[.uk] Pine Needle Basketmaking (ISBN 0971064717)

Book Description:
With the Pine Needle Basketmaking CD-ROM from Xbasket, you'll learn to make pine needle baskets the easy way - on your computer. Simple step-by-step photos and text clearly demonstrate techniques. The interactive CD-ROM lets you select what you want to see and learn at your own pace. It includes: Finding and preparing materials Beginning and shaping baskets Stitching including chain, diamond, fern, Indian wrap, and wheat stitches Designing using beads, extensions, shapes, and sheath ends Creating teneriffe for bases, lids, design additions, even jewelry Finishing baskets and adding lids. In the Gallery section, you'll see examples from fiber artist and teacher Marilyn Moore's work including jewelry created with teneriffe. Invaluable for the novice basketmaker, the CD is a great refresher for the experienced basketmaker. For IBM PC-compatible computers only.

It's OK, but no cigar:
This CD book gives straight-forward instructions on making pine needle baskets. Each technique is broken down into steps. Each step is illustrated by a photograph which is captioned with a description of what has to be done. Many of these steps have an additional photo on the screen page as further illustration. Although there are no specific projects presented here, after going thru this CD book you will have a good idea of how to make a pine needle basket. Although this CD contains good instructional information, I had expected to find some animation demonstrating pine needle basketry techniques. Failing that, I thought it would at least have some interactive elements besides clicking the menu bar or to the next screen. Essentially, this is a book that was put on CD and, other than saving book shelf space I didn't see any advantage to the CD format. If anything it's a drawback because it's easier to leaf thru a book while you're working with damp pine needles, etc. than to scroll around on a PC. \oWhen I tried to print some pages from my PC all that printed was a black screen with the menu bar at the bottom.\c Additionally, on my PC when I expanded to a full screen view, the photo quality degraded. As I said, this CD book contains solid information, but I wouldn't recommend it for a first time basket maker.

Pine Needle Basketmaking:
I liked the information on the disk, just hard to use when I am trying the process.