Fish skins are an amazing resource that are often overlooked as a basketry material and simply discarded as waste. Who knew that they could be utilized to make unique and beautiful baskets! 

Northwest basket weaver Karen Sherwood will share the process of preparing and curing fish skin, which she learned from Athabascan basket maker Audrey Armstrong while visiting Alaska. She will show salmon skin baskets and demonstrate the process of working with the skins.  Karen's baskets display a unique direction for this old tradition. 

About Karen Sherwood: Karen Sherwood began her basket weaving journey creating vessels woven with materials gathered from nature and used for wilderness emergencies or survival. 

Karen continues her weaving, blending her knowledge of traditional plant uses with a love of Northwest culture. She carries a passion for exploring historic basketry techniques and styles, and brings this to her work by gathering her own weaving materials from the wild. With these connections to the plants and their remarkable uses, each project becomes a unique blend of past and present. “It is with this vision we hope to honor the plants and the traditions they have grown from to give insight to not only the past, but how it can illuminate our future,” she says. 

Karen teaches ethnobotany programs for the Washington State Department of Ecology. She leads basketry classes, as well as edible and medicinal plant seminars, throughout the county along with other earth-centered programs through Earthwalk Northwest, a wilderness school she and her husband founded.