Wednesday, March 19, 2008

More about Madrona & Tacoma

More about Madrona: I took two full-day workshops: one given by Lucy Neatby--‘Cool Socks!’ (www.tradewindknits.com). As with all Lucy’s classes, in addition to specific sock techniques, we learned many helpful skills which can be applied to any knitting project. The other class was by Nancy Bush--Making a True Haapsalu Rȁtik’- A Traditional Shawl from Estonia’ (www.woolywest.com). In this project, we knit a sample shawl with many ‘nups’ which formed a pretty lily-of-the-valley design.


The venue for accommodation and all events in Tacoma was the centrally-located Hotel Murano
http://www.hotelmuranotacoma.com. The hotel was in the final throes of an extensive renovation, but my room and any public rooms I visited were all very comfortable and attractively furnished. On each floor, the hotel displayed a masterpiece of a featured glassblower selected from around the world.


Tacoma is the home of outstanding glassblower, Dale Chihuly (http://www.chihuly.com/). The Museum of Glass (http://www.museumofglass.org) is a unique building housing numerous examples of his unbelievable talents, and was reached by walking under the Bridge of Glass. While at the museum, I watched master glassblower from Murano, Italy, Lino Tagliapietra, demonstrating the many steps in creating an intricate piece of art.









I also went to the Washington State History Museum and saw two special exhibitions: ‘The Art of the Stamp’, 100 small works of original art which were used to create postage stamps. The exhibition was developed by National Postal Museum the United States Postal Service, and was organized by the Smithsonian Museum. It showed the development of stamp design from the original concept to final artwork—everything from dinosaurs to Elvis Presley, the most popular U.S. stamp of all time. The second exhibition was called ‘Remembered Light’ and was composed of shards from damaged church windows. These fragments were collected by an American Army chaplain during World War II.

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