Giedre tyttö Ozista

Tie & die

I just realized that the happiest hours of my life these days are the 4 weekly hours spent in the printshop. Its been 3 weeks since I asked to understudy Textile Decoration subject offered to fashion design students in our school. We just finished doing tie & dye and will move to batik and silkprint soon. For 3 weeks I came to work every Friday in the morning & spent happy 4 hours playing with colours, experimenting with different ways to fold fabric, stitching, etc..

I don't really know why it makes me so happy and why I keep thinking about it the whole week (Kaj has been getting upset with my evening "homework" sessions, because I'd stay up late and make reflections on his TV screen from the table lamp :) It must be some kind of combination of happiness brought by manual labour, sense of play and seeing unexpected results unfolding in front of you. And no pressure, nobody questioning anything, plus a completely unproductive way to spend time.. :) It somehow brought me back the memories of childhood of picking berries or doing smth equally mindless, when your imagination can travel to places and worlds you've never been before.. It is also a very social thing to do. Everyone around the table is doing things not requiring too much brain, so there's always some funny conversations going on.. A cool way to get more insight into the students' lives.. :) Plus you can watch other people's results, praise each other and learn new things.. It is just so SANE thing to do. How could i make a living out of something like that?!?

Unexpected connection - aparently tie & die is a very refined craft in Japan, called Shibori. It was nice to try some of the Japanese ways of folding the fabric, as I still think that much of my recent sanity has beeen brought about by the trip to Japan. Ever since I came back from there, I'm feeling much more curious and inspired!

The construction noise outside our windows is getting worse and worse. We tried sleeping in the small bedroom (where the windows are facing the street) this weekend, as they start making noise at 8am on Saturdays and Sundays. I had some glorious night sleep, while Kaj couldn't sleep because the room was too small and the aircon was blowing too strong and the curtains were not dark enough.. Anyway, we're moving back to the big bedroom.. And nothing we can really do about this situation - but we're moving to the TP staff apartments in January!