Lititz & Shibori!

This is how we spent the morning yesterday. We have some of our soap products in a coop in Lititz, PA. Lititz is a sort of "Artsy" town, one of those little hometown places that has actually achieved the rebirth/renewal thing that a lot of small towns seem to be striving for. Many quaint shops and well attended arts and crafts fairs throughout the year, a real destination. It probably doesn't hurt that Wilbur Chocolate is there sending wonderful smells into the air!

We had agreed to do a soapmaking demo on the porch of the coop (that's Tina behind the table). Unfortunately, we were too off the main street which had been shut down for a street craft fair, so had little traffic ourselves. We made our soap, visited with the other craftspeople on the porch, then packed up and left around noon to get home in time to see Tina's daughter off on her way to the beach for a week with her dad.

Meanwhile, I was inspired to make a new set of beads on Friday. I'm kind of excited about it, just because it seems like an unusual color combo for me. The picture behind it is an ad which was on the back of the latest "Ornament" magazine. I bought the magazine for the article in it about Sage & Tom Holland's Islamic folded beads. (The article was fascinating, btw.)

The magazine was lying face down on the coffee table and when I started out to the shop to make beads, I saw the ad on the back. The colors just popped and I thought, "I wonder if I could make a bead with those colors."

They're not perfect, but I think they convey the colors and movement of the dress in the ad. I call them "Shibori" because that was the company the ad was for.

By the way, I finally got some new vessels up on my website. I'm working on updating all the pages, but you can check out the vessels page here.