ENTWINEMENTS

This is a detail of a yukata that was posted on the shibori Flickr pool by narablog.com. It is just indigo on white (or the natural color of the cloth. It has generated quite a bit of interesting technical discussion about how it was made in the comments at Flickr. The keystone in the discusion in another piece of cloth of posted by narablog.com. It appears the this piece was pole wrapped with precision twice and indigo dyed the same shade each time. Try it, it will make you feel humble.

Narablog has explained that this is cotton, handspun and handwoven. Hand spinning takes about 5 times as long as hand weaving. This is extremely labor intensive (but made before we had labor saving devices and longer lives). The effect can best be seen in a larger view of the yukata.

One sees darker patches in the blue across the cloth caused by tiny variations in the spacing of the arashi shibori lines that in the detail seem impossibly perfect. This color blue that fades in and out is much more like the colors I see in nature. Reminds me of the flight of a flock of birds or the sound of cicadids in the August afternoon. Seldom does nature produce a large expanse of uniform color. To me this is the kind of beauty and patterns I see in nature and aspire to create.

Todays questions are different:
Is the beauty worth the time?
Can you get the same effect faster, cheaper?
What's next?