sweetgeorgia

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.

From wallace+sewell to Textile Futures

Travelling to London has kept my interest partly because their designers, artists and craftsmen are so well supported and encouraged by the local councils that they appear to be able to innovate and create more. So for me, it’s not just yarn tourism… it’s the search for signs of future growth and the pushing forward of an entire textile and craft industry. I’m looking for something more than just the mechanical workings of a traditional hand loom or traditional fair isle designs updated in contemporary colours. I don’t know what it is, but I’m looking.

On the way, I get distracted by shiny, pretty things and some of the most vibrantly coloured, interesting and luxurious woven items I have found in London are designed by [Wallace+Sewell](http://wallacesewell.com/), a pair of weavers who graduated from the Royal College of Art almost twenty years ago.

Located at the corner of Amwell and Lloyd Baker Streets just south of the Angel tube stop, the shop is seriously tiny, but stacked from floor to ceiling with silk, cashmere and wool blankets and scarves. Last time I visited, they had a “pillow” event, so the centre of the shop was piled high with pillows made from their woven designs in all different colours and textures. This time, I think the silk organza scarves were new… and these plasticized fabrics too. This was some of the most intriguing work I saw… very contemporary and very topical. Selvedges from handwoven fabric was compressed with vinyl plastic in order to create a new “fabric” which was then made into handbags.

I love love loved these. Scraps of woven silk fabric laid in quite a thick chunk of plastic making some really interesting bracelets, earrings and brooches. Just some very inventive ways of using up the little bits of extra fabric.

And of course, perfectly sheer and delicately coloured woven silk organza scarves. Not entirely innovative, but still beautiful to see and touch.

Where else in the world is really, truely _new_ textile design and innovation happening? And I don’t mean textile art. I mean functional textile design for use in fashion or interiors. Emphasis on _functional_. Where do we stop just making pretty things and start making things that improve people’s lives in tangible ways? For a while now, I have been following the work and research being done at Central St. Martin’s in their [MA Design for Textile Futures](http://textilefutures.co.uk/exchange/bin/view/TextileFutures/WebHome), mainly because I was interested in possibly studying there (but can you say “hello, life long student loan debt”?), but also because there is no program like it anywhere. Where else do students create interactive wallpaper, light-reactive window shades, and “architectural textiles for localised urban food production and environmental monitoring”. I don’t even know what that means. But when you pair [creative and innovative textile designers with Nobel prize-winning scientists...](http://textilefutures.co.uk/exchange/bin/view/TextileFutures/NobelTextiles) well, we can just be optimistic that our future lives will be benefitted by their new discoveries.

Eggs & Toast

What else can you live on besides cereal? Eggs and toast! I know that I do have some strange fixations on certain things… cereal being one, and eggs, dumplings and za jian mein as some others. But anyway. Welcome to my “Eggs on Toast” Tour of London…

My absolute, hands down, favourite breakfast place of all was [The Breakfast Club](http://www.thebreakfastclubangel.com/) in Angel. It was ridiculously good. I don’t know how many eggs were in that pile of scrambled eggs, but I ate every single last bit. It was so ridiculously good, I went back the next day and ordered the exact same thing.

Then there were the eggs and soldiers at a bakery near Kings Cross… I think it was called Le Pain. There looks to be an over abundance of bread in that photo.

The most hilarious plating was at some random cafe on Cross Street (I don’t remember the name). I forgot to ask for the eggs scrambled, as you can see.

Cheesy eggs on toast at a tiny outdoor cafe in [Blackheath](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackheath,_London) near Greenwich.

I realize breakfast menus in the UK quite commonly have things like baked beans, black or white pudding, chips, and so on… but I keep things quite simple. Two eggs, scrambled + two slices of toast = perfection.