My first blog post!

Hi, welcome to my first blog post. I'm not an amazing writer (possibly dyslexic) and a little resistant to using AI to be honest so this will probably be full of terrible grammar and spelling and possibly won't make sense (although that can happen with AI too I suppose). But I wanted to share a little of myself and my work.

A little about me and my background...

I grew up in Headingley, Leeds. Left school asap, I hated it and went to Art College and then went on to do an Embroidery degree at Manchester Met in the early 2000's. I was making some quite sculptural things there and have always been a 3D thinker and need a sense of play to come up with ideas. Then I had no idea what to do with that degree. It was a fun and I met some great people. But without being able to put it into words at the time I needed to get a bit of life experience having been in education all my life so far. So, the next natural step was to get a string of dead end jobs, call centre job, admin and bar work for a couple of years.

Then I decided to save and go travelling around South East Asia & Australia for 18 months with my then partner. Which was incredible but feels like a few life times ago now. When I got back I really struggled to know what to do with myself, so I explored a few different things Painting and Decorating, Interior Design, I was a partner in a catering business for 5 years. That was definitely the hardest I've ever worked, on your feet all day and my first experience of running a business.

Then I got pregnant and thought I'd have no time to do anything for myself. Which was true for the first couple of years (not least because of becoming a single parent and covid happening). But in many ways it was an opportunity to start again and look a new at what was really important to me and it was here that I started to explore basket making.

I was attracted to the structural, architectural aspect of it, making something 3 dimensional that is both beautiful and functional.

So my journey into basket making began when my son got 15 hours a week at nursery for free! I bought a few hand tools a bundle of buff willow and a book - which I worked my way through and had a go at each of the patterns.