spring is in the air

as i am packing up my belongings, winter is definitely over. the plum trees have been blooming for a few weeks now, and then the peach trees, and if i am lucky, i might see a few cherry blossoms before i leave at the end of march.
last weekend i wound up near aizen kobo an indigo dye workshop/studio/store in an old townhouse in the nishijin textile area of kyoto.

it's very close to the nishijin textile center, if you are trying to find it you can ask here.

i've been meaning to check it out for a long time, and it's definitely worth it. i hope to take some friends to visit it in the next couple weeks, and actually try the dye process. the people who run it are great, very friendly, and enthusiastic about speaking english. the photo above is one of the lovely large tatami rooms where the indigo dyed products are displayed.

weaving in nishijin, kyoto part 2

earlier this month, i visited the nishijin textile center in kyoto. the nishijin weaving style originated about 500 years ago, when a group of weavers were introduced to silk weaving techniques from china, and lived in the western camp (nishijin) of a general at the time.the textile center is a large and has comprehensive displays, including looms.
spinning
mini dioramas of (i guess) traditional silk stores?in the end though, the nishijin textile center is a big souvenir emporium...it has a variety of mini cultural courses. i haven't tried any of their classes, but for anyone seriously interested in crafts, i recommend orinasu (from the previous post) instead just because the textile center is so cheesy.

weaving in nishijin, kyoto textile district-part 1

last month i did a weaving workshop in kyoto with my mom and my crafty friend rebecca. the nishijin area of kyoto is the textile district, and also the name of a traditional weaving style.
our teacher. the workshop was at orinasu-kan, which is housed in a traditional japanese shop house. they have a textile display section, a workshop space, and next door is a working textile factory. unfortunately, you can't take pictures in the factory section, but it was very cool to see how they are using the traditional looms, but updated with electrical and computer technology. (although they showed us a 3.5 floppy disk during the explanation about technology, so i'm not sure how cutting edge it is;-)
a traditional spinning wheel on display in the museum.
we starting by picking colors of silk to use as our weft.
the looms were already warped, so we tried to match the colors.
weaving...weaving...woven.
our finished work. it took 2 hours, and i think we all felt like we had just gotten the hang of tossing the shuttle with the right motion/speed when our time was up.
aerial view of our placemats with a baby for scale.
and this one's just for cuteness.

i would highly recommend this workshop for people who want an intro to weaving. of the three of us, i was the total beginner, so it was a fine level for me. i think for someone like my mom who has done a lot of weaving, it was a fun experience, but didn't get into any advanced information. the instruction was all in japanese. if you don't speak japanese, i think you would have no problem going and weaving a placemat, but obviously you wouldn't be able to understand a lot of information. they are listed in lonely planet too, by the way.