Dried Willow

Fine weaving projects require dried willow that is then soaked to make it pliable again. This is done because the willow rods will shrink in circumference when drying and lead to a loose weave that can come apart.

Our sorted, cured and fully dried willow is $15 per pound.

Our main weaving crop is Koch Brown and Oka which are standard coloured all-purpose Purpureas with some colour varieties added for golden, red, green, dark purple and "Bleu" accents.

Currently, we are mostly sold out of 4 and 5 ft rods. We do have nice 3 ft weavers and thin 6 footers, lots of 7/8/9 stock. Our next crop is estimated to be dry around the end of June, depending on the weather.

 

Dried Willow Varieties 

Alba Vitilina Golden

Alba Flame 

Fragilis Belgian Red 

Green Edna 

Purpurea 187 

Purpurea Bleu 

Purpurea Green Edna

Purpurea Koch Brown

Purpurea Oka

Purpurea Packing Twine 

Purpurea Streamco 

Purpurea Lambertiana 

Salix Acutifolia 

 

How much do I need anyway?

Dried willow is sold by weight, which makes practical sense from the farmer’s point of view. From the weaver’s point of view it can be hard to translate a project into pounds of willow needed to make it. This is tricky because the different varieties vary in thickness from each other, but also season to season depending on conditions. Basically, the best you can do is a ballpark guess of rods per pound.

Not sure how many rods you need to make something? We suggest finding detailed instructions which will give a materials list of what is required. Add in a suitable amount of extras to be sure you have enough, and to provide a good selection of rods.

Detailed instructions can be found for free online or from a library. You can also find professional weavers around the world who offer digital instructions, books or even online courses.

Here are the results of a count done on a variety with mid-sized thickness (Bleu) Thinner varieties will have more rods per pound, thicker varieties will have less. This will give you a rough idea of what to expect from 1 pound of dried willow.

         2 ft  will contain approximately 250 rods

         3 ft  will contain approximately 135 rods

         4 ft  will contain approximately 68 rods

         5ft   will contain approximately 50 rods

         6ft   will contain approximately 30 rods

         7ft   will contain approximately 23 rods

         8ft   will contain approximately 15 rods

 

Note: Rods are sorted by foot and noted as the longest of the bundle (ie. 3 foot bundles will have rods that are anywhere between 2 and 3 feet long)

We have 2ft to 8ft lengths in most varieties and up to 12ft in some.