May Makes

A busy month for crafting.

The little shrink plastic charm that I blogged about here has had to be binned. I found some uv resin and globbed it on a little too enthusiastically and stuck it to the board I'd put it on to dry. In trying to detach it the thing snapped. Let's face it, it was doomed from the start. Shame really. Let us never talk of it again.

I don;t seem to have mentioned the coat hanger thingy. Inspired by pinterest, and the best way to store vest tops if you don't have any shelves. The s-hooks were sliding on the coat hanger until I wound some chunky novelty yarn around it, secured at each end with tape. Not exactly a beautiful item, but highly functional.

I didn't blog about the death star? That was Pooch's 10 year anniversary present from me and deserves to be seen in more detail...

Done all by EPP using the FREE pattern from Quirky Granola Girl. For her to give it away free makes her a nominee for blogger of the year in my book.

Lastly we have the 52 stars of the blue and white EPP quilt I am making for my parents. This is by no means the majority as I need another 70 or so and then there are all the joining hexagons and diamonds to add. I have most of them prepared so it is 'just' putting it all together now.

It's been a learning curve because my Mum was with me when I bought many of the fabrics and I never would have chosen those cutesy animal prints for her.

But she likes them so that is the main thing.

I have already been making in June so more to come on that once I've caught up with blogging about my adventures. I seem to have been at least a week behind for the last month or so.

Chinese Style

Yokohama is about 30 minutes from Tokyo and allegedly the largest Chinatown outside China. Pooch and I had been meaning to visit since we arrived and last weekend we finally made it.

It is a place of many gates.

Also of places selling things covered in pandas.

Or just creepy animatronics of them in their doorways.

Plus a man with a crab on his head.

We had a lovely time meandering past food stalls and trying the odd thing before settling on a restaurant for a very nice lunch.

There were some big boats in the harbour - a japanese navy boat you could look round and a huge cruise ship backing out of port.

There was also a doll museum which we didn't visit, but which reminded me of a book Natalie and I saw when we went craft shopping the other day. I was at the till and Natalie had picked it up to flick through. I saw her expression change and she showed me what she'd chanced upon. The book was A4 and very thick and was a step by step photographic how to make a realistic doll of a pre-pubescent girl. The age of the girl being indicated quite specifically by the genitals and breast area, both of which were shown being very carefully carved, sanded and polished. Very carefully. Very specifically. Very realistic looking doll. We backed away from the book.

A jaunt around the park finished our day off.

We headed back to Tokyo full of food and pleasantly cultured!

Japanese Scrubbies

A few years back there was a big Ravelry craze for "scrubbies" - scrubbing cloths crocheted from cotton which could be used in the kitchen or bathroom. I even created my own pattern for my own "Furry Mitt" although looking back I see the photos went when I closed my photobox account. They are still here on Ravelry. Good grief, 8 people made one. Well in that case I'll dig out the photo.

Epic! I've still got those pyjama bottoms. Anyway, getting distracted.

I was in Tokyo Hands in Shibuya looking for mosquito fatwa associated products and saw these ones, intended for the kitchen of course.

And for those still interested in crocheting them - why not make an outfit for your scrubbie? Or just buy one of course.

I think manufacturers in the UK are leaving kitchens needlessly unembellished by not including such products in their ranges.

Nippori - Tokyo's "Fabric Town"

If you sew and you visit Tokyo, you HAVE to visit Nippori.

It is a bit out of the way although if you are going to the park or museums of Ueno then you're practically there. Kinda. Plus it has Yanaka next door which I've written about here.

If you are visiting for fabric then you can't do better than read this blogpost for directions from the station and a run down of shops. The information is still correct and her favourite shops are coincidentally mine too (I only just noticed this even though I've referred to her directions several times).

When you come out of the station you'll find this guy waiting for you.

He looks pretty epic but it's all japanese to me on the plaque so I don't know who he is. Enough of that though. Shops!

There are basically fabric shops everywhere although a minority, like the one above, specialise in notions. You can meander in and out of these and feel the fabric, but it's always wise to wait until you've seen Tomato's prices and offerings before you buy. I feel sorry for the other shops when saying that, since Tomato already has 4 shops on the one road, but it is true.

The shop to the left of these two is also Tomato and then the one I was standing outside was the fourth. The biggest is the one on the right, which has 5 floors of fabric goodness. As you go in the 100 Yen wall is on your right.

A lot of this is crap, but I have had some nice bargains including the retro 70s stuff I used for the curtains in our living room. 12 metres of floor length curtainage for about £10? No brainer. However, be ready for the elbows in this section. It gets very crowded! The fifth floor holds all the quilting gubbins.

Plus a whole lot of accessories.

Then going down you have traditional fabrics, linens, man made fantasy dress up stuff, knits, baby fabric and then lots of random things plus traditional japanese cotton prints on the ground floor. It was a 10% off day when I took these photos and this was the queue to get your fabric cut from the bolt. Although actually it moved very quickly so I was only in line for about 5 minutes.

I actually wouldn't mind queuing for a little more than just getting my fabric cut with some of the cutters. They all seem to be young men, while the staff on the other floors and behind the tills are all women. Dunno why.

I'm 36 in a month - clearly my time for turning into a lecherous old lady.

Outside, another Tomato shops sells notions including all these colourful zips.

I always stand and look at this display because it's so pretty and so neat at the same time. It basically embodies what every seamstress aspires to but will never achieve. Plus these are just one length - they had other displays in different lengths and widths.

Heading back towards the station this is another nearby shop that stocks a lot of japanese style printed cottons.

Suprisingly few of the shops sell pre-cuts like fat quarters or half metres but this one does.

If you do happen to visit there are a number of cafes near by which are all of the usual good standard, but there is also a shop called Cozy Cakes Ginza, or something like that, which you often see branches of near stations. Their chocolate cake, middle of the photo below, below the orange things, is the closest I've had to a Sara Lee Chocolate Gateaux - now sadly discontinued. 

Pooch tells me the others are very nice too, but I know where my heart lies. Once you have told them what you want they'll ask you how long your journey home is and give you an appropriately sized and self-contained ice pack to go in the box to keep your cake refrigerated on the way home. Genius. 

Il Est Arrivé!

A couple of weeks ago I finished this lovely item.

It is roughly single bed sized and was not quilted since I wanted to leave it quite flexible and bouncy, plus not interfere with the texture of the fabrics. All of them are traditional japanese woven cottons with this lovely, soft, textured feel to them.

The binding was 3" strips of  leftovers. Can you see the blocks? They are like cat faces, with the ears of one shaping the chin of the next. I cut out rectangles for the faces then sewed squares to the corners. It all required a bit of planning to get the right ear patterns with the right faces. Then on the back...

The back fabric was a thick cotton with this awesome cat pattern on it. I was so happy when I found it in Nippori - which I'll be doing a post about in the next day or two. It is the best place for fabric shopping and is where the cottons came from in the first place.

The quilt is now living in the French countryside where two cats kindly allow my cousin/big sister and her husband to live with them. Vive La France!

Too Hot to Handle

I am melting. You see this:

Screenshot from my phone. Last night's "low" was 20 degrees. 20! That would be a nice "high" temperature in London. And the humidity isn't even that high yet. I may actually expire. Or just melt like that hard done by witch in Alice in Wonderland. Or the Wizard of Oz. Whatever. Too hot. My sister screeched at my complaining on Skype yesterday when I said I didn't feel it appropriate to put the air conditioning on yet. I'm British! We didn't conquer and downtread large parts of the world with air conditioning. We did it wearing flannel vests. So I'll just sit here and complain instead.

All this sun avoidance has given me a lot of sewing time so I have been getting on nicely with the voodoo doll of my sister, eventually to be given to my niece. She has a face.

The blue pen vanishes in water. She now has hair.

Before she even had hair she had her first outfit.

I feared the dress looked a bit too much like a hospital gown so added an elasticated waist and some pom pom edging around the collar.

All patterns have come from this book:

...which you can buy here (no affiliation) or on Amazon. You can also buy e-patterns individually. I've submitted a review to the site but I don;t know if they'll publish it. Essentially this is a wonderful book if you know how to sew garments. If you are a beginner or inexperienced sewer you'll have no trouble with the doll but some of the garments have steps missing, presumably to make the text fit the template. These don't matter so much if you know the basics of what you're doing but to a beginner they might be rather disheartening. If you can sew and want a handmade doll with a handmade wardrobe then this is 100% the book for you.

I was shopping for bits for the outfits when I met up with Natalie from The Yarn Yard on Monday. We had a lovely time shopping at two of the largest craft shops in Shinjuku - Yuzawaya and Okadaya. I picked up red pleather for the doll's rain boots, denim for her dungarees and oil cloth for her rain coat, as well as a variety of trimmings.

We had lunch at a Choco Cro although we were very restrained and had a savoury. This is an actual Choco Cro which I picked up yesterday and managed not to eat until I got home.

It's a small, straight croissant cone filled with nutella consistency chocolate goo, although without the hazelnut. They are rather nice and seem to go down a storm here.

I have a few more posts to catch up with since it's too hot (did I mention it's hot) to have my laptop on all the time. Poor thing keeps overheating. As, in case I haven't mentioned it, do I.