Attempted Shibori

I bought Shibori: The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing by Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada et al. The book is well worth the $ for all the instructive history and techniques. I even tried my hand at two of my favorite easy stitch resist patterns, Mokume
and Ori-Nui.Here are my first attempts.


I was just playing around, hosting another mom who wanted to dye a t-shirt. I stitched these two samples up and threw them in a ziploc baggie with the leftover dye.

After we put the ziploc bags on the sunny patio to react, we took our daughters to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to see the animatronic monsters exhibit. (You just gotta love all the oddball stuff to do in LA.) Then we took the girls out for sushi and soba.

When we got back, the stuff was overly done. Next time, I will not let the fabric sit in the dye bath for so long. I didn't get the visual texture I had hoped for, but it still looks interesting.

I had previously ordered Elfriede Moller's Shibori: The Art of Fabric Tying, Folding, Pleating and Dyeing but returned the book. It was just too annoying, the way the author kept bragging about the techniques she had invented. It was also low on information content. Save up your $ and get Wada's book.

Links: Shibori Slideshow, Dye Workshop

Haiku wrap-up

Eighteen for dinner
Our Australia cousins
Gulp. No worries mate!

The Day Fire II

While driving home from SF on Labor Day, we passed by the Day Fire. Just in case you didn't have insomnia and didn't search the MODIS real-time imagery archive for pictures of the fire, I will post it for you. The fire fell on the bottom edge of one of the imagery tiles. You can see the area outlined in red at the bottom of the image. The fire plume extends northwards from the fire area.

This satellite was launched from Vandenberg AFB which is also in the image. Doubly interesting. However, the Day Fire was not the most impressive fire in the image. Take a look at northern California below.


Earlier posts: a picture of the start of the Day fire in Home Sweet Home and Plunging Birthrates, another impressive MODIS image of California wildfire in Wildfire Weather