sweetgeorgia

SOAR… I’m actually going.

I just finished registering for SOAR… It’ll be my first time attending… so far, feeling a little tingly. It took me 20 minutes of hemming and hawing to finally commit the credit card number and during that time, Judith MacKenzie McCuin’s sessions ALL filled up completely. Ahhh well. I am signed up for Amy King’s Dye Crazy, Abby Franquemont’s Drum Carding, Janel Laidman’s Spinning for Socks, and Deb Menz’s Colour class. The amount of combined wisdom in all the instructors is absolutely insane and I can’t wait to drown in fibre and colour during that Halloween weekend.

Now, time to start organizing the resort lodging and 8.5 hour drive from Vancouver to Oregon! Anyone else going? Did you get everything you wanted and more? Anyone ever been? Suggestions to someone going for the first time?

San Diego and the all fish taco diet

Before we can even think about the trade show, yarn stuff, crocheting or weaving… we have to talk about the fish tacos. Having never been to San Diego, I was unaware (but quickly learned — thank you, Mari!) that the signature dish of the area is fish tacos. And by an incredible stroke of luck, my $17/night hostel was located a block away from (what is claimed to be) the home of the world’s best fish taco. South Beach Bar & Grille is located in Ocean Beach, a little old school beach community just a little northwest of downtown San Diego. The small, palm tree-lined streets are punctuated by smoke shops, body piercing parlours, Irish bars, and of course, surf shops.

I loved this spot. My day rate at the hostel cost less than the breakfast at the Hyatt hotel. It cost less than one day of parking at the hotel. I had a room designed with six bunks, but I was the only one in the room for three nights… so it was like getting a private room plus private shower. I would come back to this hostel in a heartbeat. Along with free towels (unusual at hostels, I found) and free Wifi, the hostel would serve a free, hot buffet with all the eggs and flapjacks you could eat. I’d get my coffee and walk the two blocks to the beach every morning, letting the sun and the sound of surf clear my head for the day. The residents were warm and friendly… and just very real. And no matter what I did in the daytime, I’d always come back to OB for dinner…

On Thursday afternoon, before I started my five hour drive from San Diego to Los Angeles (not the smartest thing, I know, but I had to get to the Unwind anniversary party), I bumped into this undeniably awesome taco shop in Mission Hills called Lucha Libre Taco Shop. Eating mahi tacos in a shop with hot pink walls and zebra striped chairs with luchador masks embroidered to them… it’s a completely perfect combination. And they have a bathroom painted entirely in metallic silver with mirrors on the ceiling… take your photo there and you can post it to their myspace page. Hah.

In the Starbucks line up on Saturday morning at TNNA, I bumped into Chris Bylsma and she recommended the Tin Fish across the street from the San Diego Convention Center, just outside the Gas Lamp district. She said it was so good she ate there twice in one day!

I think I’ve always associated tacos with the kind of small, crispy hard shell that is awkward and messy to eat… the fillings of the taco end up everwhere except your mouth. But these are light, soft tortillas, doubled up for strength and topped with a fresh, grilled piece of fish, a pile of shredded cabbage, salsa and white sauce. They are just fresh, light but filling. The grilled ones never make you feel weighted down. Mari wondered if they put butter in the rice because it’s so addictive.

I’ve been home for three nights and I miss my fish tacos.

Blogging from the beach.

This is all kinds of wonderful. I’m presently tucked into a little hostel by the beach in San Diego for a few days before TNNA, full up on super delicious fish tacos and enjoying more sunshine than I have seen in months. On Monday morning, I woke up at 4:30 am to make my early morning flight from Vancouver to LAX. The flight was short and sweet and the trek to get the rental car was easy. Mari and Rob (who came to visit Vancouver a few months ago and have amazing photos of Tofino) were so generous to host me for my first night in Los Angeles, but finding my way to Mari’s house was not so easy. I even rented a GPS but didn’t know how to use it… I kept going around in circles and the GPS kept saying I was “one minute from destination blah blah blah”. Anyhow, I finally met up with Mari and had the immense pleasure of sleeping under a quilt that she made herself!

She was such a lovely host, showing me around town, and we crisscrossed Santa Monica in search of new yarn stores. One of the first stops was not quite a yarn store, but SO awesome. The Urban Craft Center is like a larger version of what I’d like to see my own studio become… it’s a communal craft center where people come to participate in a whole slew of crafts including everything from candle making to wet felting to scrapbooking to soap making. They have three Lendrum wheels on-hand for you to use and at least ten sewing machines. There are crock pots and drum carders and pasta rollers (for polymer clay?). Oh my. If I lived in Santa Monica, THIS is where I would spend all my spare time.

We also managed to slip into Wild Fiber and buy a tiny bit of yarn. This is the first time in such a long time that I’ve bought yarn for myself… personal stash yarn. It was such a welcome change of perspective and I left the store with a few skeins of Mirasol Tupa, a Peruvian silk-wool blend, some Trekking sock yarn, and a skein of Wollmeise sock yarn. Typically, the yarns I like tend to be expensive because they have some fabby combination of silk in them… or they are dyed amazingly… but one yarn I was seriously moved by was the Tanglewood handspun. Those skeins of handspun yarn often had cashmere, yak or angora in the blends. They were hand-dyed and then spun into big skeins with prices ranging from $60 to 150 a skein. For the amount of time, effort, and artistry put into those yarns, Tanglewood deserves every single penny.

This morning, after eggs for breakfast (yay!), we visited the Getty, a gorgeous building with equally impressive landscaping, followed by a trip to a new yarn store, Compatto, in Santa Monica. It was a crafty celebrity sighting as one of the girls who worked at the store instantly recognized Mari because of a pattern she had just published on Purl Bee _this morning!_

We drove to Manhattan Beach and stopped at another new yarn store, Twist Yarns of Intrigue. Compared to the large, spacious 2000 sq ft at Wild Fiber, Twist was tiny. Maybe 400 or 500 sq ft? But it was filled from floor to ceiling with some of the most lovely and thoughtful yarns I’ve seen. The owner, Cathy, has plenty of Habu yarns stocked as well as Handmaiden, Dream in Color, Malabrigo, Be Sweet, and more. She herself was a graduate of a textile program where she learned to weave, but unfortunately, there is no space for her large Macomber loom in the store. But she does fabric dyeing on site at the shop and also yarn dyeing off site. Her colour sense seems very sensitive and sophisticated. And she seems so at peace with her passion for yarn. It struck me how much the personality of the yarn store owner affects the mood and atmosphere of the entire store. Each of these yarn store owners was vibrant and strong and passionate in their own way, and the shops they created expressed their very personality. Stepping into a yarn store is like stepping into someone’s personal closet, full of there most favourite colours and textures. It’s so revealing.

To end the day, we made our way to the Purl Soho warehouse in Orange County where Mari works and I had the opportunity to meet Jen, the co-owner of Purl Soho. The warehouse is divine. About two-thirds of the warehouse is stocked with shelves and shelves of knitting yarn… everything from Alchemy to Koigu to Manos… all the yummy stuff. And then the other third is filled with beautiful, contemporary quilting fabrics. I was so tempted to get Joelle’s quilting book, but I barely have time to knit for myself let alone start quilting. Instead, I found a few skeins of yarn that called out to me, including some Shibui Kid Merino and Koigu Mori (mulberry silk and merino sock yarn).

It is all kinds of wonderful that it was possible for me to meet up with Mari. Knitters are different than other people, and knit bloggers are even more rare. It’s a blessing to be able to share so much in common with friends from so far away. We should all be so lucky.

Indigo dyeing in Kyoto

Near the end of October, I took a very short, very last-minute trip to Tokyo and Kyoto at what ended up being a most economically unfortunate time of the year. The Japanese Yen shot up relative to my Canadian dollar, leaving me with some pretty sad (yarn)buying power. But, I did go to Japan, and I did buy yarn… but more on that in another future post.

Being in Kyoto, mere blocks away from the traditional weaving and textiles district in the city, I sought out the Aizenkobo workshop. Aizenkobo is a indigo dye workshop and retail shop that produces a number of hand-dyed clothing items using techniques such as shibori (binding and dyeing), sashiko embroidery (hand stitching), ikat and double ikat (resist dyeing and weaving) and also natural dyeing with plant dyes.

Shibori dyed Japanese cotton scarves

Rolls of double-ikat handwoven fabric

Indigo dyed and overdyed sashiko thread

Sashiko on a pillowcase

I met the third-generation indigo dyer, Kenichi Utsuki, who described how his grandfather was originally an obi sash maker and weaver and how they started indigo dyeing. His father ran two businesses — both the obi sash making and indigo dye shop — but discovered that obi sash making was no longer a viable or profitable business. Their family switched to indigo dyeing alone, sold all their weaving looms, and focused entirely on natural process indigo dyeing. He has since been invited to numerous universities around the world to lecture on natural indigo dyeing. His wife, Hisako, is the designer of many of their garments.

Kenichi Utsuki stirring up one of three dye vats

Frothy and foaming indigo flower on the top of the vat, after stirring

His naturally fermented indigo process is significantly different from other chemical indigo processes in that it results in improved colour permanence and vibrancy in the indigo dyed fabric. Whereas we use chemicals like thiourea dioxide or sodium hydrosulfite, his natural ferment process uses wheat husk powder, limestone powder, lye ash, and sake. It allows the dye vats to run continuously throughout the year. I think it gets pretty cold in Kyoto in winter, but apparently they dye through the winter too. Also somewhat controversial is heating indigo vats, and here I could see that he has a heater inserted in the vat. I even watched him taste the dye liquor… eeek.

The natural indigo process produces an incredibly vibrant, saturated and clear blue colour that does not fade. Even pieces that he brought out that were 50 or 60 years old were still a bright, vivid “eggplant” blue. For comparison, he brought out a number of chemical process indigo pieces from all different countries, and the blue colour was much less saturated… greyed. Some of their blues are so intense and deep that they come close to black. On cotton and linen, something like 15 or 20 dips are required to generate the colour range. On silk, however, the number of dips increases to 40 to 60 even. One madder-dyed scarf he showed me was dyed and washed 18 times in order to get it’s intense, beautiful red colour.

Kanoko Shibori tied fabric prior to dyeing

...after dyeing...

...and after steaming.

Utsuki explained how they do not do any of the shibori tying at their workshop and instead hire factories in Nagoya to do this work. He says that each family has their own tying method and pattern that they do over and over for their whole lives. They don’t switch patterns. They simple make the same pattern again and again. That kind of steadfast dedication to one thing allows them to develop true mastery and virtuosity. It makes me wonder, if you think your job is boring, I wonder what they think of their jobs. If they wake up in the morning and think, ah crap, another scarf, another day of making knots… But we are grateful for their exquisite skill and the beautiful things that are produced from their hands.

If you are interested, I brought back two shibori scarves, one madder dyed scarf, and two skeins of the most gorgeous indigo-dyed silk threads that you can take a look at on Saturday at the open house. We are on from 2 to 5 pm on Saturday afternoon at #401-228 East 4th Avenue at Main Street in Vancouver. Go vote for mayor… and then come play with yarn!

Wool n’ Dance

If I was in London right now, I’d be going to this!

“To coincide with the Thames Festival, Wool n Dance, also at Southbank Centre this weekend is a special event inviting you to cut-a-rug (quite literally) outdoors on a wet and slippery dance floor and turn a big wool carpet into felt. Live music and workshops in spinning, knitting, felting and weaving. This event takes place 13 & 14 September at the Southbank Centre. Free entry from 12pm.”

Turning a wool rug into felt by dancing on it? So cool.

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/visual-arts/productions/wool-n-dance-42362