Tuesday, December 09, 2008

A Master of the Tree




One of my former colleagues of the Artists' Undertaking Gallery, Patrick O'Brien, recently moved his woodturning studio into the new Lorton Workhouse Arts Center. I managed to check out the new arts center on its opening day and stopped by to see Patrick at work. Patrick is a master at seeing the future beauty of each piece of wood he turns and he allows details in the natural appearance of the tree to shine through. He will be having an open house along with a few other artists in three of the buildings of the former prison on Saturday evening, Dec. 13th, from 7-9 pm or you can stop in the arts center during open hours. Check out Patrick's turned wood mastery on his website.

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Knitting Sales !



Usually I only submit my beadweaving to my co-op gallery, Potomac Craftsmen Gallery but for the holiday show, I had some knitting that has been needing a good home for the last couple years. I can finally bid my mitred square hat and grey curly scarf a fond farewell. The hat took me from Thanksgiving to Easter to finish one year. I thought I would never finish it. It was a good learning experience in modular knitting, and strangely, I became attached to knitting mitred squares after that ! The curly scarf was another experiment with the idea of casting a crocheted chain onto circular needles and increasing until each row took an hour :P