May marks my blog’s one year anniversary. It’s also the month I turn one year older so I’ll take a moment to reflect. Last May I posted up on the couch at Jim’s parent’s beach house and decided to start a blog. The conditions were perfect: it was stormy and cold and I was jobless. I’d wake up, make startlingly strong coffee and curl up on the couch and use trial and error until I figured out how to make this or that look like this. Doesn’t that sound like the best month? I thought it was.
1. Antique katazome print (stencil resist method) using a two-dye process. 2. Katazome print from the Meiji Period (1868-1912) 3. Another example of katazome printing 4. Vintage yukiwa (snowflake) print using the sekka shibori method (clamp-resist).
Most of April was grey but I didn’t care at all. In the beginning I kept checking the weather on my phone but quickly realized that I missed Hanami (cherry blossom season came early) and that it was a good twenty degrees cooler than I was prepared for. I barely opened my suitcase. I wore the same pants and leather jacket every day and used an obi as a massive scarf, which local women pointed out was a man’s belt around my neck.
