Beginning of pine needle project!

First you gather them.

Then you soak them in boiling water and decap the clusters.

I use the back side of a butter knife and scrape them off one at a time.  I also discard any really short or broken ones.

You need to keep the ones that don't hold together separate from the clusters.

Then I collected vines from the back yard for decoration pieces.

Here is some of the purple fabric I think I am going to incorporate by wrapping with it.  Still trying to figure out what I want to make with this stuff.  

The prep work takes a long time.  No wonder people get so much money for these baskets.  The stuff is free and great for recycling, but very time and labor intensive.

Keep watching...more to come later.