The Pinners Conference came to San Diego last week and I, for sure, was not going to miss it! I had seen an ad back in October 2017 and have been waiting for its arrival. Held at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, the conference took over two of the larger venues offering 80+ classes over the two-day event period. I purchased a one-day ticket plus two class registrations, Beginner Brush Lettering and Beginning Macrame.
Part of the conference featured vendor/artisan booths but the classes were by far my favorite part. The instructor for the Brush Lettering class showed a variety of techniques using the Tombow dual brushes, including color blending. I actually started playing around with brush lettering last year but have not made much progress. She gave a great suggestion to start practicing with one letter on the first day and then add the next letter the following day. This cumulative approach might actually help with my lettering consistency, which is where I usually get frustrated so I end up stop practicing altogether. Let’s see how patient I can be the next time I practice brush lettering!
Of the two classes, I was really looking forward to the Beginning Macrame class. The instructor was clearly a pro at making macrame but I think the way the class was set up made learning difficult. To begin, we worked on our macrame laying flat on a folding table. Not only was it laying flat, we were instructed to tape the dowel (that holds our macrame) to a sheet of kraft paper on the table. But that sheet was loose and moved around every time we made knots. Laying the macrame flat also didn’t allow for tension so the knots were sometimes more loose than I would have liked. I ended up using my heavy purse as a paperweight and that made macrame-making easier. I finally caught up to our lightning speed instructor and am quite pleased with how mine turned out! I learned the square knot, half knot, overhead knot, lark’s head knot, and the uber tricky double half hitch knot that left half the class confused. It wasn’t until I was done that I realized macrame is similar to Chinese knotting, which is a class I took at Chinese school when I was younger. It’s so fascinating to see how some art forms are similar across cultures.
I hope Pinners Conference returns to San Diego next year as I definitely will sign up for more classes! Being able to do two crafts in less than four hours is a crafty mama’s dream! 🙂