Handmade in Japan Fes 2014 Part 1

Last weekend was the amazing "Handmade in Japan Fes 2014" at Tokyo Big Sight. The building itself is astonishing.

It reminds me of a scene in 'Men in Black' where Will Smith is told that the observation towers at Flushing Meadows Park in NY are actually the first spacecraft that landed on Earth that couldn't take off again.

Standing underneath it is fairly imposing.

The bit I was going to was in the basement and consisted of two huge exhibition halls full of, I would guess, 2000-3000 exhibitors. These were quality stands too with many vendors looking completely professional with very nicely designed tables. Prices were high - high enough for you to be sure these people had taken into account the time they had put into making these things - so my haul wasn't enormous even though I spent almost £60. However, it is all gorgeous stuff which I am very happy to have brought home.

From top left, clockwise, we have a kanzashi hair elastic, leather cat ring, knitted hair pin bows (kawaii!), blue leather button pin, wooden cat shapes and a more elaborate kanzashi hair slide. I also came back with 150+ photos and a huuuge stack of business cards which I have whittled down and combined below so you can see how I could easily have spent ten times what I did.

Mother Tree - screen printed t's, leggings and tights.

Akkaakka.com - beautifully hand painted clothes for children and adults.

Naoki Onogawa - the tiniest origami cranes you have ever seen turned into exquisite jewellery.

Pampshade - bread products that are actually lamps. Yes. Lamps.

Machu Picchu - handmade shoes. Polka dot heaven! They run a one day workshop but it is in another part of Japan. But still...shoe making....

Tsumami Kanoha: This lady is one severely talented Kanzashi maker. The second photo below is the clip that I bought. These were not cheap - and rightly so considering the work that goes into them. My clip was almost £20 so you can imagine how much those huge ones cost.

Gunyan Yanko: I've not seen anything like these before. Strips of leather with bendy metal inside that you wrap around your finger, wrist, pen, bag strap etc. The people on the stand were awesome too. The woman was uber enthusiastic and the man saw me coming and grabbed a little sign they'd made explaining what they were in english - and that each one is unique because they are all hand drawn. I bought a ginger cat ring.

Tokimeki Gabriel: Mental stuff. Very kawaii and lolita but with a kind of sparkly-goth vibe too. It was all painted plastic so quite light. The owner is below in the red dress. The chess piece type things are about £25 each!

Nekkosippo: Lovely handmade washi tape cabinets. This is also where I got the wooden cat shapes from.

Kato Koto Panda: This is silly stuff - light plastic models of pandas sandwiched in various foods, including sandwiches. Loads more photos at the link.

Koge Neko: Cat collars and....bandanas. Odd.

Zassou: An unusual combination of chemistry cartoon stickers/badges and things made from tiny felt nubs. My heart was with the stickers although I did walk away empty handed.

Deme Tyoubi: Amazing felted goldfish.

Tuan Tuan: Bags made from feedbags.

Kokechi: Kawaii! Similar to kokeshi dolls but specifically stylised. I had to buy the cat one below.

Mine is already part of cat village on the kitchen shelf.

Matori: Interesting earrings, even for someone without pierced ears.

Chou Chou: Brooches made of fake succulent plants. Actually very pretty!

Sai Design: Wire whatnots wrapped in silk.

Placebo Parade Orchestra: Constellation and other finely made gold and silver jewellery.

Michicusa: To me, these look like broccoli florets. But then what do I know.

Yuki: Another kanzashi stall and where I got my hair band.

Maito Parta: Oh my goodness I was tempted by the astronaut badges. But £25 each? I couldn't justify it.

Number Zoo: Very simple concept - animals with numbers as part of their bodies. I loved the 8's!

Yuchitana: Very pretty hair spangles.

Karate Gal: Very impressively embellished bags and purses.

Tomorrow, more photos and the workshops!

Stripes

I really do like yarns with long colour changes. I particularly like using two of them at once to contrast the colour changes against each other.

I am currently knitting a wrap cardigan for my niece for the winter - getting started early - and am striping two colourways of Drops Delight.

I have in the past done this sort of thing with Kauni, although then it was using just one colourway but starting at two different points of the colour progression.

Awww, I loved those jeans... thinner days. Anyway, I've also used Noro for this kind of thing.

But...

What I do not love is when lazy yarn manufacturers have knots in the midst of a ball and join the ends together without any attempt to keep the subtle colour change going.

As a customer I pay for something in order to use it. You don't buy a dress and then expect to have to correct it when you wear it for the first time. Drops Delight has proved not so delightful, as did Noro, and it is deeply disappointing. So despite loving the colours I will not be buying any more of this once this project is done.

By the way, Noro is the same price here as it is in the UK. I find that really odd. Not that I use it anymore.

Let's Talk About Sweat, Baby

I am going to broach a subject we do not discuss in polite UK society, but which has been on my mind constantly now for weeks - sweating.

The english way has always been that "Horses sweat, men perspire and ladies merely glow" (I say 'english' because I've known some right sweaty scottish men but I'm uninformed about the welsh and northern irish.) However, recently I have been not glowly, nor perspiring, but straight-forwardly running with sweat.

Those of you who read regularly will know that the Byrne is no athlete.

(Image from here.)

I therefore do not sweat because of exercise - but just because it is so freaking hot in Tokyo at the moment. For instance, I just cleaned the surfaces and hob in the tiny kitchen which took about 15 minutes. By the end of it I had to go and get a cloth to mop myself down with. My t-shirt was stuck to my back, there were little rivulets of sweat running down my neck and my face was damp all over. Grim. The reason for all this was at 8.30am I thought it would be ok to do some housework just relying on the through breeze resulting from having all the windows open, forgetting that it was already 30 degrees outside and the humidity was over 70%. I've had to close the windows, put on the aircon and have a sit down directly under it to stem the flow.

Putting on air conditioning is something I feel morally opposed to. It uses up energy to cool the room which heats up the machinery and that heat goes outside making it worse for everyone else. Plus it costs money and electricity is really expensive in japan since they shut down all the nuclear reactors after Fukashima. Plus surely I am not such a wimp as to be brung low by a bit of temperature? But no, I am. My family think I'm nuts for not using it all the time but it just seems so...weak. I don't know if I'll ever get used to it.

 

There are basic adjustments such temperature causes the people of Japan to make. The first is that every umbrella you own becomes a potential parasol, apart from the nice see-through one I was given as a leaving present. That would be silly.

The second is that you stick to the shade when you are outside, leading to simultaneous overcrowding and practical desertion on the same street. If you are waiting for a bus or to cross the road you stick to the nearest shady spot, even if it is some distance from the target.

And then there is "the cloth". This cloth doesn't appear to have a name but they are sold in every department store in Tokyo and lots of smaller shops too. Every Japanese person has a selection of them and they are essentially personal hand towels - often a bit like a british face flannel - that is carried around in bag or pocket and used for mopping the japanese invisibly sweaty brow. I haven't seen a japanese person sweat anywhere else. The closest I can find online is Tenugui which are long rectangles of cotton.

They come in every design you can imagine - traditional, manga, cartoon, pop bands, sports teams and so on. Some people frame them and hang them on the wall. Others use them as bandanas or drape them around their necks like small scarves.

All the time it is so hot it is often not actually that sunny, which is definitely better than when it is. When I have been out in the sun without an umbrella the sun has felt so intense on my skin that it was almost painful. This is therefore curtailing my patrols out of doors although giving me more time to craft inside. I have a large quilt I am making at the moment for Nickerjac which I need to spend some time on so this is no bad thing.

By the way, I was looking for photos to illustrate this post using Flickr's Creative Commons search (how do I love thee etc) when, as you do, I typed in 'sweaty man'. It really is amazing what you can find on that site.

What is he looking at?

Flickr Groups - Vintage Book Covers

I do love vintage book covers.

The titles, illustration and blurb are often amazingly misogynistic but then that's the era they're from.

I found all these in a Flickr Group called "Old Timey paperback Books".

Terrible name, but there you go.

I love using Flickr for research and inspiration. And their combining with 'Creative Commons' licensing means you can use many images for free, even in a commercial context.

Not all though.

Fuurin Matsuri - A Wind Chime Festival

I went to this on Saturday and had a lovely time pottering around. It was boiling hot and very humid so the occasional breeze was very welcome, even though the noise could be quite overwhelming after half a minute or so. I made this 10 second video to give you an idea of it.

The actual wind chimes, while numerous, did not take up much room.

Those hanging up were essentially samples, grouped by artist, and you wrote down the number of the one/s you wanted and took that number to another booth to pay and take receipt of yours, suitably boxed. You can buy basic ones with a mass produced print in the 100 Yen shop and in fact I have one with goldfish on and it is very nice, but these were artisan ones. While most were glass there were also quite a few metal ones and others decorated with bamboo. The variety of decoration techniques was fascinating. They varied in price from about 500 yen to more than 5000 (about £30).

You see the glass whales in the middle? A blue one came home with me as a present for my little niece. I would have loved to buy more but those I wanted had metal parts which were very heavy and I have to think about getting this stuff back to the UK.

Nishiarai Daishi Temple, where this happened, is about an hour north of central Tokyo and is a 'working' temple with services going on in the background. The prayer chants and bonging of the gong along with the chime of the chimes and the sound of the waterfall in the garden ponds combined to be quite idyllic. I enjoyed all of them in a medley while watching the fish.

There were actually two gardens - this second one was away from the various noises although probably the most beautiful. It also had more fish and they ranged from minnows to huge beasts the size of a small dog.

The surrounding grounds held many treasures.

In addition this impressive crow - look at that huge beak - had found a big worm - or maybe a centipede which it was subduing and getting ready to eat. He saw me looking at him and moved to the top of this post before checking to see what I was doing.

They are as common here as pigeons in London and we have one who comes and lands on the railing of our balcony with a resounding clang every now and again. I would love to get to know one a bit better. I wonder if they are as freakishly intelligent as they look?

It was all very lovely and I was very glad I went, despite all the travel it entailed on a very hot day.

Pay It Forward

I am a big believer in pay it forward. Also 'do unto others' and other such sayings that turn a good deed into a kind of karmic ponzi scheme. Back in January I joined a 'Pay It Forward' meme on Facebook and have since been very aware that I owed two gifts. I thought deeply about this and decided to go with EPP metal frame purses. I carefully chose fabric. I hand stitched. I joined with blanket stitch using cotton embroidery thread. I lined. I inserted into frame. I threw away because it hadn't worked and they were ghastly.

Well, you know. We live and learn. That's another one I'm fond of. Also "The heart is a muscle..." speech by Bill Murray from Charlie's Angels - the one that came out in 2000. Plus 'Many a mickle makes a muckle'. And of course Terry Pratchett's "We've all passed a lot of water since then" when reflecting on the past. So I made these simpler DPN zippered cases using traditional japanese fabrics and a fabric covered button using something matching.

BOSLEY
All my Angels.  The heart is a muscle.  In body building, we exercise the muscle, and it grows bigger and stronger.  It's the same with the heart.

DYLAN
I must have the heart of a rhino.

BOSLEY
You do.  And you be proud of it.  Mes Anges, these little hurts will heal.  And at crunch time, your hearts will be so buff, you'll be able to clean and jerk his love, three sets, ten reps each.

ALEX
Thanks, Bos.