Kimono Fabric - My New Obsession

Sunday evening I was browsing Ebay trying to find the right color of purple wool (which I never did locate) and I stumbled upon some amazing Japanese Kimono wool. It runs about 12-14" wide and comes in an amazing variety of abstract patterns. I ended up finally ordering 10 meters of this one for about $30, shipped from Japan for a pretty reasonable price . I am having a lot of fun thinking about the kind of dress I would make given the narrow width. And then I got this lovely much smaller wool butterfly piece from a lady in New Zealand who only ships one day a week because she has 4 kids.

And this small one as well. She is a very poor photographer and puts the little origami's on the fabric to "help focus the camera" (??) so I am sort of wondering what the rest of this one looks like.

Then I wandered into Kimono fabrics in general and turned up these completely fantastic abstract Obi's. This one is called a Suminogashi dye and unfortunately I lost the bidding on it because all the darned auctions are on Japanese time and finish up at around 3AM.

This is a small panel of Obi silk that I completely love....

And then I got completely carried away and bid on this lovely silk kimono - which I lost because the auction finished at 3AM - and sold for $31. I have to admit I had mixed feelings on loosing it because I am not quite sure what I would have done with it.

Junk

Seeing LLG's Mum's overflowing attic made me feel a lot better about all the stuff in our basement. When I saw the blog title - Garage Sale - I was wondering why she didn't refer to a boot sale, since she is English, but when I saw this I realized that there was no way this would fit into a boot.

Hot Hot Hot Birthday Weather Again

My birthday always seems to fall during some of the worst weather of the summer. This year has been no exception, with the entire western and northeastern parts of the country consumed with a withering heatwave. Last night I arrived at the gym to find that the AC wasn't working too well, but I virtuously toughed it out, racing through my workout in the 90 degree heat in record time. On the way home, soaking with sweat, I stopped at the supermarket, which was over-chilled but had half the lights out to conserve energy I guess. So here I am, getting ready for a birthday lunch with my 90 year old mom on the hottest day of the year. I made the top last weekend from some lovely Indian fabric that I had bought at John Lewis in 1998. Picture is a bit blurry, but taking self-portraits is not one of my talents.

I started the day at about 7:30 to avoid the worst heat - the temperature was already 84 - and first headed to the Amish market where I found some lovely tiny sweet plums.

When I got home, after I took the picture of the plums, I arranged my huge plum tomatoes and tiny sweet orange paruche tomatoes with a deep violet prosperosa eggplant from my garden.

It hit 102 in the afternoon and after my mom and I had lunch (transported by my highly air conditioned Camry) I found that she hadn't been to pick up her mail for three days because it was too hot for her to leave the house. So we stopped by the main building of her community and I waited outside of the door while she dashed inside. It just started raining this evening, so I hope it cools off to 90 or so tomorrow.

Purple Pencil Skirt

The JCrew fall new arrivals popped up in my mailbox yesterday. I am in love with this skirt. For once it is also in a length that I can actually wear.....

Flower Arrangement of the Week

Every weekend I have been picking lovely flowers from my garden to make a arrangment.

I am hoping these lovely lilies won't be the last of the season after our blast of 100 degree days.

Peachy Sheets, Lily, Fruit, Tart

It has been very peachy around here since last weekend. ABJ's peach sheets arrived from Garnet Hill and I couldn't resist draping one of the pillowcases next to one of my peach lilies. Local peaches (and tomatoes :) have started appearing at the Amish market.

So last weekend I made a quick tart.

Last of the Black Raspberries

Sadly, I picked the last of the black raspberries last weekend and made the final shortcake. They definitely make the best shortcake ever. And, after wondering for two weeks what the slowly forming little white globes were (pumpkins? cantelope?), I finally identified the 'volunteer' next to my compost bin - several lovely perfectly formed white acorn squash. We must have eaten them last fall and the seeds survived the composting process.