2024 Black Cat Makerie : Market Baskets and Bags with Annemarie O'Sullivan & Tom McWalter

MARKET BASKETS AND BAGS: INTERMEDIATE

We are thrilled to announce a very special partnership with Black Cat Organic Farm ~ the Black Cat Makerie: Farm to Craft.  This new set of retreats marries Black Cat’s and the Makerie’s mutual love of creativity, exquisite organic farm-to-table meals, and life on a working farm.  Each unique retreat combines creative learning opportunities led by renowned artists and teachers, and James Beard finalist Chef Eric Skokan’s extraordinary ‘as fresh as farm gets’ Front Range cuisine.  Our retreats vary in scope and scale as we explore different formats to bring you one-of-a-kind experiences on-site at the magical Black Cat Farm located just outside the city of Boulder, Colorado.

Working with willow, students will learn to make an attractive and strong market basket, perfect for gathering garden produce or doing some light shopping. This course will suit people who have some experience of working with willow. The focus will be on the ‘scallom’, the cut used for attaching stakes to the base and making a good border. It will involve time refining knife skills. We’ll start the ball rolling by weaving the base of the basket onto a pre-prepared hoop. You’ll choose between two different systems in order to weave the base evenly. We’ll be looking for elegant turns around the edge of the hoop. Once the base is made you’ll learn to scallom using a knife and a single rod of willow. A scallom is a method of taking away part of the butt end of the willow rod, in order to create a thin section. This will allow you to tie the willow rod onto the base hoop. It is a more advanced basketry technique that requires real focus and previous experience with a knife. This process will be done slowly and there will be lots of help available from Annemarie and Tom.  Annemarie will demonstrate the attachment of the scalloms as many times as needed. We’ll encourage you to perfect your technique so you will be able to make easy scalloms at home. Once the scalloms or side stakes are attached, you’ll weave the sides of the basket with a French rand. You’ll make a strong rod border. Tom will guide you through the process of preparing and finishing leather straps for attachment.  Once your market basket is complete and you have added your leather straps, more advanced makers can try making a willow bag or a fitched basket. You’ll have the chance to weave this second basket with an English rand. 

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• How to prepare and select willow for weaving
• How to make an oval base on a hoop
• How to cut and attach ‘scalloms’
• How to shave scalloms using a fixed knife position
• How to weave a double French rand
• How to weave an English rand
• How to finish a basket by making a sturdy rod border
• How to prepare, finish, and attach leather handles
• If time permits, advanced students may learn to fitch, a challenging technique, used in openwork baskets
  

VENUE
The workshop will be held on Black Cat Organic Farm, the most ambitious farm-to-table operation in the United States. James Beard Award finalist Chef Eric Skokan and his wife Jill have created a 425-acre organic and regenerative farm that supplies the bounty of their farm dinners, the downtown Boulder restaurant Bramble & Hare, the recipient of a coveted and rare Michelin Green Star, which honors restaurants that demonstrate true commitment to sustainability, CSA’s, and a Boulder Farmers’ Market Booth. Depending on the weather, classes will either be held in a renovated 19th-century cozy boutique barn that used to hold a community blacksmith shop, or on a brick verandah surrounded by gardens and acres of fields of vegetables, herbs, legumes, and grains. Mountains capped with snow for much of the year decorate the farm’s western horizon. The setting itself, however, is extremely pastoral, with sloping fields full of vegetables, fruit trees, a broad strawberry patch, and flowers everywhere when in season. Black Cat Organic Farm’s Toulouse geese, Akbash guard dogs, and strutting groups of chickens wander the property all day, evidence of the constant symbiotic relationship of life on a working farm.

CUISINE
Using Black Cat’s Certified Organic farm as a source of creativity, Chef Eric Skokan creates an award-winning cuisine vibrant with seasonality. The culinary team behind Bramble crafts our Black Cat Makerie meals, all of which closely reflect the seasons. The kitchen draws heavily from the farm’s more than 250 varieties of organic vegetables, legumes, grains, herbs and flowers, as well as its large flock of heritage sheep and its robust population of heritage pigs, paving the way for a limitless palette of flavors, colors, and textures from which to build each food experience. From artichokes to chickpeas, tomatoes to arugula, basil to wheat to winter squash and much more, Black Cat Organic Farm nurtures it all, transforming these stellar ingredients into gorgeous dishes. Each day of the retreat begins with a delicious homemade morning snack, followed by a hearty, fresh-from-the-fields lunch, and a delectable afternoon nibble. New this year! One very special farm dinner will be shared with our retreat community as part of the Black Cat Makerie experience. Surrounded by pastoral beauty and pampered with warm hospitality, guests who attend Black Cat Farm Dinners enjoy culinary experiences unlike any other in Colorado. The farm team devotes hours every day to harvesting these ingredients, then crafting them into outstanding dishes that mirror what is thriving in the fields. Many guests dine in private, glass-walled cabanas spread out across the farm, with views of rolling hills, organic agricultural fields and snow-capped mountains. We can’t wait for you to experience it all for yourself.