Wampum

Yesterday I took Jonah, Sam and Grace to the fairgrounds at Cherokee for the Gourd Workshops. We walked past the gourd piles, where gourds were sorted by size and shape and to the community center were we saw a lot of people working on gourds as a medium, cutting, polishing, scoring, dying, and weaving half-baskets atop -- known as "wrestling with an octopus".

Jonah was my octopus, a two hands-on pull-me-this-way and limp-rag-doll-that-way sort of restless plethora-pod. Armed with a dollar, Grace found, first shells to make a necklace, then a finnished necklace. Sam was my gourd watcher, finding a walrus, a penguin, masks, and later in the day, giraffes.

I didn't see any white ash basket making materials, or the grasses we use in the north, but there was a good deal of cane and reeds.

This was the 3rd Gourd Workshop. The photo is from the first (google is my camera) in 2003.