Simple Jewellery workshop

Had a good, if tiring, day yesterday teaching the jewellery workshop. It involved an hour's drive to get there, and a five-hour session had been planned. I think, with hindsight, it would have been better to do a four-hour day, with an hour for lunch, though it was good (unusual, for me) to have time to spend thinking and doing things carefully, rather than the usual bull-at-a-gate approach, trying to get through too much in a short time.
The ladies were friendly and fun, and all up for having a go. The things they produced were to be admired and the day passed in a good-humoured frenzy of activity. They only stopped for a delicious communal lunch - to which I was invited - and by the last hour of the day, the mood was noticeably quiet and weary.
We cleared up and exhibited our work and congratulated ourselves on the dot of 4pm and I drove home, surprised that by the time I arrived I felt creaky and drained. Each student had gone off with a basket of great jewellery to be proud of - at least four pieces each, though some did seven or eight. Mission accomplished! 

Performance

I can't say I'm a comfortable performer. I can teach people OK, which I suppose is a kind of performance, but I've never been into drama and stage performances. This morning, however, I was involved in a workshop led by a "performance poet" and reading group facilitator, and boy, was she impressive! She gently led us through several warm up exercises - one involved our passing round her car keys, with which we were asked to "do something" before passing them to the next person. I tossed them in the air and caught them again, others twiddled in a particular way, or peered closely at a certain key, for example. Next we were asked to do exactly the same thing, but minus the keys...and it was truly incredible how vivid those mimes were. We were sure we could still hear the keys jangling.

The morning progressed, finishing up with each of us being asked to "perform" a given poem - which is when I knew I'd reached my limit.

Teaching the simple jewellery workshop tomorrow - much more my kind of thing!

This week's knitting

My "smoke ring" (where does that name come from?) is coming along well and is a joy to knit. It's the first time I've knitted lace and I felt really anxious about working from a chart rather than a written out "K2tog" type pattern. I need have no fear though, for as Sue told me, it's actually rather straightforward to follow and somehow makes it easier to see what's what in terms of where the stitches of this row sit in relation to those of the last row (thanks for the encouragement, Sue) Anyway, I'm now at the stage where I'm "continuing in this manner" until it is a particular length, or in my case, I fear, until I run out of yarn.

Speaking of yarn, this is the Artesano Inca Cloud Alpaca which is a Fair Trade product as well as being lovely to knit. Good things all round!

We met Edward for lunch in London yesterday and walked along the Thames from Tower Bridge to Tate Modern. Made an impromptu stop at City Hall, the new glass structure housing the Greater London Authority - that's Ken Livingstone and his support network. As we walked along the river in beautiful spring sunshine, we spotted people at the top of the building, so ventured inside and really enjoyed the views, both inside and out. Above is a collage of my own photographs, but you can enjoy the official views here. I feel a piece of textile work coming on!

Tate Modern was our goal, particularly the Rachel Whiteread exhibition in the Turbine Hall. We'd heard her on Desert Island Discs last Friday which made it all the more interesting. Anyway, we all loved her work and found the "Embankment" exhibit as enriching as the Tate hoped it would be.

Our favourite part of the exhibit revealed our differing personalities:

Above, you can see Mark's favourite stack. Below, you can see mine!

I am in awe...

...of the tutor who cut the circle below freehand, using a swivel bladed Xacto knife for the first time. To be fair, I think he was impressed by the result, too, but was modest enough to simply claim a few years practice drawing circles with a pencil had stood him in good stead.