Back to it!  Being away with the textile tour group in Japan was fantastic. I always feel like another person when I’m away. Briefly stepping away from worries and the stresses of life, and into another world where I am largely a spectator. However there are many nice things about being home, nearer family and with my looms again. At one point in Japan I was so inspired I thought I would have to leave the group to come home to my looms right away!

Before the tour began I spent some time catching up with the Jo family and on new Saori developments at Saori no Mori in Osaka. As Dave, my husband, was with me he decided to weave cloth too. Although he briefly wove at the Bendigo show some years ago, he has never really sat down and woven cloth in the almost 40 years that I have been doing it around the place.

The cloth he wove was just lovely. Being a new weaver helps with all of that freedom. Some sections were woven with a technique that requires two people that get along and we managed that quite well!

When I got home I really wanted to make it into a garment immediately, before the magic wore off. I chose, as the basis for the design, the new bias technique that I learnt at Saori and it worked really well. There is a new book being developed for this technique and I look forward to its publication. Bias style garments fall nicely on the human body and are a good way for using for our narrower woven cloths.

I’ll be writing about our tour in Japan but I wanted to start with this as my husband has been an enormous source of strength to me over the many years we have been together. Even when he has been kicked down in life he still seems to have some energy to keep me afloat. I’ve been very fortunate indeed in this regard and this is why the cloth woven by him means so much to me. So perhaps it’s never to late to weave, even if only one special cloth.