Tokolo PPP Mufflers

Ok, so I found the Japanese shopping site with mufflers (i.e., scarfs) bearing the motifs in Asao Tokolo's pattern magnets. They are cashmere and wool and quite spendy, ranging from about $96 to $106, according to today's rate for the yen.

Here's a screen shot:




















The website is called http://www.parco-city.com/mall/, and if you type PPP muffler in the search box at the top, you will get lots of designy scarf results. (PPP must be in caps.) Bonus points if you read Japanese well enough to actually order one.

Cheers!

I've got a theme going here

It's been so long since I posted to the blog. I can't believe where the time has gone. Nevertheless, I've been busy at a myriad of fiber projects and they all seem to be color coordinated.

It all started with a special order chenille scarf. The requested colors were dark blue, teal, true green, sage green, and red violet. I mixed up the dyes for yarn painting. When I mix my dyes, I tend to always do the same amount of dye liquid for each color, roughly half a liter. Over the years I've gotten this system going where I measure out about 1 to 1 1/2 tsp. fiber reactive dye to a half liter of water and store the dye liquid in plastic bottles with squeeze tips. The hope is that I use up the dyes in a timely manner, because fiber reactive dyes tend to lose potency fairly quickly. So I painted my chenille. And wove the scarf:



Then I needed to use up the dye. So I painted some rayon.




Then I painted some wool. Then I Navajo plied the wool.



Then I painted some 10/2 bamboo.



Then I painted some more wool, but I haven't photographed it yet.

Then I gave up and dumped out the rest of the dye. There wasn't really enough to do anyting with, and it really had seen better days.

I continue to be thwarted in my efforts to find Tokolo pattern magnets on the internet. Although, I did find some cute scarfs (mufflers in Japan) printed with Tokolo designs.
Can't seem to locate the URL right now, but I'll get back to you.

Cheers!

Green Chenille Scarf on the Loom

Here's a shot of my latest weaving on the loom, a rayon chenille scarf that is a special order for my shop on Etsy.

I have a new camera, a Nikon digital SLR, and it is way too much fun. I've been trying it out in different lighting conditions, night time and day time, manual settings, and auto settings. I much prefer not to have a flash, because the lighting is very intrusive and often distorts the color of what I am shooting. When I am shooting textiles, it can drive me right up the wall when I can't get the color casts just right.

So, I set up the tripod in front of the loom a few nights ago, and set the aperture to f11 and the shutter speed to 1.5. That's really slow. You need a tripod for that. I probably should have had a cable release too, but I didn't. The resulting photos turned out pretty good. Not perfect, and I still did some tweaking in PhotoShop. This weekend I'm going to set up the tripod again in the studio with daylight and see what happens.

Also, I need to shoot some handpainted yarn for Etsy.

Tokolo pattern magnets final update: wargo-nippon.com finally got back to me on my order inquiry. They are out of stock. They will not get any more. I am getting a refund. So, that's that for now. All the other possibilities are Japanese language websites. But I've got another angle I'm considering...

Weavolution Auction Wool

Got my Weavolution auction wool last weekend. It's a huge amount - 3.5 pounds according to the auction, I haven't actually weighed it myself, or even unpacked the box except for one ball. It's very nice stuff, it feels like fine singles handspun. It's kind of white/gray with some darker guard hairs sticking out.

Since the auction was kind of iffy about the exact compositon of the yarn, I decided to try handpainting it, trying it out with my Procion dye painting. So I wound off 2 ounces. I did an initial water and Synthrapol soak, and then a water and vinegar soak. Then I painted the skein, wrapped it up and steamed it in the crockpot. And this is how it turned out:



It's much softer now, and if you look at the photo big, you can see how fuzzy it is too. Next I'm thinking I will Navajo ply it to see if I can get it to the point of knitting weight. I'm very pleased!

Tokolo pattern magnets update: I ordered a set of magnets from wargo-nippon.com almost three weeks ago. They do ship to the U.S. by USPS Priority mail according to their website. But I haven't seen a package yet. I've inquired with customer service...