Kelly Azuma

These rainy, windy, wintery evenings have been quite productive for me. I’ve been sitting in front of the tv with a ball of wool and some knitting needles. It’s helped me immensely with my now non-existent insomnia. After looking between the tv and the wool all night my eyes get to a point where they can’t stay open and I fall into bed and snore my head off.

Remember that ball of sheep’s wool I posted about a while back? Well I turned it (and 2 more)  into a nice warm scarf for Yasu! I finished it yesterday and last night he was walking around like a proud peacock wearing his new scarf. I’m really happy he likes it so much!

Now I’m on to a new project. Youtube is so wonderful. Today I have learnt how to knit one purl one just from watching the video’s online. I’m thinking of making us some mobile phone covers in a kind of rib stitch that is stretchy with some new purple wool I bought. That will keep me going for the rest of the week at least.

I’ll leave you with a photo of Yasu’s finished scarf in Arabian Spice.

I indulged in some shopping therapy today. Read more

Yesterday I went to my class at the community centre and found that we were learning how to paint silk.

It was so interesting, it’s not just putting paint on, there are so many techniques designed to get different effects.

You can scrunch it up, fold it, put epsom salts, sugar, twist it, wring it, and it all creates a different image on the silk.

The woman who was teaching us has her own company where she makes the paint, which is environmentally friendly and after it’s on the silk it sets forever so no washing repeatedly to make it stay.

We did 3 practice pieces, one of which was used to make a butterfly.

I haven’t actually had time to cut out the butterfly yet, but hopefully on the weekend.

The blue and purple silk at the top was made by sprinkling epsom salts randomly all over the material. I think it looks very psychedelic!

While those were drying we were each given a quality white silk scarf to decorate, and because I know that my mil loves them I decided to do it in colours that I know she likes.

I used epsom salts, and the colours were yellow, orange, and magenta.

It looks really different in every light condition, and I used just enough salts to get a bit of a blossom pattern here and there, so I’m really happy with it. I just hope my mil is too!

I really had fun doing this and there are so many possibilities. The thing is to not use more than 3 colours though otherwise they can run into each other and become a brown mess. I’m thinking of buying a pack off the teacher, it comes with some silk pieces including scarfs, and all the paints needed, plus a book.

I never thought silk painting could be so easy. It doesn’t just stop there though, the teacher also showed us how to apply the paints to cotton or nylon to get similar effects, and they are great for using in patchwork blankets which is what I’ll be learning how to do soon. :)