Making Time

Introducing Nina, my learning Japanese partner!

I fully believe in the contructivist learning theory that we learn best by doing, and making things. So, I’m going to attempt to ‘read’ a Japanese craft book, and learn the words in the book, as I make something.
When I first signed up to Japanese class, my sensei 先生 (teacher) asked me what my goals were. I listed:

• conversational japanese
• ability to read patterns in craft books

Since then, she has cleverly convinced me to go for the JLPT level 1 Japanese test. I still want to know how to read Japanese patterns. Now that i have some basics under my belt, I’ve asked her if we can bring in some crafts into my lessons.

I’ve chosen to make Nina-chan Ninaちゃん. Nina-chan will help me learn Japanese!

About the Nina Doll

Ninaちゃん (Nina-chan) is a cloth doll, and the book comes with patterns for different clothes. She is 35cm (Almost 14cm). The book and pattern is sold by the very chic-chic Hobbyra-Hobbyre, which tends to be a bit expensive in the fabric department. The kit to make her is *gulp* 25,000円 which is €135 or $211USD. Needless to say, I won’t be using the kit.
Ninaちゃん has yarn hair, which I adore. Oh so lovely. I had a hadmade cloth doll when I was little, with brown yarn hair. She was very nice. She was big though, and Ninaちゃん is small.
She rather reminds me of the stuffed Madeliene dolls.

Warning: Looking for the “Nina doll” in English turns up some unsavoury results, but looking for Ninaちゃん brings up some blogs (ブログ is blog) of Japanese crafters who have used the pattern. ちゃん sounds like’ chan’, and is a diminutive to make a name cute. Like Kittyちゃん for Hello-Kitty.

Hapimama made her Ninaちゃん from a kit and is very pleased. She does say that the clothes are very small and thus, hard to make. ” お人形の服って、小さすぎてタイヘン！”

wonderBABY* made a few of them. So they have friends. A commenter on her site remarked on the nice color of the hair.

I’ll get some pics from the book when it’s light out tomorrow!

These paper crafts are from the Olde Sturbridge Village Kids’ Club. When you go there, people are dressed in old clothes, and if I remember correctly they are pretending they live in that time. I’m adding their crafts page to my ‘cool list’.
jumping jack. that is cute. that is very cute.
spinning image: this looks relatively simple. the ‘Thaumatrope’. you pull tight on the strings from the sides of the circle, and the classic image shows a bird in a cage.
dancing dolls: it’s hard to believe this would actually work. ‘dancing pasteboard dolls’ which you can attach in a line on string through their ‘belts’ and they do a little line dance.

i saw images of this artists’ work in a magazine, but cannot find decent ones online. bah. must find that magazine again, or maybe have a look at this book of her work.
清川あさみ Kiyokawa Asami machine-sews different pieces of fabric together; varying texture, color. they look like impressionist paintings. one image i saw showed all the stitches going in a vertical direction, and all of the pieces cut in a leaf shape, layered over each other- and shades of colour, in a gradient… it was lovely. Her official website is at http://www.mili.jp/asami.html

she is having a show in shibuya at logos gallery 17 mar - 9 april. wish i could be there.

Image from her show at LOGOS gallery.

tabi and shoes shown on talk shop

I’d like to make have a clothespin bag. As I am discovering that I am agonizingly slow at hand-sewing (no machine here!) I’m still getting ideas for sewing, but I swear I don’t want to actually have to *do* this. Alas I may be forced to.

It seems most the ideas involve a wooden or wire hanger. All our seem to be plastic. Here is a pattern for a rather droopy clothespin bag with a wooden hanger using a kitchen towel. Another common type I’ve seen is made using a baby dress.
I’d like it to stay a bit more closed than the droopy one, I think. I think I might just try and find a wooden hanger, and make a simple rectangle with a split down the middle. And maybe make it look like a dress. However, a hole down the front of a dress might be weird.

I was trying to brainstorm different shapes: animals, fruits, flowers, houses, and came up with the ladybird idea. But, I might have to make a structure for it. And I’m not sure, but it might have to be heavily interfaced to keep the shape.

I feel like I’ve been dabbling around with making things. One christmas, everyone gets red crocheted lace bags, another, it’s paper cards. I make stuffed animals, sometimes they have plastic eyes, sometimes they are embroidered, sometimes they are faceless. I doodle and draw- but wonder if it all looks like it was done by the same hand. I want to discover what is ‘inside my circle’ and what is outside. I want to develop my aesthetic.

I love artists whose work is so distinct, you can see it in everything they do. My friend Orla Kenny is like that. She paints, she does video, she takes photos… and everything she does looks like her work. You just look at it and you know. (She also crochets, and is one of my star protegées. )

So, oooo goody, I was so pleased to find this great post linked from crafty mcgee’s blog from May 2004: 10 ways to infuse your work with your personality at Wishjar journal. This is probably something alot of people have seen, but it’s such great advice. And something I’m planning on doing with my blog/journal here…. Here is the abridged version for my reference:

1. Document what you are responding to regularly.
2. Start to challenge yourself on a regular basis to try new things
3. Go back to your childhood, (the formative years). What were your favourite things to do?
4. Do something that is not for money.
5. Use sources that are based on your daily life.
6. Become a collector.
7. Ignore what other people are doing.
8. Don’t promote to target your audience.
9. Take a lighthearted approach… If you feel stuck, you can always reinvent yourself,
10. Study other artists or creators who followed their own vision. Research.

We’re in the middle of the doll festival right now. I remember seeing Kurosawa’s film the Dream, where the dolls came to life. I know when I was little I was very aware of the personalities and spirits of all the stuffed animals and dolls I had. I haven’t sat down and considered all of them… but I imagine ion some ways they were probably aspects of my child-self.

I love the idea of the hina-matsuri…

(image from kungfootv on flickr)

Formerly, people believed the dolls possessed the power to contain bad spirits in their bodies, and would thus save the owner from dangerous encounters.

More about Hina Matsuri, the Doll Festival

Most families take their beautiful collection of dolls out of the closet around mid-February and put it away again as soon as Hina Matsuri is over. This is because of an old superstition that families that are slow in putting back the dolls have trouble marrying off their daughters. (from Kids’Web)

Hinamatsuri is over on the 3rd of March, so people will be taking them down quick.