Holiday Weekend

I attended a Kumihimo workshop yesterday that was offered by our guild.  This a Japanese braiding technique that uses a disk.  I'm reminded of the spool with nails in it that we made cord with I was a kid, pulling in down through the center.  These are the samples of what our kits would look like.

Our instructor is Karen Huntoon and she will also be offering classes at the Conference of Northern California Handweavers in May at Squaw Creek, at  the site of the 1960 winter Olympics.  That white disk on the lower left table is what we used for the braiding.

The kit I selected was two colors and my braid is finished here, ready to attach the magnetic clasp.  The white donuts are the bobbins.  I couldn't believe how easy it is.  I was prepared to battle my way through a new technique.  I bought an extra disk so that I can show Alexia how to make friendship bracelets.

This is my finished necklace.  Karen encouraged
us to place the cord on the ironing board and steam it without touching it with the iron, then roll it a bit to relax the threads.  It's round because it's still stiff.  I'll take care of that tomorrow.

As for today, I don't know how I get myself into these things.  I promised Erik a ride to the Lake to teach a class in exchange for instruction.  I told him yesterday during the storm that I was hating him, but today the storm had blown over and the day was lovely. This is Sand Harbor.

We all walked around and visited each others work stations from time to time.  Kim was painting right on the shore so everyone took a break to see how she was doing.  That's the most valuable part of the paint-outs to me - the sharing of ideas and the commitment to paint for the entire time. 

I was the only one painting with acrylics and at about 3:00, the temps dropped sufficiently that they froze.  I was pulling off more paint than I was putting on, but I did get it done about half way so that I can finish it up tomorrow.  I spent some time talking with Ronni who is a water colorist and who also keeps a detailed sketchbook.  She told me about the class she took just for keeping a sketchbook.  She was waiting for paint to dry and I was sketching since I couldn't paint.  I learned a lot from her.  A four-hour round trip to paint for four hours is a little extreme and I doubt that I'd do that again.  But it a beautiful day, one that I will never forget.

I thought this sequence shows why plein air is so exciting and also challenging.  The light constantly is changing.  Ideally a session should just be two hours.

We got caught up and the session went over long, to the point that the sun had started to set as we were packing up.