impetuousdesigns

[impetuousdesigns]

I love the growing wall of artwork at Ringo Art Club

[impetuousdesigns]

At art class tonight, the kids made Hinaningyo, special dolls for Japan’s Hinamatsuri (Doll Festival). It was my daughter’s request! The kids’ creations were more diverse than the typical dolls 😂

I made fox people instead.

[impetuousdesigns]

Finally added zippers to the chair covers! I used zippers from old futon covers. It’s amazing how many uses zippers can handle!

Still really love the pockets on the back. My kid loves storing her colored pencils and stuff in them!

[impetuousdesigns]

Teaching my 4yo the sewing machine

[impetuousdesigns]

This student has been coming to my art class for three years. I don’t think I’ve really taught her anything, just provided her with materials and let her be amazing. (She’s in 5th grade, btw!!)

[impetuousdesigns]

Oh my gosh! I forgot to stitch the fox’s nose! Added.

Too chilly to go outside. Decided to do a little foxy embroidery

[impetuousdesigns]

Too chilly to go outside. Decided to do a little foxy embroidery

[impetuousdesigns]

My daughter loves those dress-up sticker things, but they always come with way more outfits than girls to dress up. So tonight I decided to draw more figures for her to put outfits on! She said she would color the hair and draw the faces, so that’s what we did.

She enjoyed drawing lots of eye makeup on the girls, and I was glad the stickers came with hands and arms in various poses so I didn’t have to draw them! 😅

[impetuousdesigns]

Another kid in our art class draws or makes dinosaurs almost every week, and today my daughter felt inspired by the big dinopedia.

I’m not sure if she ever really tried to draw dinosaurs before, but I really love these things she made today!!

[impetuousdesigns]

A while back we made spinny things!

[impetuousdesigns]

My daughter picked a Pokémon out of her 図鑑 and asked me to make it out of clay. シェイミ turned kit pretty great, I think!

[impetuousdesigns]

My daughter has drawn many things, folded lots of origami creations, and collected a mass of childish artwork. Some of the littlest bits of stuff I have stuck on a large piece of paper I put up in her room. She also added her own little drawings since I put this up about a year ago.

As we prepare to move, I have to make decisions about what we can keep and what is not worth keeping. Fortunately, I can photograph things!

[impetuousdesigns]

Haha! My sister sent me a photo of a little rabbit she is felting, and that reminded me of these crochet and felted creatures I made back in college!

Since we are really getting pretty close to Halloween, some of us may be in need of some decorations or just something fun/festive to do. I made some really great monsters ≈two years ago in a pretty creative way. Socks? No. Sewing? A little. Crocheting? Yes. Felting? Yes.

So here’s how it works:

Get materials. You’ll need some roving (loose wool in colors of your choosing),(preferably [at least] partially wool) yarn, assorted scraps/findings (for limbs, eyes, whatever), some sort of plastic (ideally bubble wrap), and a couple balloons. Additionally, you’ll need a crochet hook, needle&thread, and a mixture of hot water and dish soap.

Crochet a vessel. Crochet as if you were going to make a hat, but think about the body shape of the monster/creature you wish to make. It’s pretty easy to decrease and increase the circumference as you go. Don’t go too crazy, though, because when you get to the next step and go to blow up a balloon inside of the vessel, it can be difficult to fill out all the spaces. Using different stitches is also fun, because you can see them through the felting if you use a nice contrasting yarn. Decrease the opening down to a fairly small radius.

Stuff it with a balloon. Once you’ve got your vessel, you’ll find it doesn’t exactly hold itself in a particularly 3d shape. Hooray for balloons! Stick a balloon into the body you have made, and blow her up! The balloon should fill out your vessel so it looks nice and plump. 

Begin the felting process! Nuno Felting video(s): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyEfiUV40KQ  Honestly, this is like WAY too serious and you can easily skim past the first video and a lot of what she is talking about, but the lady is doing it right and is quite informative. The obvious difference is that you are working around the balloon. I lay on a thin layer of wool, tiny fabric specks/bits-o-yarn, and another thin layer of wool on top, then wet it down just a little bit so that it sticks to the balloon as I rotate to get to the next side. 

Rubbin’. Once your crochet-covered balloon is fully coated in wool and decorative thingies and dampened with soapy water, roll it up in the bubble wrap. Now you seriously are just going to thoroughly rub it all over. I use my knuckles and go in small circles until I’ve gone over the entire surface about 852,345 times. Or just until when I peel back the plastic, all the wool looks like it’s holding on very well. Do not be afraid to apply lots of pressure; be aggressive!

The scary part. Ok, once you are sure this layer of wool is felted pretty well together and to the crochet, pop the balloon. Then! Turn your vessel-body inside out, insert and inflate another balloon, and repeat steps 4 and 5. You need not watch the youtube videos again. 

The bouncing part. If it’s all good and felted, you can and should rinse the darn thing so it’ll quit smelling like you’re washing a dog. You don’t have to pop this balloon, and as I’ve found- the thing dries WAY faster if you don’t. After it’s rinsed, bounce the felted-crochet-covered balloon around on the counter/floor/bathtub for a bit. There’s a thing in the video about “fulling” and we’ll pretend that’s what we are doing here. Honestly, it’s mostly just fun and one time when I was a kid I got a felted hat kit and the instructions said to bounce it so I did. 

The boring part. Wait for your vessel to dry.

Decorate! Safely deflate and remove the balloon from the fabulous body you have created, and add limbs! Eyes! Hair! More eyes! Actually, flip it inside out as the inside tends to dry a bit smoother (and it’s felted a bit better) than the part that was on the outside post-drying. Then stuff it with poly-fill or whatever (I use muslin scraps) and THEN add limbs, eyes, hair, more eyes. It’s easy to have legs that originate from the opening in the vessel so it gets closed up. Or you can sew it shut. Or you can do whatever you like- have it’s brains be falling out for all I care.

So that’s really all there is to it! If you’re like me, you’ll probably make a couple more than just the first one. It’s worth it. They’re hilarious, especially when you hang them from your living room ceiling. 

[impetuousdesigns]

Throwback Thursday!

I was looking through an external hard drive for a particular artwork from college, when I stumbled upon some high school self portraits!

[impetuousdesigns]

She’s the best model.

Yes, I hung artwork of my cat next to her cat tower.

[impetuousdesigns]

獅子舞・The Lion Dance

朝5時半に起きて、ご飯を食べて、7時35分発の高速バスに乗った。娘と一緒に高松市での獅子舞イベントを見に行った。2人ともワクワクしていた。1ヶ月前垂水の海神社の秋祭りに行ったが、獅子舞は行わなかった。家に帰ってパソコンで娘に見せるため獅子舞の動画を探した。出たビデオはほとんど香川県で撮ったビデオだ。何でかなーと思った。もうちょっと調べたら香川県は獅子舞で「日本一」だと初めて知った。

Got up at 5, ate breakfast, and took the 7:35 highway bus. My daughter and I went to Takamatsu City to see a Lion Dance event. We were both so excited. A month before, we had gone to Kaijinja, a shrine in Tarumi in Kobe, for their autumn festival, but there had been no Lion Dance. When we got home, I looked for some good Lion Dance videos to show my daughter, and most of the videos that came up were from Kagawa. I wondered why. After a little more searching, I found out that Kagawa Prefecture is "#1 in Japan" for the Lion Dance.

確かに、香川に住んだ4年半の間、秋になるとマンションの近くにある神社が獅子舞をしながら神輿を担いで近所を歩き回った。それが特別だと感じていなかったが、神戸に引っ越してから獅子舞は１回も見たことがない。

Of course! I'd live in Kagawa for four and a half years, and every fall a shrine near my apartment walked around the neighborhood, performing the Lion Dance and carrying the mikoshi. I hadn't really thought it was anything unique to Kagawa until coming to Kobe, where I haven't seen the Lion Dance even once.

獅子舞王国さぬきというイベントでは、上演した獅子舞団が香川県と沖縄も神戸市からも来た。神戸市の団体は南京町から来たから、中国の伝統的な獅子舞と似ていると思う。香川の団体は私にとって「普通な」日本の獅子舞を踊った。沖縄の獅子舞は香川の獅子舞とだいぶ違う。本州、九州、四国などの獅子舞は奈良時代に中国から入ってきた。しかし、沖縄の獅子はシーサーに基づいている。シーサーも元々中国の獅子だったが、伝説と特性が本州の獅子と異なる。ネットでいろんなことを調べていっぱい知ったが、このエッセイは研究論文じゃない。😂

At the Shishimai Okoku ("Lion Dance Kingdom") Sanuki event, groups came from around Kagawa, Okinawa, and even Kobe to dance. The team from Nankinmachi, Kobe's Chinatown, performed what I imagine is a more traditionally Chinese Lion Dance. The Kagawa teams danced what I had come to know as "the usual" Japanese Lion Dance. The Okinawa team's performance was totally different from Kagawa's. The Lion Dance came from China to the Japanese islands of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku during the Nara Period, but the Okinawan shisa is the basis for their shishi, or "lion." The shisa also came from China, but its legend and features are different from Honshu's shishi. I read a lot online about these things, but this essay is not a research paper. 😂

娘と一緒に獅子舞を見に行ったという話を友達にして「怖くない？」と聞かれた。全然。娘が可愛いツインテールの髪型を下ろして、獅子みたいに頭を左右に振って鈴の音を真似して「ジンジャリンジャリン」と歌った。このイベントの数週間後、山形県に住んでいる親戚に会いに行ったとき、夫のおじさんがお土産を売っている店で、「何が欲しい？」と娘に聞いた。「これ！」と答えて小さい獅子様を指で指した。その日以来、毎日コートのポケットに入っている。

When I talked to a friend about going to the Lion Dance event with my daughter, my friend asked, "Wasn't she scared?" Not at all. My daughter took down her cute pigtails and swung her head around like a shishi, imitating the bells and drums with her voice, "Jin jarin jarin." A few weeks after this event, we took a family trip to Yamagata Prefecture to visit my husband's relatives. While we were there, we went to a souvenir shop where my husband's uncle asked my daughter, "What would you like?" "This!" she answered happily and pointed at a little shishi. Ever since that day, she's been carrying it in her coat pocket.

Various links to things I read while writing this essay:

[impetuousdesigns]

We made shishi puppets! Red one is mine, rainbow one is my daughter’s.

We had so much fun at Ringo Art Club on Friday, and I’m really proud of the kids’ creativity and skills!

The base of each puppet is actually the bottom of a paper milk carton. Cut down two sides and fold in half!