I sold two tea cozies this past weekend to a woman from Moscow! It makes me smile to think that one will warm her mother-in-law’s teapot in Moscow, another her mother’s teapot somewhere in France! The design began as a paper cutting. I call it my Haiku House finch Tea Cozy. The haiku reads:
Curious house finch
Tastes the ripe crabapple —
Daylight grows short.
I’m working on a new online shop that will feature my katazome work. If all goes smoothly, I plan to launch it sometime in November.
I need to purchase another jizomebake brush, used to brush dyes (or soy sizing) on larger areas of the cloth. I own one, but it would be helpful to have a somewhat smaller one to use only for colors. John Marshall is the only USA source for this as far as I can tell. Yesterday I came across a wonderful article, Painting with Indigo by John Marshall, published in the Turkey Red Journal last spring. The article shows wonderful examples of John’s expertise and unique style, and describes the uses of soy milk as a pigment binder for painting on textiles, specifically with indigo. In 2006, John sent out a small New Year’s gift to his students (image below). This is one of a series of small pieces he created based upon the symbols of the Japanese zodiac. The work is about letter paper size, natural dyes on a slubby-textured silk, more like broadcloth than raw silk. 2006 was the year of the dog. I love the sweet, slightly mischievous expression on this dog’s face!
I washed the rice paste out of my sample, and here are the results, along with a couple of photos from my Sunday walk through Reservoir Woods. With this process, there is virtually no pigment wash out. Amazing. I will go ahead and use this fabric for my next project. The soy milk, used before dyeing as a sizing and then as a binder with the (pigment) dyes, gives the fabric more body and makes it easier to iron when it wrinkles.
silver minnow 