happy 4th

Sparklers on the dock, originally uploaded by Emily ♥ Follow The White Rabbit.

for those of you celebrating the 4th of july in the united states, i hope you are having a wonderful holiday weekend and some tasty potato salad.

for me, the 4th has always been a pretty mellow holiday, and being in japan i don't miss it so much. in grad school, when i was part of a international summer studio posse, it seemed like we would always wind up in asia for the 4th, taipei or china, and go to pizza hut to 'celebrate.' (sorry, i know pizza hut is gross and corporate, but until you've been a cheese-lover in asia, don't knock it!)

when i lived in seattle, we could see the fireworks from our front yard, which made for a nice yearly bbq party (ohh, i do miss bbq, or 'grilling out' as we say where i'm from).

in college in portland, mostly i think we watched fireworks from roofs of warehouses, or later the roofs of people's apartment buildings.

when i was a kid, we usually stayed home for the 4th, with some small fireworks in the backyard. i always was fascinated by the smoke snakes (cobras? is that what they were called?). and of course we had sparklers, and tried to write our names with the light before they burned out.

i love this photo from emily follow the white rabbit on flickr. when i was a kid, we didn't have time lapse photography, and the image only lasted as a memory of your eye.

but the key is, when someone hands you a sparkler, you have to move! wave it around, make circles, run around barefoot in the grass with the fireflies and crickets in the backround.

qiang embroidery

starting in a few hours from now (since it's after midnight, with a full moon, and i will have to get up well before the sun rises) i will be heading off to china for a week.

it's a research trip for school and we will be visiting the area of sichuan that suffered badly from the earthquake 2 years ago. it's an area that is home to the qiang people, an ethinic minority in china, who have an extremely rich tradition of embroidery. i'm not sure how much i will be able to blog, but you can bet that i will keep my eyes open for crafts.

the photo above is from sandyahyu on flickr.

another lovely kogin embroidery book

this new kogin book was just published this year. it's in the shop, and the full flickr set is here.

happy summer solstice

in my family, we didn't put a lot of emphasis on mother's or father's day, especially because my dad's birthday is june 21st, which is always close to father's day, and summer solstice to boot.

most years we had cake with strawberries for my dad's birthday, since strawberries were always in season. the strawberries in my kyoto veranda garden aren't doing that great (i'm learning a lot about how do be better next time!), so here's a link for the adorable knit strawberries above from kathryn ivy.

my dad has always supported anything i wanted to do, and is probably responsible for my wanderlust and my love of travel. he's a teacher, and a translator, and while i was growing up, he had a hobby business binding books by hand. now that i think of it, the different activities that i'm doing in my life right now (graduate school, research, studying a foreign language, running a small business on the side) are not that different from what he has done. yesterday he put up with the technology that is skype (he's not a technophobe, but a little bit of a techno-impatient) and we chatted. happy birthday papa!

i hope all the dads out there had a nice father's day, and everyone had a happy solstice.

antique market at toji temple

toji temple in kyoto (not far from the kyoto train station) is the site of a huge market once a month, and also a smaller antique market on the 1st sunday of the month. in june, i made it to the 1st sunday market for the 1st time. as expected, it was quite a bit smaller than the main market, actually very peaceful. flickr set here.
the lotus pond at toji.

much love, illy giveaway

just look at those flowers--felt, orange, poppies--3 of my favorites combined in one! this is one of the items made by much love, illy who is sponsoring a shopping spree givaway via paper n stitch: more info here.

beautiful sashiko collection from sri threads

this is just one image from the sashiko abundance shared on the sri threads blog.
if you love old japanese textiles, you can often find a beautiful visual feast there!

around the world with needle felting, a new book

i've seen a lot of japanese needle felting books, and i really believe this one deserves to be shared. it's called 'small world trip-encircled by felted wool,' and beside the wonderful idea of a world encircled in felt, i love this idea of organizing a series of projects based on the cultures of different countries. this leads to a nice mixture of animals, scenes, and other small motifs.

here are the projects from holland: a girl, wooden shows, and a little windmill scene.
koalas from australia,
and pandas from china.

there a full flickr set here, and the book is in my shop too.

goodbye louise bourgeois

I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands.

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois died today, at the age of 98. 'Amazing artist' doesn't really do justice to the work and the life of this woman, who did so much, and created so much, and had a larger than life role for a whole generation (or more) of women artists. If you are not familiar with her work, you may know her from her giant spider sculptures. But she did so much more--installations, works in many media at different scales. Printmaking and bookmaking and casting and sewing. In different styles and feelings, but together a massive body of work. I discovered her work in a museum in Madrid traveling by myself in the summer of 1998, and was amazed, had to just stop for a moment. She didn't have an easy life, and had perhaps more that her share of pain. She was terrible and difficult to work for. And her work often makes one feel uncomfortable. It is not pretty. She continued working even when very old, in recent years creating more soft sculpture and fabric pieces. She was a true artist, and a great woman. And she left us a lot to think about for a long time.

the guggenheim has an online retrospective here.


from a performance piece at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in philadelphia in 2006.

this piece is a mixed media work from 2007, entitled A Stretch of Time. via art news

keibunsha, a kyoto destination

today was rainy and grey, and after a nice yoga class this morning, i had a cozy restful day inside. but last weekend, i finally made it here, to the mecca that is keibunsha. keibunsha is an art and design bookstore, in a building with a lovely dark sprawling interier, with several rooms of zakka, stationery, accessories, clothing, and a small gallery space.
i'd read about keibunsha before, and its' wonderful reputation is completely deserved. i'll definitely be adding it to the kyoto shopping section of felt cafe japan, but since i've had to put that project on the back burner temporarily, i wanted to share it here.
the shop is a little out of the way and quite far north from the center of kyoto, a few blocks east of ichioji station.

their website is all in japanese, but here's the zakka page, from where you can click around (on the photos, or on the main menu on the left side of the site) to see some beautiful things.

cute stamps, animals and letters

i was inspired by the stamps my friends got excited about (see the earlier post) to finally add alphabet and number stamps to my shop! can't believe it took me so long.
i love love love these cursive stamps.
and new baby animals

and new totoros!

may handmade market

more photos from the may handmade market at chionji temple here.

goodies that my friends bought

last weekend when i was showing my friends around kyoto, we managed to fit in some shopping, (easy to do in japan). here's the haul. good thing they love tenugui towels, muji, stamps and masking tape almost as much as i do!

what kitka brought back from japan

very pretty finds by kitka while they were in japan. via bloesem.

including a few of my favorite design goodies, and a few new beauties.

tabi patterns from sri threads

this images is a collection of tabi patterns from the beautiful sri threads blog.

i've had a few friends visiting from the states during the last few days, and all these pattern for shoes seem like a good representation of everywhere we've walked! i'm having a great time showing off my favorite places, and discovering some new ones. and of course adding to the list of things i want to share here--sights/shopping/crafts--when i can find the time!

happy mother's day, and tiger babies

my mom is for sure a big reason why i love crafts. when my brother and i were little she always made sure that there were art supplies available to us all the time, and made us homemade playdoh and potato stamps. i learned many crafts from her directly, like sewing and knitting. my mom is the kind of crafter (and compulsive teacher) who is interested in almost any craft activity and wants to try it herself. from her, i picked up the idea i could replicate (almost any) crafty project i see, and that of course handmade gifts are best!
so when several of my friends became mothers for the 1st time this spring, of course i wanted to make handmade presents for their babies. i used japanese kimono tops (so soft, and so practical and easy to tie), and did a little handmade stamping. since these babies were all both in the year of the tiger (2010) i reused my tiger cub stamp from my new years cards, and added some bamboo.
the bamboo stamp was really fun to do, making different combinations of the leaves and stalks. of course i used the wonderful stamp carving material available here in japan, which i also have in my shop.
here's what the stamps looked like.

come to think of it, my mom was also a champion card maker with lino prints from back in the day. i bet she would enjoy rubber stamp carving.

what about you? what crafts did you learn from your mom or enjoy together?

happy mothers day!

a new kogin embroidery book

i just added a new lovely kogin embroidery book to the shop. i've posted about kogin before, and i am still interested in exploring this craft more.
i like this book because the projects are simple and useful, and showcase the beautiful kogin patterns.
a full set is of photos of this book is on flickr.

children's day and koi nobori

in japan, the 1st week of may is called golden week, because of all the holidays a row. school and business close, and it's a popular time for vacations. may 5th is children's day, and families fly these koi nobori or carp flags. cities also fly them in larger numbers, like the photo above.
and, if you want to make your own tiny koi nobori, craftershock shows you how.

elephant bib project in process

i've been doing some crafting for friends with new babies recently, and this project is something i've been thinking about for a long time--i love these tiny elephants and especially how they look together with multiple colors. also, i now have elephant fat quarter sets in the shop, which is something else i've been planning to offer for a while.

i made a simple paper pattern for the bib, using a 5 cm grid. unfortunately, all the babies i know are far away, and i just made up the pattern based on what looked reasonable to me. i tried one with pieced blocks of fabric,
and one with more strips of elephants in rows.
the bibs will be reverseable, and i'm thinking about using this cute mouse fabric for the other side, or using larger peices of the same elephant fabric. what you do think? which would be better?

wake robin, and the power of paper textiles

velma bolyard is textile artist and bookbinder. she spins paper, along side many other wonderful and creative projects.
i saw her work via an article in handeye magazine, which is in itself an amazing publication, dedicated to the empowering role of craft and the handmade as well as design as development.

in the article, velma explains how one of her works, a handmade book, is being used by a therapist, and how people connect with the book. it's an incredibly touching story about the power of a handmade object. also it makes me cry everytime i read it. velma's paper mill is called wake robin, which is also the name of her blog. good stuff.