Jewelry Class

In the last few weeks I have experienced a renewed attraction to two old "frenemies": sewing and jewelry making. I don't know why I am always recycling previous interests and why they have to reappear two at a time, but that's what happens. And just when I was getting into painting and mixed media!

Anyway, I bought the Alabama Stitch Book, can't remember why nor how I heard about it, started cutting up some clothes, signed up for a pattern making class with Jarred Garza that starts on September 30th at The Sewing Workshop. On top of it all I started to feel the jewelry thing calling me again.

So today I'm just going to focus (something I should practice doing) on how the jewelry making reappeared on the churning surface of the not so still waters of my awareness. Did I actually write that?

It went like this. Jewelry making had not, except for brief moments here and there, interested me much in quite a long time, that is, until it started whispering to me "you've got all the tools, a gazillion beads and stones, silver and copper in sheets and wire.... come to me, come to me..." Then I listened to Alison Lee's Craftcast interview with Michael David Sturlin. He sounded like such an interesting person that I visited his website and there it was: he was scheduled to teach right here in San Francisco at The Revere Academy! The class that caught my attention was "Classic Wire Rings".

I tried to resist. I really did. I told myself "Don't do this! Stick with the mixed media!" I told myself the class was too expensive, that I could find it all on Youtube, which I did. There are many videos about the subject, some good, some bad, and I watched them all. But on Thursday, the day before the class, I told myself (we have a lot of conversations) that if I were to travel to a workshop it would cost me so much more in airfare and food and lodging, whereas this one was right here. I was convincing. I signed up, took the day off, and went to class.

I'm so glad I did, because less than 30 minutes into it, I knew that it was pretty stupid of me to have thought that I could get the same experience from a video. I find youtube videos great for discovering techniques or building on them, but nothing can really substitute for a live instructor or, next best, an online class with videos and pdfs.

The teacher was excellent. His expertise, clear instructions, soft-spoken manner, great sense of humor can't be captured in a photo. (And he's even better looking in person, but I won't apologize for the photo because he told us not to apologize for imperfections in what we make...).

The view was beautiful.

The sound of happy little elves hammering away in another classroom drew me towards them long enough to record the rap, rap, rap of their hammers.

Although we were taught several other styles, I couldn't stop making spirals in copper, copper and silver and just silver, and left the class with the collection of rings in the image at the top of the post.

I have enough of them to wear a bouquet of wrapped spiral rings.