A Little More of Yoshiko Wada

Never utter the word "bleach" in Yoshiko's presence. Ever.

For her, shibori is not only about dyeing, and certainly not about tie-dyeing, which is why she used the words "shape-resist" in the title of her first book. Maria in class tried pleating by pole-wrapping without involving colors. Yoshiko repeatedly reminded us of the different characteristics of cericin and fibroin of silk and the potential to sculpt textiles. Which naturally led to different shrinkage of different yarns, a subject familiar to us weavers.

I can't remember how exactly she phrased it, but she kept repeating something to the extent that "fiber is twist".

Even though it was a Boro workshop, those of us who tried shibori techniques had more (i.e. numerous) visually spectacular results, whereas those who stitched diligently, well, many pieces were overdyed and their efforts somewhat obscured. Which, in a perverse way, made me happy I am a weaver because without the weaver, there is no cloth to dye.

For now, I still love my multicolored cotton cones, but New Zealand wool (i.e. merino) and delving deeper into the chemistry of it excites me.

* * * * *

I wrote the series of posts about the workshop over several days, hopping from one post to another, reordering, reorganizing, and splitting longer posts, hoping to find between the lines or in the gap between the words some kind of an answer or resolution for myself. By Sunday morning I was starting to feel pretty desperate about finishing the lot, because part of me felt tardy in reporting back to you one way or another, and another part of me wanted that lovely convenient concept that allows us to proceed to the next phase: closure.

While still in bed Sunday morning, I picked up Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" which I started the weekend before the workshop.

"... depression was a successful adaptation to ceaseless pain and hardship. Pessimism, feelings of worthlessness and lack of entitlement, inability to derive satisfaction from pleasure, a tormenting awareness of the world's general crappiness: ..."

I got out of bed thinking it's an astute observation, but it's not me.