Inspiration and Frustration

I'm really busy these days. I'm still remodeling a house, and even though I'm not doing much of the physical labor, it's still nearly a full-time job (it's fun, though--better than a dollhouse!). I'm still working on my jeans circle quilt (a bit more than one-third done with the main stitching now). And I'm doing the mom thing (dropping off, picking up, helping with homework, volunteering at the schools...). Some days I'm lucky just to get a shower!

Today was a little different. I took a carload of kids on a shopping/exploring field trip up to Japantown in San Francisco.


We hit the Pika Pika photo shop, where the kids all crammed into a single photo booth for a goofy group picture, Kinokuniya Stationery and Gift, where I got some cool origami paper (but not as much as I wanted!), and Ichiban Kan, where I got some small plastic boxes and sticky notes, and most of the kids got various trinkets. We also went to the Soko Hardware store across the street, where I got a single-burner electric stove (doesn't everyone need one of those for heating batik wax?), and some of the kids got things like ceramics and paper lanterns. But my best treasures came from the Kinokuniya Bookstore, where I found two gorgeous shibori books for my reference collection.

I got Shibori for Textile Artists by Janice Gunner and Shibori by Yoshiko Wada. I had previously checked out the hardback copy of the Wada book from my local library (multiple times!), so I know it's good, and getting it in paperback was an easy choice. I hadn't seen the Gunner book before, but it looked interesting, so I got it. I looked at it later after I got home, and it's even nicer than I had thought initially.

So now I've got lots of fresh inspiration in my hot little hands, and not much time right now to go act on it! Shibori can be quite time consuming, too, especially for the stitch resist type (the simple shirt below took me a few hours to stitch).


Ah, such sweet frustration!