Four More Letters for My Japanese Alphabet

I seem to have been going very slowly and have a bit of catch up to do.  Blame a week in Bali and kitchen restoration.

 I is for Ikebana, traditional flower arranging.

 J is for Jizo.  Small statues of Jizo can be found on the roadside. with bibs placed on them by worshipers. Jizo is a being in Buddhahood who leads people to salvation and particularly protects children

 K is for Kokeshi, a simple wooden doll.  They originated in Tohoku, north of Tokyo, but are now made in many other regions.  Each is distinctive to the region

There is no L sound in Japanese.  The nearest sound is R.

4 more

 

B, K, V and L  ... six more to go !

Penny's letters

I am heading away soon and wanted to get my alphabet finished and posted.

Fiona is posting my letters as Ia m having a few problems uploading photos.

Burnt Letters

Catching up the Burnt Letters e-h

And the Burnt Letters up close...

I trace the letters onto the fabric using my lightbox. If I did this again, I wouldn't cut all the squares of fabric first because sometimes it gets pretty hot when you are burning a section near the edge. Or perhaps if I centred the letter, there would be less problem, but I am considering doing something in the open spaces.
You have to also take into account that the just burnt section of fabric will be HOT. So when you reposition where you are holding it you have to be careful not to touch the section you just did. It cools fast, but you don't want to touch it straight away.

following letters

Here are the following letters of my blue alphabet :
k, l , m , n, o, p,for september and october
You can see papers, stickers, stamps, laces, old writings, pieces of diary an so on...
I play with all these materials :

Burnt Letters

I never got around to starting a second set of letters. Partially because I find it hard to jump right in when the first set is finished and also because July and August are very busy months for me. It wasn't because I lacked for ideas, but rather that I couldn't settle on one.

However, the other day I followed up a link in the sidebar here to Fiona's blog where she had used an incense stick to do some burning marks on paper. Funnily enough, I was thinking of doing some more burn mark work with my soldering iron. I use it in a similar way to a wood burning tool.

So, I decided to do the second set using the soldering iron. This time I chose to use calico - actually the back of some calico I used years ago when I was first learning pattern drafting. So, recycling!

The calico takes a bit longer to create a strong mark than silk and needs more heat. For silk or for cutting synthetics, I use my Margaret Beal soldering iron with a curved tip. But for the thick cotton, I use a fine tip soldering iron made by Drapers.

As you see, it isn't as fine as the M.B. one, but I find it gets hotter and so works better on the calico.

So, I am working on catching up. Here are the first 4 letters. These are lower case letters from a Celtic Design book

I am considering presentation options.

New York New York

So my place alphabet is like others', coming along in fits and bursts.  Here I have managed to complete a further 8 letters, and with a month or so of travel ahead I am trying to get in front a bit.

I - is for Inside-Out, the most amazing exhibition of rusted steel sculpture by Richard Serra at the Gagosian Gallery. By pure serendipity we became aware this show was on - and it took our breath away. A real highlight.

J - is for Jennifer, one of my best blogging friends. We met in person the first time we visited NYC, and this second time, J made the time to come down and see us again (from Connecticut) even tho her life was full and overwhelming at the time. Special.

K - is for knitting which is kind of weird, but my favourite shop Habu often tempts me in a crazy way to become a knitter. They have such lovely knitting!

L - is for Laughing Man, a coffee shop in Tribeca owned by Australian actor Hugh Jackman. We mapped our way around NYC via Australian coffee shops and this is a wonderful tiny corner shop with good coffee.

M - is for the Met of course. One of THE galleries of the world for me, we spent an amazing day there again seeing some pieces that will stay with me forever.

N - too easy really and a bit cheeky - New York itself!

O - is for the Opera Shop. We spent a fair bit of time in thrift stores checking things out and by far, my favourite was the Opera Shop, proceeds go to support the City Opera, and the clothes were so gorgeous and stylish and fabulously presented. I could have left my suitcase at home and kitted my self out there for reasonable money and looked great!

P - ahh Pizza. One of our lasting memories is losing track of where we were and what we were doing and accidentally ordering a Large pizza. It took up our entire kitchen table and lasted for three full meals - it was ENORMOUS!

It's quite good fun remembering New York all over again...

Next instalment of Place letters

I seem to be having trouble producing 'a letter a week' this year! I have spurts where I get a fair bit done and then do nothing - although I do a lot of thinking in between. I have just had two lovely weeks holiday which has helped this time.

Anyway, here are my letters finished. The application of the letters ended up not being such a big thing -  I love using the ruling pen - so I did.

For contrast I have overlaid a Helvetica capital over each of the little 'pizzas' then printed them digitally on Canson paper. Then I tried coloured inks over the top with the ruling pen but they bled terribly. So I went back to black - very graphic as usual. Maybe I'll go all out on the covers!

The finished presentation will be a small concertina book in a box, the top and bottom of which will be the covers.

Everyone's work is looking fabulous. I love looking through when I haven't been on for a while to see the progress - great stuff!

Meg (maybe not so confuzed this time)