Waiting for the outside cat to finish her dinner (she needs a guard while she eats because of Big Orange Tom), I was distracted by the honeysuckle runners reaching into the grass. So I grabbed a knife and trimmed the stems that were going out of bounds, which left me with a dozen or so long bendy pieces. The cat was still eating, so I made an attempt at a basket. I laid out six of the thicker stems as my spokes and used the other stems to twine around the spokes. When I ran out of material, I wove in the tops of the spokes. Huh. I can make a basket. There we go. The cat was long gone, at this point.
It is a rough little basket, but was straightforward enough that I looked up honeysuckle basket making online for more information. It turns out the best recommended time to harvest honeysuckle vine is in the fall, and once harvested, the vines can be stored. Then the traditional method is to boil the vines to kill any bugs, assist in removing the bark, and make the vine more pliable before making a basket. So I’ll give that a try this fall.
