Saori, Osaka: I

Last month, Kaz and I were fortuante enough to spend 5 days at the Saori Studios in Izumi-shi, Osaka. It was a beautiful studio filled with natural light and ventilation.

As you can see, looms were all set up ready to go. Everyday, people turned up just to weave. Experienced and new weavers, young and old, couples and children. It was a pleasure to see how easy it was, no hang ups about threading or sleying. You just pick the colour and type of yarn, wind up a bobbin and off you go.

There was an extensive selection of yarn to choose from. Each cone is colour coded to show fibre: wool, cotton, synthetics, jute, etc. You can blend fibres and colours. The warps were all set up in fine black cotton at 5 ends per cm and they all have 2 shafts.

Everything has its home. Shuttles, bobbins, scissors were all provided for. You literally just need to turn up and start weaving. At the end of the day, tools were returned, warps were re-tied and each loom is ready for the next person. The studio is opened from 9:30 to 5:30 each day, 7 days a week!

We were also fortunate that the condominium across the road was available. Saori has the property to house people who had travelled to weave at the workshop for a very reasonable sum. It is a fully equipped apartment across the road from the Studio.
The most wonderful thing about the apartment are these Saori curtains in each room.

bedroom

There are 2 bedrooms, a tatami room, kitchen, living and dining area. Each room can sleep up to 2 people. On the second night of our stay, a lady from Okinawa joined us. She was on her way to Tokyo and stopped by to weave for a day. She arrived in the afternoon at about 4pm and started weaving straight away. By dinner time, she had a scarf. The next day, she learnt how to wind a new warp and to set up the loom (threaded and sleyed) from scratch as she had bought a loom to take home the last time she was at Saori.


dining area



living area

It was a wonderful experience. It opened my eyes to a different way to weave and a different way to utilise the finished pieces.
Please look forward to the next installments......