Undiscovered Mysteries in Space and Time

Alan Duffy took on the potentially daunting task of teaching us about Dark Matter: Seeing the Invisible but did a top job! First of all we brushed up on our knowledge of the cosmos – did you know that only 0.0007% of the universe’s composition is planets? – and then moved on to gravity, mass and other forces to learn how dark matter works to keep the galaxies together. And we did so by swinging toys around on bits of string. With more [games] (strike through) real scientific experiments we learn what dark matter is, what it does and different ways to detect it.

Gift WrappingWith Christmas just around the corner, what better way to spend a Wednesday night than learning how to Wrap Your Christmas Gift Origami Style. We had all our early present purchases at the ready to wrap and decorate with everything from bows to tiny origami butterflies! We all left with some very stylish looking gifts, lucky for those who get all our presents this year.

Knooking: Knitting & Crocheting Crossover. Who would of thought you could mix these two textile techniques into something new. Bali and Queenie from Yarn Corner did, and they taught us all how to do it. No more knitted jumpers: try a knooked jumper!

KnookingFor the second part of their Laneway Learning double-bill Bali and Queenie helped us to make Streetwise Tile Coasters. All it took was some bathroom tiles, an old Melways and some glue and we were soon making our own coasters sets. No more coffee rings on the table.

We then learned all about how to Become Your Own Family Detective with Judy Rochow. We played a few round of royal family bingo to test our skills in working out just who is baby Prince George’s 4th cousin twice removed! We then worked through all the best sources of information out there and talked about how best to keep track of all the awesome (and weird) stuff you find out. One top tip – people lie and make mistakes, so don’t believe everything you read.

HomebrewingThen it was time to bring out the grains and hops in Homebrewing: Fun Fermentation with Adrian from Brewsmith. We learned all about the different grains, yeast and hops and how that gives you all the different styles. Did you know that you can grow yeast for brewing from beards?!?! That’s right, beards. You can’t learn about brewing without having a few cold ones, Voodoo doughnut was probably the highlight – a butter, banana and chocolate ale. Delicious.

We’re up to the last night of classes, and for our penultimate presentation we brought back one of the popular classes of the year – Glass and Paper Jewellery with Jenny from Vera Chan. We got to work straight away and made our very own, custom made, jewellery – everything from ear-rings, to pendants to cuff-links. So satisfying and rewarding and great personalised gifts too!

SoutacheBrushing away the tears, we ran our final class of the year, Soutache Swirls: Ornate Embroidery, Karolina showed us how to entwine beads and cord into decorative brooches reminiscent of times past. The result was 24 different designs, perfect gifts for the holiday season to come.

And that’s it: the end of 2013. Thanks for coming, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for 2014!