Three Fall Open Houses!

And the first one is a birthday party this Saturday!

What with a lot of travel, gardening, garden-related travel, and more this summer, it’s been way too long since I’ve invited folks over to my studio at the Wilkins School Community Center (WSCC) in Regent Square. But I’m eager to make up for that: I already have three free events lined up there in the next few weeks.

Saturday, Sept 23, 9 am to 1 pm (and beyond!)

• Everyone at WSCC is celebrating our building’s 90th birthday!
• Lots of groups and instructors are offering demos and free lessons in all the various rooms, rotating each hour, starting at 9 am, and ending at 1 pm.
• In my studio, I plan to offer a mix of brief demos and explanations of how I created various pieces, also from 9 to 1. (My very tentative schedule is at the "celebrating" link above.)
• I’ll also have lots of items for sale.
• At 1 pm, we’ll gather downstairs to offer a toast to the building, celebrate with cake, and explore its new mural!
• After that party, I’ll head back upstairs for about another hour, to try to get my demo table back to a space I can work on next week. If you can’t get here before 1, this will be another time for you to come and shop. As long as folks are around and interested, I can stay open until about 3.

Saturday, Oct 14, 4 to 6:30 pm

• The Regent Square Civic Association’s (RSCA) inaugural Second Saturday in the Square kicks of at WSCC that afternoon!
• Food trucks, craft beer, live music, children’s activities, and more!
• So of course, I’ll open my studio for another show then!
• The RSCA’s event actually runs from 4 to 7 pm. Due to prior commitments both before and after that time, it’s going to be a challenge for me to fit this in. But I will!!! I’ll likely arrive right at 4, and will have to leave no later than 6:30. So please be sure to catch me while I am there that day.

Satuday, Nov 11, 10 am to 4 pm

• The delightful Indie Knit and Spin (IKS) will be back at WSCC!
• I’m not an official IKS vendor: my studio just happens to be right in the middle of their wonderful show, so I’ll have my “shop” open then too.
• Sometimes, but not always, I offer button-making workshops at IKS. I’m not doing that with this one, but I will offer two (one each in silver and bronze) at the North Hills Art Center in October. If you’re interested, please sign up for one or both of those!

If you can’t make it to one of the above three events, just get in touch and let’s arrange another time that will work for both of us!

(I just realized the photo I added to this post
shows my studio from over three years ago:
I need to get a more up-to-date one!)

Buttons, Buttons, Yet More Silver Buttons!

Did you miss the button-making class at Indie Knit and Spin last November? If so, you’re in luck: I’m offering it again at the February 6 session, from 10 am to 12:30 pm!

We had a great time last year! A number of folks wandering along the hallway, checking the vendors and classes in other rooms, stopped in to see what we were doing and said they wished they’d signed up. There aren’t going to be many (if any) other classes at the February event but, since I’ll be using my own studio (i.e., Cosy doesn’t need to pay to rent another whole room for the class, and WSCC doesn’t need to schedule other events around IKS’s use of yet another of the by-the-hour classrooms), I said I’d be happy to offer this one again.

Please note: You don’t have to make actual buttons in this workshop! If you’d prefer to make a focal piece to serve as an embellishment on your fiber work, or just want to make some other type of decoration, that’s OK too. Unlike most of my workshops, where I make a point of showing how to make two-sided pieces, for buttons which are typically sewn down onto some fabric, we will just be texturing the “front” side of our pieces. But all it takes is a shift in the placement and/or size of the holes we’ll make in our pieces, and you can have another form of decoration for your work or even a few charms, earrings, or a pendant. It’s up to you!

For more details, see the Button Making post at the Indie Knit and Spin website. As described there, to sign up for the class, send an email to cosymakes@gmail.com Please sign up by 8 am on Monday, February 1, so I can have time to place an order that morning for enough material to use in the class. Seating is limited but, if spaces remain after that deadline, I’ll allow others in if but only if I have enough material for late-comers to use.

Once again, I forgot to tell Cosy to change the write-up but, as I discussed last fall, I’m planning to use .960 Sterling Silver for the class. If anyone has problems with that alloy, I will have on hand the .999 Fine Silver mentioned in the class description for you to use. The techniques used are the same either way.

(What problems, you may wonder? .999 means it’s 99.9% silver, and only silver; it’s not certified at 100% simply because no manufacturer is going to swear that not even an atom or two of something else managed to sneak in there somehow, but it’s as pure as reasonably possible. Whereas .960 means it’s only 96% silver and 4% copper has deliberately been added, so if you are someone who reacts badly to copper (or to traditional .925 sterling silver, which contains up to 7.5% copper), then you may want to stick to fine silver. It is extremely rare for anyone to have a bad skin-contact reaction to silver alone; most people who say they’re allergic to silver are actually reacting to the copper in sterling (not the silver element itself), or else to some patina chemical or polishing compound applied to their silver (which I am happy to omit for anyone with a sensitivity–there are several products I’ve learned to avoid myself!).)

Here’s looking forward to another fun class with more great participants: it’s only a little over three weeks away now, so please sign up soon.

Yes, Thank You Indie Knit & Spin!

As Cosy said at the Indie Knit and Spin site: Thank you to everyone who helped make this fall’s event yet another success: workshop students (mine and others), my fellow teachers, other vendors, all the wonderful shoppers, Cosy who organizes the whole thing, and Patty who first clued me in to this event several years ago.

Though I’d said I could fit in up to six people, I was actually slightly relieved when I learned I’d only need to find space to fit in five: that’s five plus a space for me to do demos! (I was then disappointed when one of the students got the time wrong, and arrived “early” for the end of the class, which is the time she thought it would start; sigh!)

In theory, I can fit 10 to 12 student into my studio comfortably (probably 14 in a pinch, though I’ve never gone that far: I prefer to limit class sizes so I’m sure I can give everyone the attention they need and deserve…), this was the first time I ever tried to fit a class in behind the space I use when I set up a shop!

Once I’d left some room for my shop assistant, Kathy, and for shoppers, not to mention a variety of my creations, the space left for the workshop did get a bit cosy! I managed to capture a snippet of it all in the photo here, though I couldn’t back up enough, nor squeeze into any other corners, to capture the whole space. Oh well, this shot is a nice memento of a lovely morning. I thought everyone in the class did well, and I hope they’re happy with their creations and will consider making more! (I did promise them a free firing if they did.) Also, though I can’t imagine why she’d see this (but I’m going to be vague just in case), I hope the mother of one student is delighted with the Christmas-present pendant her very focused and productive daughter managed to make in the time we had together!

Even more, I hope they’ll show me / us what they’ve done with their creations, whether it’s in a comment here or by bringing them (or at least a photo) for the next Indie Knit & Spin! Cosy may not organize classes for that one but, since I did this in my own room, I can offer another button-making workshop then. Even better, in a way: if there aren’t other classes that people want to dash off to, we can have time for a slightly more complex project: instead of just making holes in our buttons to sew through, we could even explore making shank-style buttons too.

Mark your calendar: that’ll be on Saturday, February 6, 2016!

Yes, hand-made: Buttons at Indie Knit & Spin!

The delightful Indie Knit & Spin returns to the Wilkins School Community Center this year on Saturday, November 14, 2015. The marketplace will run from 10 am to 4 pm, and there will be classes running from 9 am to 6 pm!

In one of those classes (10 am to 12:20 pm), I will be teaching how to make your very own silver buttons!

And, you may ask, just how do metal buttons tie into an event aimed at “Everyone who loves to work with beautiful and unique yarn and fiber”? Well, the theory is this: if you’re going to go to all the effort to attend this show in order to obtain fabulous fiber arts products and materials, and then lots more time making your own hand-made creations, doesn’t it make sense to have your own hand-made buttons that you can use on those items?

Though I originally announced this as a workshop using .999 fine silver (at least 99.9% silver; not 100% only because we can’t swear that there aren’t a few atoms of other stuff in there somewhere), upon some reflection it dawned on me that .960 sterling silver (at least 96% silver, with up to 4% copper) would be better for buttons.

In general, I tend to make a lot of pendants and earrings and, in that context, fine silver is a wonderful material to work with. But metals-folks have been adding a touch of copper to silver for ages because that alloy yields a slightly harder, stronger product, and that’s useful for things like rings or bracelets that tend to suffer a bit more from normal wear and tear.

Now, the most typical alloy, called sterling silver, is referred to as .925: i.e., it’s at least 92.5% silver, and the remaining 7.25% is usually just copper, though sometimes other metals will be included with copper in that 7.25% as well. The problem is that alloys with even just that much copper or other metals then require lots of special handling, firing and/or finishing than does true fine silver.

But, there is yet another compormise: .960! That designation means it’s at least 96% silver. With that mix, you get (roughly) 90% of the strength of .925 sterling with almost none of the extra complications!

So I’m now planning to use .960 for the class, though I will have a bit of .999 on hand just in case anyone signed up specifically because I’d said we’d use fine silver. But I’m assuming the students will all be metal clay beginners, and happy to use the product the teacher is recommending for their buttons.

I’d also said that it’d take just a minor adjustment to turn a button-project into one where the person is making charms, earring elements, or small pendants. We can make any of those out of .999 fine silver or .960 sterling silver.

Last I heard, there were still just few seats left. If you’ve been looking for a good introduction to metal clays, why not sign up for that session! Or, if you can’t make it that Saturday, let me know if you’d be interested and able to come over the next day, on Sunday the 15th. I’m hoping to offer another little introductory session then: the focus will be small earring, charm, or pendant pieces.

Soft Yarns + Hard Metals!

Indie Knit & Spin returns to the Wilkins School Community Center this Saturday, November 15, from 11 am to 4 pm. And, once again, I’ll be having an open house in my studio (room #25) at the same time.

I’ll have my usual mix: a variety of pendants and earrings, plus a few bracelets and other (non-jewelry) items such as hashi oki (chopstick rests, to keep their tips off the table) / dohgu oki (tool rests, to keep them from rolling away), in a range of silver, bronzes, copper, and steel metals. I have a number of newer styles, including my popular Three Rivers pendants and some of my simpler designs to which I’ve been adding a bit more sparkle.

Most of them are ready to go. I’ll be bending earwires (out of hypoallergenic niobium and titanium headpins) and assembling my remaining earring components as the day progresses: that’s one of the most conversation-friendly and even interruptible yet productive things I can think to do as folks wander in and out. I’d be delighted if you were one of them!

Impromptu Show!!!

I’m having a show at my studio later today!! Given the wee hour of the night at which I am writing this, assuming I make it up and over there in time, it will run from 11 am to 5 pm. (I definitely plan to stay until 5 pm; the question is whether I can get a show open by 11.)

Why? Well, Friday evening I learned that Indie Knit and Spin will be having their annual show in the building where I have my studio, on Saturday from 11 to 5. And, not just in the building, but actually upstairs where my space is, in rooms on either side of me. How can I not take advantage of all those shoppers just walking past my door?! (My aerie’s hallway does not normally see much traffic: most of the “events” in the building are held downstairs.)

Now, the thing is, I wasn’t supposed to be in town this weekend. I’d had some clay-play time planned with a friend who, due to family constraints, had to change that at pretty much the last minute. Not to worry, thought I, I need to sort and check tags and confirm prices and do inventory for several upcoming shows, I’ll just take advantage of the “found time” to do that. I’d earlier retrieved some unsold items from various places and had left those at home; last night I’d just finished packing up every remaining item I could possibly want to sell when I got the news.

So I’m up way later than I’d planned checking that everything is in the spreadsheets and priced accurately. Not everything has a tag yet, but maybe I can spread it all out and work on that in studio tomorrow while shoppers browse. I’ve also made up some little flyers (not as creative as I’d like, but this is last-minute) listing the other local events where my work will be available.

If you’re in the area, do stop by. (And, if you’re not, but get a chuckle out of my last-minute planning here, please at least send me a few words of encouragement to keep me going on not-enough sleep! Thanks!!!)

I will close with a quick snapshot (on borrowed camera since I’ve still not sorted out the problems with mine yet, and its colors are off a bit for some reason) of just a few of the pieces I have on hand. Each of these has a little stone (lab-created corundum or spinel) that will glow in the winter’s light….