Hat class in LA was awesome!

Though I do admit that I am glad to be home again, the class was a total win-win!

They even fed us beautiful homemade food for lunch and dinner!! I have pics of that somewhere...

yes...the class:

I taught three cockades that I learned from Candace Kling, gave a lecture with samples about millinery materials and sources, a hands-on section about feather work, (buying, curling, wiring, combining) and a demo of pulling a felt hat.

The only thing I forgot was my super-neat stack of crinoline squares, but my generous host, Giles, had some double buckram that I disassembled and made work. Not bad, all things considered.

It was very well attended: 15 students, two of them from the blog universe (Hi Austin and Coleen!) and the rest from the SCA. The group was a perfect size. Here they are, in the next two images:

 It seems that I only managed to take photos during the cockades classes, since the materials class was just me talking about a handout with samples and the pulling demo was, well, I had my hands full then. I could/should have taken photos of the featherwork section, but we were running behind and I was prepping for the pulling demo.
Here are some great shots of some of the students' cockade work:

In other news, I had a stack of custom orders kindof piling up for me at home, and I've wasted no time getting them started. After going to hat class at Izzie's (hooray! only a two month hiatus. Sheesh) I began two baby hats.

Hmm....blogthing won't let me add more piccies right now. Will post this and post more ab out the baby hats later. Also will post about the shop-of-chaos, which is going to get cleaned this long weekend.

After we go crabbing :)

Cheers all - and THANKS to everyone who came to the workshop and who made it possible. I know it was a lot of work, a lot of prep, a lot of cooking (thanks Joe and entire kitchen crew!!) but mostly a LOT of fun.