I had a wonderful, wonderful weekend, with a group of lovely people. There was chocolate, and tea, and coffee; there was a large table full of books to browse; there was a nice, light, large room to sit in and chat and work on projects brought along; and then there was the workshop room, where I spent most of the time.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="960"]
Our group - as you can see, it was a mixed bunch, doing Living History of a good number of different times! (I was one of the people opting for modern clothing - it's easier for me to put on and take off layers as I need to when I'm hopping around the room teaching.)
I had a lot of fun teaching a variety of courses - though, as sometimes happens, one of the courses went a little bit different than I had planned for. Apparently, my method of explaining how to sprang does work for some people - and for others, it does not work at all, and causes more confusion than clarity, which is not a good thing. (The workshop taking place on Saturday afternoon may have had something to do with it, too - with all the talking, book-reading, sewing and cutting, plus the other workshops taking place before, and the night probably not being too long for most people, learning something new is a tad more difficult than when you're all fresh and rested.)
There also were a few bouts of frustration about threads not going quite where they were supposed to be - and that is one of the category 2 problems, the ones involving motor skills and only being solved by practice.
In spite of all the pitfalls, we got it all figured out by the end, and all of the participating ladies had a nice bit of sprang to show for their efforts when we ended the workshop, with some of them even making holes where they wanted them to be. So the next time I'll give a sprang workshop, I will change things a bit, in hopes it will be clearer and easier for everybody.
"While we teach, we learn", said old Seneca the Younger - and he's still right about that...