Early this morning the highway to Takao was empty and the valley was a cool silver blue as we drove. We said our goodbyes and it was suddenly silent as I drove back to Fujino to an empty house (except Snoopy) and more silence. The Textile tour preparations had taken up a solid eight month stretch of life.

Ten days flew by. We packed in a surprising amount of activities, some planned and some spontaneous. I'll write about them over the next month.

On the first day we arrived at the house and unpacked. Saito san and Junko prepared a sushi party for us.

After we hit the indigo vats.  I had a new stainless steel vat installed and we filled it with water, christened it with some sake and then added the indigo and then dyed some cotton thread. Kurihara san came the next day to pick up the thread and brought it back to us yesterday in a gorgeous knit.

Blandina holding out freshly dyed cotton thread.

The finished indigo knit fabric.

The view from the top of the village with mountain cherry blossoms out. 

Jean holding some freshly pulled natural madder/ akane.