to finish hers. About 5 hours and a lot of pain in the hands later she had made her first basket. These are the different stages and I tried to keep them in chronological order but it is a pain in the butops to upload images to inleo still so there might be some effups.
Everything starts with a good base and in order to make a good an symmetrical basket you need a base that is helping you to reach this goal. The branches used are thin cooked branches of the so called Nyárfa or cottonwood or poplar in english. You need to soften these branches by performing a breaking motion without cracking the wood.
It starts by cutting three thicker branches longside in the middle and pushing three other branches through the hole to from a cross.
After this you will be doing circles for about an hour until you finally have a finished base in your hands.
The base can be used as an item on its own. It could be a protection where you can put your hot pots or pans when taking them from the stove. Or if you make a smaller base they can serve as coasters or beermats.
I missed the next step but you will have to push branches into your base from the side and then crack them towards the top so they point upwards, these are going to be the ribs of the basket to weave along.
Whenever a branch runs out you just leave it as it is and continue with a new one always putting the narrow end to the narrow end or the thicker end with the thicker end in order keep consistent with the growth of the basket.
I did not document how you condense the branches but that basically happens with a heavy peace of metal and you really smack down on them to get them in order.
Unfortunately I missed the end because I was taking pictures of the dancers. Apparently finishing the basket is a harder step because it involves a special weaving technique. The closing of the strings of branches takes about an hour.
This is the final product and my wife was super happy that she managed to get this done in only 5 hours. In fact the lady who was holding the course was quite impressed by her too. She said most people need a year until they finally manage to make a basket like this. My wife was also complaining about hurting fingers and hands the next day.
I hope you all enjoyed this little photo documentary even though it is not containing all the steps.
If you want to check out the baskets made by the instructor you can go and check out her facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/nyarfaskosar
To find out more about Köfeszt you can check out the website:
https://www.kofeszt.hu/ you will have to let your browser translate the things since there is no english version of the site...
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