President’s Message (June 2026)

We had a great retreat at Lake Tahoe this year. Had some interesting projects and learned some new techniques, such as Huichol yarn painting, wire coiling, knotless netting, lauhala wrapping, and folding a palm leaf to make a basket. It was a rather laid-back relaxing time, we were even able to spend time assembling a jigsaw puzzle and mostly everyone finished their projects and made some extras.

Our silent auction was awesome, bringing in over $1700, partly due to the generous donation of Billie Walker’s baskets. Everyone had fun with the Mystery Bag Raffle which brought in $200. Each bag was filled with materials to make a basket, some bags contained pine needles which were donated by Betty Hulse. Those bags were definitely in high demand, as they contained lots of raffle tickets. I can’t wait to see what the winners create from their Mystery Bag supplies, maybe they will be baskets entered in next year’s silent auction.

We will begin taking registrations for our Fall Workshop at St. Mary’s Art Center in Virginia City, October 13-15, 2026 with Margaret Mathewson. She’s been working on samples for an asymmetrical willow basket. We should have costs and forms available at the June meeting. Registration will be limited to 12.

This spiral woven willow basket pictured in one of our library books is similar to the one being developed by Margaret. It will be an intermediate to advanced workshop.

We had open studio last week and several people finished baskets and the hex do-over class learned some new twists of the embellishment process, as did I. A couple of the weavers took more materials home to make a third basket because they wanted to get it right!!!! We’ll tell you more at the June meeting--keep the suspense going.

Cheers,

Karen Olson