The Urban Craft Center is bringing some classy crafting to Food & Wine’s Taste of Beverly Hills. Put on by KCRW, this delicious extravaganza is a series of events, tastings and talks starting on Thursday and continuing through Sunday. We at the UCC are going to be making our crafty contribution in the form of five handmade aprons made from fabric in our studio.

Pics to come!

We’ve recently added a new Intro to Knitting class on Friday, September 24th from 6-9pm. Open to both complete beginners and advanced beginners looking to expand their horizons, this class is a great way to get you started knitting all your beanies and scarves for Fall!

We’re also expanding our Kraut & Kimchee syllabus to include Kombucha, a tart carbonated tea whose unique flavor comes from the fermentation process. Taught by Master Food Preserver Delilah Snell, instructor for our popular Summer in a Jar classes, this class definitely makes the most of produce at its seasonal best. There are still a few spots left, so come take advantage of this fantastic Fall class while you can!

In a timeless tale of skill against skill, there is a competition a-brewing here at the Urban Craft Center.

It’s happened to all of us. We see our friends breaking out their most impressive projects and we feel the need to show off our own skills. Occasionally bragging will ensure, and sometimes a dare or two will slip into an otherwise civil conversation. Last night when Amy brought out her new quilt project, she discovered Rhea also had a quilt project in the works. Two crafters, two projects, both at the same stage of completion. What began with a few harmless jokes ended in a challenge; a race to see who would finish their quilt first.

The odds are difficult to judge. While Rhea’s quilt is certainly bigger, Amy is trying a new sort of binding on this quilt and may run into a few problems while mastering the new technique. With the outcome so uncertain, excitement is definitely in the air at the UCC.

Special guest instructor and local artist Nicole Stevenson of Random Nicole is moving north for the winter and leaving us to finish up her masters degree in San Francisco. Not one to fade quietly into the sunset of the Golden Gate, Nicole has gone out with a bang of three fantastic classes; Transform your Tees, Soy Candlemaking and Spa Goodies.

In Transform Your Tees students had the opportunity to explore different kinds of alterations on their favorite shirts, from adding fabric embellishments to screenprinting new designs. Our soy candlemakers left the class with a collection of all natural soy candles, individually scented with a variety of essential oils and personalized in decoupaged jars. Spa Goodies students learned how to make a full line of natural bath treats designed to pamper and indulge, from bath salt sachets to handmade soap to lip gloss!

Prepare for the throngs of seamstresses ready to take LA by storm! Between Christine Haynes’ Intro to Sewing classes and Shannon Richards’ Pleated Clutch and Cosmetic Bag classes, dozens of crafters are now roaming the streets with handmade accessories and pillows for their homes!

Kids Craft Camp came to a close a couple of weeks ago but we can’t stop talking about how much fun we had with our 13 campers every day. All of these exceptionally talented young ladies, ages 8-12, learned new skills and took their projects far beyond what we anticipated. Workshops in sewing, embroidery, zines and comics, mixed media art journaling and jewelry making kept everyone busy no matter what their skill levels were. We’ve had lots of requests for another session in August (which is just a bit too soon for us to plan), but don’t fret, we are already planning for a Winter Break craft camp with more information to come!

Congratulations ladies on all of your super crafty achievements!!

This weekend at the UCC special guest teacher Delilah Snell, Master Food Preserver, lead our first canning class, aptly named Jam Session. We learned the process of steam canning, something that has long intrigued and confounded me. Delilah demystified it throughout the session as we made apricot jam, red wine jelly, and sweet onion marmalade, all three equally delicious. We talked about everything from how and where to acquire ingredients, the best places for buying canning supplies, to altering recipes by adding your own personal flair. Delilah imparted the knowledge for each of us to set up our own home kitchens with a canning station. Thanks to Delilah for making the trip from Orange County up to The Urban Craft Center we look forward to the next Jam Session! :)

Third Wednesday of every month. Next meet-up: Wednesday September 15th, 6-8pm. FREE

Zines are small, low budget, self-published and self-distributed publications, written by authors outside the mainstream who are motivated to share thoughts or skills with a community rather than to make money or get famous. In a word, zines are awesome. We’ll be working on our own zines are well as collaborative projects, have zine swaps and lots of examples to peruse through.