in February…

Before I get lost in this post and forget, I promised the recent workshop participants this NHK link about the Lost Textiles of Ryukyu. It’s a fascinating search to discover the origin of a fiber used for a brief time in the RYukyu islands for kasuri weaving before disappearing. It features Reiko Sudo who became passionate about pursuing and replicating this fiber with very interesting characteristics. It first aired in November of 2020 and will only be available until this November. Catch it if you can!

Then, also for those in the recent zoom Komebukuro Treasure bag workshops. Some had asked for a shop lising the larger moons on fabric sized for the bags in order to make more and here is that listing. Also, a listing for the wooden karuta pieces- here is that.

And for fun, I added two of the komebukuro bags I made with participants during the recent workshop to the shop. I just love these. So fun to make and beautiful to look at. It has been really fun to see all the variations participants came up with-using the kit and using their own materials. In the most recent session one of the women made her own cording by twining dogbane she had processed! Impressive! Bag one and bag two.

In an hour from now I will host the last of the currently scheduled sessions for these bags- this one for the group of friends I went to school with in Yokohama way back when. This group did an all handsewn version of the bag. Today we do the lacing at the top and finish off the bags.

One more thing… the Moon of the Month Circle. There was a snafuu in the auto subscription of this item and none of the subscriptions were renewing! I spent a day troubleshooting it with Squarespace and we got it fixed. What that meant was relisting the item, and asking everyone to re-subscribe. So I emailed all of you who had subscribed, explained the situation, and asked you to re-subscribe. So far, about half of you have done so. I’m guessing that many of the rest of you have not seen the email. I know that many people use a separate email address for ordering things that is not often checked. So if you see this notice here and have not re-subscribed, please visit this link to do so. I will be re-emailing the list that did not re-subscribe again later today.

If you still want to join the circle beginning with February, you can do so at the same link. The cut-off each month is the 20th. So anything after that, your subscription will begin the following month. It’s all working correctly now.

The past couple of weeks has been somewhat of a blur…indigo, shibori ribbon, zoom, dog skin allergies(arrgg…), but the garden has still been in my view. My sister send me a little surprise that she made out of some scrap wood. I had been sent links and photos of this more times than I can count but here is what she sent me-ha!

So the table is set, and now she expects photos, movies and various hilarity as I work in the studio outside with my squirrelly friends. They have picked the persimmon tree clean of the last orange gems so it’s back to walnuts now. Expect to see more photos of this…
And in the garden, there are lots of highlights- and weeds! I go after them as I can but I’m distracted by the senna, the salvia, the moon leaf wattle and more. There are about 10,000 fennel seedlings sprouting among the waning narcissus so I’m trying to pot up a bunch of them to put on the free table out front. Should have picked off all those seed heads…
The tomato seeds sprouted and I came across a group of Aunt Ruby’s German Green tomatoes volunteering from last year so I’m looking forward to those. The garden is my sanity!

redyeing my worn out bag-good as new again!

there was a beautiful crescent moon behind the winter ginko

anyone remember this from oh so long ago- from weaver Neki. I love it every day.

it’s gotten so big!

sweet spicy scent permeates

it’s also gotten big!

i love the little yellow flower puffs

salvia blooming well

10,000 fennel plants!