divajools: About that workshop ...

Before I tell you all about the recent workshops that I attended, I have to say a few words about the bloke who taught them. Bear with me. I may gush - nah, I am definitely gonna gush! I have admired Kieth lo Bue's work for quite some time. I knew I wanted to meet Kieth after reading this blogpost in which he describes how he made a chain. From A Single Piece Of Freakin' Timber. Who does that? What kind of person has a brain that works like that? Mr Lo Bue - that's who! I follow his blog and have stealthily cyber stalked him over time to see where and when he would be teaching. As it turns out stealthy stalking pays off 'cos I finally found a workshop I actually had a hope of attending! 'So',you are thinking, "this guy makes cool stuff but has he got the goods when it comes to teaching?" Oh yeah baby - the man has them in spades! Kieth is a gifted teacher, experienced and enthusiastic and able to do that remarkable thing that all the best teachers do - he enables. No matter the skill set ( or the god-damn weather ) he gets people to LEARN. Very neat. Very talented and thankfully just as lovely in person as I supposed him to be. The man nuzzled his hammer. That makes him seriously OK in my book. Phew, so glad I could share that with you (insert girly giggle here!).
On to the workshops! The first one was called "Back On The Chain Gang" and over two outrageously hot days (I am talkin' about the weather people - sheesh!), Kieth taught us how to make our very own beautiful jumprings and clasps and fancy links. He got us to experiment with steel wire so that we understood its properties and led us through the very beginnings of chain making to the final clean and polish.

These are some of the samples that Kieth showed us - most he made althought there are a couple he found as well.

Here is some of the work we made. Some of us couldn't resist making our links and so forth into wearable pieces.

These pieces are by Jo Jo Spook - a talented SA Sculptor ( ok so she may have originally been from Melbourne but we are claiming her as our own now!). Go visit JoJo here

I really like the way JoJo took the skills Kieth taught us and just ran with it, imbuing her work with her very own style!

Lots of lovely rings and bits that Kieth made as part of a demo. Kieth shared an amazing amount of his knowledge with us and one of the best bits of advice he gave us was ...

... no, no, not "walk like an Egyptian" - he told us to go home and use the process we had learned straight away. At least once because then it will stick in your brain even if you don't get to revisit it for a while. So I did. This is what I made ....