Stories

“Who Done It” Gourd Art by Kelly

I put water in it and let it set overnight, then put rocks in it to clean out the inside, then set it out to dry on top of my husband’s workbench, outside.  When I got home, this is what was left!   – Janet Johnson

What’s Lost is Found
Are you ready for a sightly eerie story?  You may remember that several BABMers went to Camp Magruder in Oregon last October to participate in the Columbia Basin Basketry Guild retreat.  Nancy B, Jutta, and I took a class from Judy K. Wilson.  I finished my colorful, twined and beaded basket at home and brought it to a meeting.  I took it home and carried it around for a while in order to show it off to my local basketmaker friends, and then promptly forgot where I put it.  I occasionally looked for it but wasn’t alarmed.  One day recently, I pulled up in front of my friend Virginia’s house and a splash of color caught my eye on the curbside mailbox of her neighbor.  I looked more closely and got a creepy feeling on the back of my neck.  There, hanging on a nail below the mailbox was my little Judy K. Wilson basket.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was none the worse for wear but had an abandoned spider nest tucked inside.  I grabbed it and ran.  Virginia called her neighbor and found out that it had been in her garden.  She didn’t know what it was or where it had come from so she hung it on her mailbox.  It still amazes me when I think of it.  Now, just a glimpse of my precious basket makes me believe a little bit in garden trolls.  – Nancy Jones

Death by Kelp Basket:  A Cautionary Tale
by Jill Stanton

Choco, our Labrador retriever, was true to her breed.  Over her 11 ½ years of happy life she ate son Gabrielʼs
homework, his lunch money, any dead jellyfish she could find on the beach, countless plastic bags that once held food, and my HRT (estrogen) prescription–pills, bottle, and packaging–which the postman once threw over our fence.

When I first took up basketry last year, she tasted, mangled, but then wisely rejected, a prickly pine needle basket I was working on.  But it was a dry, finished kelp basket that led to her demise.

When Choco stopped eating last month–a clear sign of serious illness in a Labrador—sonograms identified a large organic substance in her intestines.  After a three-plus hour surgery, the vet showed me the blob he had removed to see if I could identify it; some of the sewn panels of the kelp basket were still intact.  Poor,
sweet Choco died a day later from a stroke.

If there is a dog heaven, Choco is romping in the ocean waves right now, swinging her kong over her shoulder, and then gamboling through the sand to roll in a dead seal.   Hopefully, she will pass on the kelp this time.

She will be missed.