Circle back

Has it been a month and a half since i blogged here?? Is that possible? This might be the longest “dry spell” here since i started blogging sometime in 2006 (maybe I’m just giving you and myself a break).

Lots going on really- I should probably break this post up in chapters, we’ll see. In brief, the summer garden has kept us well fed and busy with it’s bounty. I’ll add an annotated gallery of photos in this post. This year the garden seems like it is in perfect harmony with itself. Lots of insects keeping each other in check. Fun to watch.

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  raised some swallotails

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  picked some marigolds

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  made some fresh tomato soup

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  they were fun!

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  release!

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  more marigolds

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  emerged

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  sunflowers

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  ladybug nymphs and aphid snacks

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  lots of nymphs!

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  ladybug eggs everywhere

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  spicy!

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  candied jalepenos!

The tekumo shibori zoom workshop has concluded and students are working on their own with posts on the group blog to guide them, a place to post their own work and ask questions. That is really what has kept me pretty busy. Lots of technical challenges. Multiple cameras, multiple devices, recording, lighting and audio! Jeeze- and all I wanted to do was teach you some shibori. I do miss in person workshops. I was fortunate to have a student volunteer to co- host the sessions- Thank you Komo!! She also took attendance and kept the chat questions going when I was busy presenting in addition to making me some good spreadsheets. Great fun though- a fun roster of exceptional people- some whose path I have crossed variously in the past and some new friends- all looking to learn and get creative!

Part of the class was about creating the fabrics, learning and practicing tekumo, but the end of the class was about using the fabrics you created- in any way whatsoever. One of the pieces I made from class demos for purposes of exampling what one could do, was an indigo wall hanging. I really had a good time making it and thinking about the elements of it. Using pieces I made as demo pieces was part of that fun. At a certain point I let these pieces evolve. I try not to have many pre-planned ideas or expectations as to their final outcome. Often, they are made over the course of several weeks and while that process is happening, life occurs. Natural disasters, loss, rebirth…things one contemplates while one stitches and creates. It ended up as a very tactile piece and one that really should be touched to fully experience it.
I added it into the shop here.

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  sculptural

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  inside/outside

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  considering

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  a visitor

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  full view

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  indigo, discharge,marigold

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  useful cloth

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  adding stitch

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  aspects

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  dimension

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  respect the selvedge

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  master the hem

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  cat one-not my cat

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  cat two-also not my cat

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I’m also working on more silk organza tekumo pieces as well as a 2 hour make-along zoom class to make the organza flowers. If you were in the online workshop and made the fabric, use that! If you just want to make one and want to order a kit, I’ll have that available too!
There’s a list developing for a second online tekumo shibori workshop so if you are interested, let me know and I’ll add you to the list.

And for those of you still waiting for the Silk Study Tour to Japan 2022 signup email, I’m hesitating a bit until I see what direction the pandemic is taking. In the meantime, stay safe, masked and vaccinated so we can meet again!
Here’s a little video that Hirata san made of a new restaurant in Kamakura-I want to try it out next visit!

a quickie announcement…

I’vee had a couple requests to set up a local silk shibori flower making class, so I did!
There are only 4 spots open so if you are interested, please check the shop listing here.

All materials are included in this small group class.

assorted silk pleated flowers

florals

poinsettias

I was going to post this on FB yesterday as a new event but there was a worldwide FB outage affecting postings,comments etc.  Maybe that isn’t a bad thing?

And while I am at it, I will remind you of the upcoming April 6-7 Shibori and Indigo workshop at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles (or as it is sometimes known as- Japangeles).  Signups are through the museum at above link.

The rain here has gone away for at least the next couple of weeks and I was able to replace the shade structure over the dye space outside. There is a new squirrel in town (or even possibly Squirrelly Gurl herself as they can live up to 8 years or so). She is so friendly to me and personality wise, much like the OG Squirrelly Gurl. I can’t know for sure but am enjoying her daily visits. Buddy the dog enjoys watching her and feeding time but the new cat-Kuro chan is trying to chase her when she can!  SG is too fast for Kuro-thankfully and outsmarts him every time.

kuro

is it?

lookin’ bushy

risu chan- Onakagasuita!

I did channel a little bit of Ume san last week and made this bag from the piece of sashiko laced boro from the last blog post. Adding it to the shop now.

Cross shoulder bag, made entirely from used/recycled and vintage materials outside of the thread and the shoulder strap. One outside pocket on back side, one inside. Completely lined with vintage kasuri kimono silk.
Front fabric covered button closure with indigo twined wrap-around cording. Outside pocket fits large mobile phone while an ipad can fit inside.

Link to shop

 

Plus the Silk Study Tour to Japan is in high gear. Everyone is getting ready for this great adventure.  I’m receiving the bio pages for the booklet I make to hand out to our hosts so they can learn more about us.  It’s always interesting to them!  We still have 2 spots open for anyone wanting to make last minute plans to join our textile adventure.  Link here. 
In the absence of the Amuse Boro Museum (which closes this month) we are making plans to visit the Mingei Folk Museum instead.  It just so happens that they are having a special exhibit of the work of Motohiko Katano, known for his adventurous and creative shibori patterns.  I have never seen his work in person so I am quite excited about this.  My first visit to this museum was with vintage textile dealer Carola Pfau’s husband Makoto (now passed), who also treated me that day to several of his favorite temple sales.  Boy did we have a good time! Great memories…
We will also be visiting the Ichiku Kubota Museum as well as the Kyoto Shibori Museum so participants will have the opportunity to study some of the best shibori in the world!

Time to go and dye the rest of the indigo thread for this weekend’s workshop!
mata ne!

carry on child…and wonder

I remember when I was 13 and this song came out.  I believed it. So did many others I’m guessing.  We lived in Japan and we heard it on Armed Forces Radio like all the top hits. The Vietnam War was ongoing and not to be ended for several more years. We got a lot of the war news in the daily Stars and Stripes.

I heard it again the other day and I still loved the emotion behind it. But it made me sad to hear it in our present time. In 1970 it made me feel happy and hopeful! At 13 I was not very aware of race, racism, or of the disparity life was dealing out to non-whites in the US. We were growing up in another country and when listening to the radio I often did not know (or wonder about) the race of the groups we heard until I stumbled on an album cover at the PX and when that happened it was exciting. I had my own reasons for wanting to believe the words of this song and it wasn’t until years later when we had returned to the US that it started occurring to me that this song was written about something I had no reason to understand based on my own experience at that time. Thankfully, that has changed. But maddeningly, for many, that day has still not come to pass.  We simply cannot continue down this path.  It is such a waste of our collective potential.
I was reading as I always do, jude’s blog, about saying what we are thinking. I tend to keep most of it to myself, at least here. But I am always thinking as I work and it becomes intertwined in everything I do and everything I make. It can’t NOT be that way.
So, this is what I was thinking about this morning as I prepared some silk for an upcoming workshop at the JANM. You can read more about the workshop in the previous post.
As for the silks, these are mostly collected from the last trip to Japan. Found in dark shop corners, as they are all leftover from unassembled kimono and were un-dyed which makes them perfectly suited for dyeing mandala but generally overlooked by other customers there.  Fabric kits this time include habutai, jacquards, chirimen, organza and some satin organza (new to me and difficult to work with -so far).

I actually had to go out and buy a backup sewing machine for this workshop-picked up a low end brother machine-something in case my regular machine takes a dive during the workshop and allows us to have two machines going.  In the past I just had the one and hoped for the best!  In Houston when I do this workshop we have rooms full of machines and everyone can sew their own.  This workshop requires a sewing machine.
Encouraged by jude’s blog post this morning, I dug out a video I made a month or so ago that I never used. It’s a few “loose thoughts” stitched together in video form. This one’s for you jude!

As for other goings on here, my shibori ribbon likes to travel the world and has been to so many more places than I have!  Recently to Russia, Italy, Poland, and the UK. So that continues.

The garden is producing tomatoes! Kind of crazy for January but I took a chance on equally crazy weather and voila-tomatoes! Also there are lettuces, swiss chard, carrots, onions, beets and broccoli for now. It’s also citrus time here still and whether I am sharing my own or enjoying the bounty from others we have our quota of vitamin C covered daily here. I hope you are as fortunate.

Ooh Child…

wishes

Our wishes came true here- r a i n !

More expected tonight. We are way behind and grateful. So far no downpours here and we hope for the best in the burn areas.

Rain necessitated taking some photos indoors in poor lighting in order to list some things in the shop. Moons mainly. All indigo. Some moons on silk, some on cotton and all vintage cloth and collected in Japan. Several scarves, some with moons and others using various shibori techniques are also there. In she shop now, here.

assorted moons

rising moons

old cotton moons

old silk moons

tattered moon

silk moon scarf

arashi chaos scarf

arashi scarf

ombre indigo scarf

moon and shibori scarf

silk ro moons

In addition, over the turn of the new year, some lovely new silk shibori ribbon has arrived in Italy and in Russia.

There are new classes coming up as well. Two at the Japanese American National Museum (still open) and one at the Fresno Fiber Guild (sold out).
I did a little slideshow for each one –
-on Saturday and Sunday, February 3-4 from 11 AM to 4PM it’s Shibori Mandalas on Silk.
(sign up here)

-and then on March 24th and 25th it’s more of Indigo Shibori dyeing
(sign up here)

And one last thing, I will be sending out an email for the 2019 Silk Study Tour to Japan to interested parties who have indicated interest via the Constant Contact newsletter (signup here and in the right hand sidebar). I have been working on editing a group of photos into a slideshow from last year’s tour.  It’s hard to select 30 or so out of thousands! But the memories I had while sorting were wonderful!
Coming soon!

 

 

 

 

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summertime, and…

I’m redoing my indigo fermentation vat this weekend.  It’s been a while in coming.  I emptied it out (25-30 gallons) about 2 months ago when I was redoing a fence line that it sat along and it needed to be moved.  At  the time I was also having some issues with fruit fly larva in the vat and wanted to have a fresh start and see if I could solve that issue.

The vat will take at least a week to ferment to a usable state and in addition I need to receive an order of ground indigo from Cheryl at Aurora Silks.  Coincidentally, she is having a sale on the 1 Kilo size ground natural indigo and offers free shipping.  I only had 4 oz on hand so made the vat up with that to get it started and will add the rest of the indigo when it arrives in a couple of days.

I am adding a fine mesh cover to the top of the vat since the lid to this container is not a complete seal.  Additionally, I am making a large net bag to drop into the vat while dyeing to keep all the organic materials and sludge to the bottom and away from the cloth as I work.  It’s really only an issue when working with larger open weave fabrics which I seem to use a lot these days.  It saves having to pick out the particles by hand or resort to lots of water wasting rinsing.  Water is precious here.

When I disposed of the old vat I balanced the ph with some citric acid down to about 7 and used the liquid on the ornamental drought tolerant landscaping.  The rest of the sludge in the bottom I added to the compost and was ready to start again. This vat had been in use for 4-5 years.

I am adding some video of the process of this new vat to the student forum for the online indigo workshop I have in my shop.   Here is a little bit of day two progress…

August 6-7 is the final summer indigo workshop at the Japanese American National Museum. Signups are through the museum here.
Last time this is some of what participants did…

And likely,since Jude had been busy with moons, folks have been ordering the moon assortments which has kept me and my studio helper hard at work…

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.

seeds, seedlings, seeded

Back to seeds…

The beauty of seeds is that they can become.  What?  Something of beauty perhaps. Many seeds are beautiful themselves. Today I was noticing the seeds in the yard.

sunflower

milkweed

poppy

I will save some of the sunflower and poppy seeds. That sunflower plant had over 70 flower heads all at once. There are so many.  The birds love them too and we share them.  The poppies were so successful this year and gave much delight to all who saw them.  And so easy.  I really didn’t have to do anything at all except cast them out at the right time. Nature did the rest.  Next year, if you drive by you’ll know the house for all the poppies.  The seed heads for both the sunflowers and poppies are in the drying and maturing stage. Some will just drop on their own and surprise me next year. Faithful volunteers.

Yesterday, I went to present myself and my “career”  for Career Day at a South LA Elementary school.  First, I want to say that the kids were great.  They are like little sponges that soak things up.  They were enthusiastic.   Turns out- the school does have two mulberry trees on its campus.  Just no memory of why.  I think I can solve that. Next year, I will get some silkworms started early- just when the mulberry leafs out.  Plant some silk seeds and water them into fertile ground there.  As for explaining my “career” to the kids-it was challenging, funny, and informative.  I only had 30 minutes with each of the 4 classes. Most of the time was spent talking about silk and silkworms.  I brought a tray of them-still so tiny. We cut open the cocoons and saw the pupae inside. I passed around a hank of reeled filament silk, mawata, yarn, kibisu and more.  I showed them the cocoon frames-both straw and cardboard. They all took home a cocoon and a square of silk. Three classes were 3rd graders and one was 4th grade. Trevor had 4th and 5th graders and did 5 sessions. His kids learned to play a couple of rhythms with straws at their desks with him playing bells. This K-5 has no dedicated art or instrumental music teacher.

Unfortunately, I must report that the silkworms are not thriving.  This is the latest I have ever started them. I really wanted them for the career day event and was taking a bit of a chance.   Although there is green mulberry leaf here it is not new and succulent. It is just too dry. We had rain earlier this season but has been very dry for over a month now. El Nino did not arrive in the south this year as predicted. Moving on…sadly.

But fortunately, my friend Nobue Higashi in Annaka, Japan is having a very successful cocoon rearing season. I recently watched this NHK short video on a visit to her place there.  I couldn’t find one video of the entire episode and this one repeats but you can see the portion of the show in which they visit her.

A long hot dry summer is ahead. Water will continue to be precious.

There are a few openings left for the indigo and shibori workshop on June 18 & 19. Contact the Japanese American National Museum to sign up. I will have some indigo seeds to share as well.

 

I get letters…

It was a great weekend at the Japanese American National Museum.  There were several returning students but the majority were new to both dyeing and to shibori in general. It is always a pleasure to introduce people to both.  Most indicated they will sign up again for one of the upcoming shibori workshops featuring indigo in June  and August (contact museum for reservations).  The force is strong in shibori…

combining techniques

understanding shibori on various fabrics

practicing arashi

showing each other

gohan!

makinui

itajime

arashi devolving

plenty of inspiration from the past

Participants were fortunate to be able to see the last day of the exhibit “Two Views” featuring photographs by renowned 20th-century photographers Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank who each captured distinctive views of the Japanese American and Japanese Canadian incarcerations. I had seen it previously and encouraged everyone to take a break and go through the exhibit.

Early on Sunday I had the opportunity to view the other exhibit “Making Waves” before the museum opened to the public. It was really too much to take in in the amount of time I had- I spent a scant 30 minutes and knew I couldn’t do it justice so will go back before it closes the end of June.

really showed another side of artistry

yes.

In other news, I am feeling much better! The garden is blooming, vegetables growing. I also had a chance to see the current exhibit at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego recently.  (Thanks to Nadja for the hospitality!) One thing I was curious about was the attribution of this piece on display.

Obviously shibori dyed but yet annotated as printed.  Unless I am missing something…  I could see the needle marks. Anyway…there were some fabulous pieces there, like this detail from a fisherman’s raincoat woven with reed and seaweed.

I came home from the weekend to find a lovely letter from a customer. Honestly, I have to say this sort of thing keeps me going at times. I know that making things by hand is an incredibly personal and worthwhile endeavor. Sometimes a journey of the soul. Please teach any children in your realm this valuable gift.
now I’m crying…xo

Forging a path in the right direction

Maybe it’s just me…

but recently, of course, as indigo becomes more noticed (not unlike shibori) in the general mainstream media-in fashion, in art, in department stores, in wal-mart and beyond- you start seeing more things like this.

indigo before

Now most of you know I am not the Hollywood type (even though I live near LA- the LB being LA’s stepchild of sorts) so something like this will never be in my future but I wondered about it since it was popping up in my Google alerts.  Being a Founder and Creative Director myself (of my own life), I wondered.

I wondered how one can cram so many hippy hop cool things into one ultra coolio trend setty project?  I also wondered what statement is being made by advocating the shutting down of nuclear reactors while growing indigo hydroponically indoors under artificial lights ( no mention of solar generated power here) when plenty of free sunshine is readily available right outside the door.

What is the connection and significance of surfing, indigo, hydroponics (we are reminded-we are not talking about pot growing here!), SanO (watch out long time SanO surfers-a new invasion is on the horizon), Echo Park (hipster paradise), environmentalism,  heart, soul, handmade, new wave, artisan, vessels filled with knowledge, poetry, relationships, honest living and hard work, small farms and the big picture? Turning green into blue?  Or perhaps more clearly, blue into green.

“Artists, musicians- a.k.a. the collective consciousness”  really?  Let’s not take ourselves too seriously here.

indigo after cutting

It’s hard to come up with a better list of trend worthy words or topics to associate one’s self with. Then again, this is LA, and this is Southern California. A place where concept art and all of those things aforementioned are trend forecasted and rolled into one tidy bundle for our experiencing pleasure. Who said manufacturing has left the building in LA?

I’ve made a few waves in my time here, and I’m likely to make a few more. But I prefer a different approach to my work- a slower persistant approach that naturally begins from the center and moves outward, growing in gentle circles as it expands.

But now,  I have to go and spread out the first cutting of the indigo for drying and pack the car so I will be ready to go give an indigo workshop tomorrow for Debra’s kids at Artisun. More on that later.

indigo first harvest drying