My first class was Kumihimo, which is a Japanese form of braiding. The instructor, Karen DeSousa, owns the online business Accent Bead Design. The class was arranged by the Hanging By A Thread chapter of the Embroiderers' Guild, and was held at Kelsey's Needle Krafts in Placerville. This class was geared toward braiding with beads. I've rarely worked with beads, so this was a first for me. So small and wiley!!! I found that my braiding thread for the beads ran a little short, so this will become a bracelet instead of a choker.
Silk cord and beads.
The Kumihimo disk and bobbins.
Ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille...
I then attended a class for Free Form Crochet. It was held at Lofty Lou's and the instructor was Karen. It was a blast! I felt like a little kid pretending to crochet. I really let myself go and didn't use many structured patterns, but that is what it is all about. There are no mistakes in this method and I found it very freeing. One method is to assign six different yarns a number and six different hook sizes a number, then roll two dice and use those numbers for your yarn/hook choice. After a while, roll the dice again. I haven't tried this yet, but it sounds like fun.
Here is my first attempt.
For more info and examples, here's the link to the Free Form Crochet site. Some amazing stuff. There are several books you can find on the subject as well.
3 comments:
I never knew you had class! How fun! That beaded bracelet is really cool looking... and I think the crochet sample looks a lot like what my true & sincere effort would look like at this point... imagine what you could come up with with a few glasses of wine in ya! Maybe you should invent that... Drunken Free Crochet Class... I'd pay just to observe!
You just have to show up after 5:00 pm and put a crochet hook in my hand and you can observe for free!
I always wanted to crochet.. tried once but they used the "you're left handed and unteachable" excuse.
Post a Comment