Last week we attended the 2025 Firefly Gathering in Green Mountain, NC. We were fortunate enough to be asked to teach Firefly attendees interested in kuboo baskets how to make one. The above picture is from day two of the class. For the first time since we’ve started teaching this skill all participants walked away with a completed kuboo basket. In past classes only an average of three out of ten students manage to complete a basket.
The reason for this is because a kuboo basket is not easy to make. It requires a willingness to practice dedication, discipline, and most of all determination (the three D’s). The class I taught at Firefly was the more comprehensive version whereby I teach students how to fish rather than just feed them a meal. Typically, I have to provide all of the materials pre-stripped and split, but in this more in-depth program I was able to actually teach students how to process kudzu on their own (henceforth I will be using the Japanese word for Kudzu which is Kuzu, as I prefer using the proper name). It’s much more rewarding and in line with Carolina Bamboo’s mission to teach people the skills necessary to wildcraft their own baskets. No box store or truck need apply when one can simply walk to the nearest kuzu patch and harvest for free. All of Carolina Bamboo’s baskets originate in raw nature. That is, I go into nature and harvest kuzu and boo, strip and split, reassemble, and like the sculptor proceed to reveal the basket that preexisted in the quantum entanglement of our imagination and abilities.
I’m interested in teaching folks how to do that! Firefly provided a great container for mutual reciprocity in exploration of that entanglement. Along the way the nature of Yin and Yang emerged, and we collectively played with it. Kuzu is feminine, wild, soft, and it readily shapes itself into a container while also tying the Yang up into spiraling knots of corporeality. Bamboo is stiff and straight, and it requires knives, cuts, blood and splinters, but it will also bend to the will as well as compromises with the Yin to create functional beauty. I have to supply that Yang element to my students because the skill of splitting bamboo for basketry in the traditional Japanese method is fraught with physical danger. In fact, I once saw an apprentice need to be hauled off to the hospital for numerous stiches when knife met knuckle. Knife safety rules need not apply to this traditional technique. Carolina Bamboo is interested in teaching this skill as well, but it will require waivers, and it won’t be cheap. It definitely requires the three D’s in sufficient quantities.
More often than not, the bamboo itself will cut you. Bamboo skin has a lot of silica and when split creates a razor-sharp edge. In fact, the indigenous peoples of North America gave up stone for Rivercane at a certain point in history. They traded one mineral (rock) for another (bamboo, or Rivercane, N. America’s native bamboo, Arundinaria Gigantea) and went from a stone age civilization to a bamboo one.
Carleigh Fairchild of the History Channels show Alone attended class and made a basket. She’s been making baskets for 20 plus years and made a basket better than I can. If you look closely at her basket, you can see that she “twined” the first layer of boo which is a technique I have not employed in any of my baskets (that will be changing very shortly…Thanks Carleigh!).
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the lovely and talented attendees. In the below gallery of pictures, you can see most of the amazing kuboo baskets that were unleashed at Firefly 2025. Unfortunately I was not able to get pictures of every basket due to prioritizing teaching over photographic image collecting. We are humbled and grateful for having the opportunity to attend. With any luck we will return in 2026!
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