Japan Goodies

I've just come back from a wonderful two weeks in Japan which you may have shared with me on my Facebook page so I thought I would show you some of the goodies I brought back with me. I'm not a great shopper so these are just small and interesting.

These cute crayons really appealed - don't know if I will ever use them but it's a fun idea and apparently the coloured speckles do show when you use them.T

 

This brand of needles will soon be available in Australia from my friend Jane at  BeBeBold and I'm going to try them out for beading as I don't use beading needles - I use short and sharp ones. I love the packaging and each type of needle is in a different coloured box.

 Of course I bought next year's calendar from the Kubota Kimono Museum. My favourite point of the tour.

At the Yokohama Quilt Exhibition I did the Shashiko mini workshop. Obviously I mastered the technique so quickly I didn't need to do any more. Actually it is an amazing craft but I just don't have the patience to do spend hours replicating someone else's patterns.

 Now can you guess what these are? I nearly missed it too but they are actually packs of tea bags for you to fill with your own tea mix. However the thought of Judy Coates Perez Ephemera workshops where you use tea bags (admitedly used ones) came to mind so I bought a couple of packs. Now what to do with 120 empty tea bags!

Of course we eat a lot of really delicious food in Japan and wasabi appears everywhere - even in Kit Kats.

I really enjoyed this trip to Japan and the good news is that we are doing it again next year. Even better is that we will be going via Taipai in Taiwan and arriving in Hiroshima. There will be more workshops and even a cooking class ending up of course at the Yokohama Quilt Festival. More information is here but we are still working on adding even more textile activities.