dot .dot. dot.




dottie dress from enfant terrible




firework drawing from rosemarie fiore

More Tenugui love


from Ponpindo

**kobacha/ pumpkin




**fuji


** see more here!! and a online shop here.



from RAAK ( thank you shisomama for the link!)

** jump!!

More magazine love.....

1. mogu 蘑菇手帖
(mo -gu means mushroom)

A Magazine from Taiwan. I will say it's about love of the island, people and everyday things......... The layout and the size makes it look like a notebook /diary!!??.......


issue No. 12 Old stuff


issue No.13 Utensil


This is the copy I have at home. The theme is about " kids & animals".
( whenever I open the mag. I feel that the subtropical heat and endless sunshine leak /creep out from the pages..... )








* * *

2. 銀座百點
Giza Hyakuden
It's more like LA weekly kind of magazine. It tells you all the events and stores in Giza. Never seen a real copy but love to browse their cover archive.







I also have hard time to erase this image from my mind!! keep going back to see the same image again ! I hope I will be able to find a copy here.

* * *
Also I had 3 scarves available in shiny Squirrel.

*Magazine maniac*_ I can't stop buying magazine.............


1. Theme Magazine

I haven't found a real copy in my city but I like to browse the articles from their internet archive.
I really like this interview with Chinese designer Zhang Da_ "Formed from flat"

"Chinese thinking, culturally, is two-dimensional,” explains Zhang. The O Shirt, perhaps Zhang’s most recognized piece to date, utilizes the traditional Chinese technique of flat cutting."..........

read more here.





2. Lovely daze, Issue 3: when i am alone, everything is so surreal
I just got 3 back issues from here.




3.monocle

Till now we only bought one issue, it's also very hard to find in my city. We bought our copy in MOCA store last time. It's like wall paper* graphic but with totally different contents. (with articles which you will want to read). It's lucky that we also can find lots interesting stories in their web. I bet soon this will be popular and probably will be more easily to find in the news stand.

I love Tenugui ( for Shash's textile week)

" Tenugui, or strips of dyed cooton cloth, have been traditionally used as towel, handkerchief , bandage or headgear, as situation required."
Quoted from postcard book of tenugui designs from the Edo period

Here are some spreads from the book.










* * * * *

I picked up this fun illustration While I was in Kyoto. 8 different ways to use your tenugui.





I bought this tenugui with "hulu" (bottle gourd) pattern in Tortoise. They also sell them online.




Friends, have a nice weekend!!

New scarves

I just put 3 new scarves up in my esty.

I hope you will like the new ones. I will send out another 3 to the "shiny squirrel" later this week but all of them are different. Same as other scarves I weaved. They are mixing a lot of textures and colors. The scarf shown above is mixing with brushed , non brushed irregular shaped alpaca and linen (those they called butterflies)

I want to say thank you to Jessica from "the shiny Squirrel" also Billie and Tootie from "Reform school".
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!! Ohh, also friends, you bought the scarves and leave me nice comments. It makes me want to make more and try more........

Also I want to say thank you to "esty", without "it" I would be so hard to survive........


Credits:
photo by CL Shih
dress, sweater, skirt are all from "a la sha" !

What's in my bag today??

I was tagged by Sanne!!

1. Very thick black wallet
2. Notebook from "a la sha", my FAVORITE Taiwanese clothing shop.
3. Car's key with a wool felt case, from ABITX
4. Ball pen and lip balm
5. MUJI felt tip pen set
6. "Lucky" pink deer key chain, I believe the deer will bring me luck. Don't ask me why? I don't know why either!!
7. Five and a half " Let' them eat cake" notebook. I use it as a sketch book. I like everything about it,"handmade, 100% recycle paper, 3 different kinds of paper textures,very handy and super light.....
8. My digital camera in an orange soft case.

I think I forgot my cell phone today! Oops!!


**** * ****

Also Shash is doing "textile pattern week". How fun!! Will join later this week.

Happy Chinese New Year to you!!

新年快樂!!


We had a Chinese new year dinner last Saturday with friends and I made these red envelopes/luck bags for everyone. I printed my Chrysanthemum design on red paper and made some tags imprinted with lucky numbers.




Gifts from the dinner

Yuko brought over this lovely set of small utensils.




and a birch panel for me to draw/paint/ print on!! I love this so much!! thank you !! also I love the wrapping paper she used ( a news letter from sci-arc!!, haaaaaaah !!) next time I will remember to collect all the posters or news letter from school too.




************

Talking about pretty wrapper and package, I want to share this book with you!

京都を包む紙



It's about the pretty packagings from Kyoto's shops.
One of the author,Yumiko Niwa has a nice studio in kyoto and she shares some of pretty wrappers in her website. ( It's under the "favorite" section and there are 4 categories)

I love weaving!! ( I say it loudly, really!!)_to answer your questions in comments.......

Shiri Me asked me if weaving is difficult to learn! I am not sure it's " difficult" but I want to say it's a bit " complicated". The main thing is to set up the loom, there are several steps and every of them needs to be taken care carefully. Usually it takes me an hour to finish the setup. Sometimes it takes even longer.

I did struggle a lot ( trust me!!) First, the class is not cheap, and you need time to do it. Once I enrolled the class, I made myself to go to the studio almost everyday (but not weekend), and I tried to stay there as long as I can. Simply I don't want to waste my money.

Right after the class finished, I immediately decided to buy a loom from studio. I think at that time I was losing my mind, I was so afraid that I would forget whatever I've learned from the class if I don't have loom at home. I threw my last bit of saving on the loom. ( It was right after our wedding and a trip back to Taiwan) Also I got a smaller loom. It was a 8 harness table loom had been converted into a floor loom. It' s smaller but still take a lot of space and It only fits in the front door so I can't move it into my studio. The interior doors were slightly smaller. We knew we probably could reassemble them but we gave up. It's ending up sitting in our living room now.

Of course this is not the happy ending yet! I did found some little problems ( I want to say little because I don't want to scare you). It's a 8 harness loom but the one I learned in studio is 4 harness. I definitely need a 8 harness book, but I missed a bid on Ebay. After that I didn't see any more 8 harness weaving book. So I decided to solve this problem by myself. I did learn how to do the drafting in the class. So from the tie-up patterns of this 8 harness loom I figured the way to do twill or diamond pattern (see the picture above). That means I can do any patterns now. It was at least 2 hours looking at the numbers and I kept telling myself to be calm........

The first time working with this loom was NOT so easy neither. When I learned setting up loom in studio, Babajam was always there. We always chatted and did it so naturally but I found it so much different to set it up all by myself. I had to squeeze my brain to remember every steps!! It took me forever to finish the setting up for the first try.

CL reminded me a very important thing when he was helping me to set up the loom. He said " come on, can you make it more workable?? can you do something with this crappy loom???" I was a bit mad with him. I said " it's a old old machine, you can't do anything with it!!" And then he answered back to me, " NO NO NO, you definitely can do something with it, you have to adjust it to become YOUR machine.... thousands thousands years ago people invented the loom, it just made of wood pieces with very straightforwards mechanics...."
I totally agree with him now. I did make some little adjustments and I know I will do more later on.

Of course this is not the end of the story yet... b

I hope you won't get bored with my weaving story or scarves.


............. ......... ............ ................ ..................... ........................


Two new scarves I made last week before I got sick. They are super super soft . I used alpaca for warp and played with different textures and mixed a lot of colors.

I wanted to do a post about weaving today, but I'm a bit under the weather now. I think it's hay fever!! sneezing, runny nose and itching eyes!! I couldn't sleep last night, I need to get some medicine now.
Will be back later tonight!

Have a nice weekend, friends!!