AKA ONI page on FaceBook

I'll be posting updates on my new AKA ONI page on Facebook from now on, so please look me up and "Like" me, won't you? Thanks!

Early Christmas Workshop

Started a few Christmas toys for sale this year.
I try to make them all from recycled materials(mens shirts, work gloves, gently worn suits, etc.) but if I find a yard or two of pure bliss, well, who can resist? Patterns are mostly from odd Japanese craft books and the ever kawaii Aranzo/Aranzi design team. I have started to design some on my own but they're still in the pattern process as of yet. The chihuahua measures 5" in soft felt with eyes and nose from an old ladies coat.
From Aranzo/Aranzi .

White cotton work gloves and a couple shirt buttons produce a pup who bears striking resemblance to an old friends Jack Russell Terrier.
Very drowsy donkeys stitched from a few vintage sport coats.

Stitch , Stitch, Stitch.

A few examples of my work in sashiko. I love the simplicity of white on indigo blue. I'm partial to traditional designs but am always developing designs for modern sensibilities as well. One of the best things about it? No color matching if you lose the thread label numbers!

The road to where is paved with good intentions?

A set of pillow cases it took me far too long to get back to after a long stay in the "to finish" drawer. Please tell me someone else has a few of these well intentioned projects that haunt you.

Two panda buddies after a great Chinese New Year party.

A tiny bunny arriving a little early for Easter.



I've been sorely lack in keeping up this blog lately, just got a new camera and have been occupied with taking snaps of anything and everything to test it's capabilities. We boys do love our new toys. I'm still no Avedon or Leibowitz but am trying to make a start. I have to take my technology in small increments at a time, I'm afraid.
It is glorious spring here at last though still chilly (we never really warm up until June and you should never put away ALL your sweaters, ever). There's an old flowering plum tree behind our house that has exploded in a Japanese dream of pale pink and the courageous early bulbs below have started their show.

Life by candlelight

At the insistence and perhaps ridicule of my friends, I've finally started a blog and hope to appease them and perhaps even make some new friends as well. I've always been known in my little group to be the last to embrace any new technology but always the first to be called on when an old school version of doing anything is needed. A bit archaic, little me. My little sister always jokes that when civilization finally comes to an end, my little urban circle will be gathering at my house because I'm the only one among us who can still grow and put up food, make soap, sew clothes, raise animals and write a letter on real paper in ink. I was fortunate enough to be raised in the country where the nearest neighbor was miles away and to actually receive something advertised on our old black and white Zenith was a treat. Though I'm almost voracious in my need to learn how to make things from odd scraps and delight in anything homemade in my 40's, I would shun all such things in my teen years and think anyone who did as embarrassingly simple and unworldly bumpkins. It's funny how we never see the depth and value of things in our youth until we experience the shallowness and impermanence of them in our mature years. To quote ( perhaps incorrectly) that great observer of the human condition, Mark Twain:

"When I left home at 16, I knew my father to be the most ignorant man alive. When I returned home at 30, I was surprised at how much he had learned in such a short time."