baskets course – 2 days

I had such a lovely weekend learning skills for basket making, I hope I can retain some of them but also hope to attend another class as thoroughly enjoyed it!

A thoroughly enjoyable two days making a basket from scratch. John paced the course perfectly so that we all finished, whilst providing the opportunity to try a number of techniques so we created quite different baskets to one another. A fun course with a hugely knowledgeable and patient tutor! Highly recommended.

Thank you, Rebecca - it's good to hear!

An excellent course and good foundation for basking weaving, I shall certainly be attempting to make more baskets to master the craft. Thankyou!

Not the easiest place to find but well worth it!! John has the perfect blend of knowledge, humour and patience. The course is well run with enough time for everyone to create their own basket from scratch. I was just left wanting more, which is annoying as there isn’t a class available for another year!! However I actually had to leave a bit early and was allowed to take some raw materials with me and together with what I’d learned and a recommended book I finished the basket at home! Very pleased, I’d thoroughly recommend this course to anyone interested

A thoroughly enjoyable course. As complete novices we really needed the patient and detailed tuition we got from John. We definitely had a sense of achievement as we left with our finished baskets. We would recommend these courses to anyone, and happily do more ourselves.

Thank you for an enjoyable and instructive course. Lots of clear, useful and interesting information balanced with plenty of practice time. Highly recommended.

A thoroughly enjoyable couple of days with fun company, excellent tuition and finished basket to take home. Comprehensive introduction to the techniques necessary on which to build and progress further .

Great fun – even though the finished product was a bit lop-sided! Thoroughly enjoyed the sessions and learnt something – friendly crowd and instruction very helpful, even though I was the slowest and worst in the class!

Just a quick note to say “Thank you” to John for the basket course this weekend! Thoroughly enjoyed it I will see if I can remember what I was taught, when I come to try on my own!!  We will see what the little  fragments grey  matter absorbed.
Thankyou once again for a fantastic weekend.

I cannot think of anything that might improve the whole experience. I was particularly impressed with the fact that we all achieved the point where we had a finished or almost finished article to take home. For me the most important thing was that I learnt what it was like to weave with willow. Through doing the basket-making exercise I am now able to see what the limitations of the material are and what its possibilities are, and I can now appreciate the skill that has gone into making those willow baskets I have at home produced by others. Because it’s basically a simple activity I now see how I can improve my own technique in order to come up with something that is visually attractive as well as useful. And the really exciting thing is that there is no limit to the range of willow-fabricated structures, containers, etc which could be produced with this simple technique.
So I’m bowled over by the activity itself. In addition I have to take my hat off to someone who is an excellent teacher. As a teacher myself I reckon I know when I see someone who has a natural instinct to teach, and you proved that over the two days. The work was well paced – achieveable stages well described (even though I was deaf), pauses to make sure everyone was there, examples of finished work for us to check against, an atmosphere of acceptance of those of us who couldn’t quite get it to look like it should and help us when necessary: no one felt left out or felt unable to ask for help. I cannot believe you ever get a negative comment on this feedback form

Thank you David for such glowing praise!