mid summer's night dream

MIDNIGHT BARCELONA from Pau Garcia Laita on Vimeo.

excuse me william :)
have a great weekend.





neki desu
 

50 years of pret-a-porter

 from the 50's to now a chronicle of the raise and decline of the fashion and textile industry in catalunya.

       tailleur                                                    perfect lbd    

those wool crepes ceased to exist long time ago.

 good pattern making skills dress

innovative use of cotton gauze : ruched, needle felted and then covered in tulle. a fresh contemporary approach to wedding dresses.

also interesting to note how the sizing gradually changed and contrary to the fact getting smaller and smaller.

sorry for the photos, they were taken w. my phone.

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the postman loves me-again!

look at these beautiful vintage silk threads i got from blandina. think i'll put them in a glass urn and just look at them, too scared to use them ಠ-ಠ  

turning a page. this weekend and until tuesday is  barcelona's patron saint feast  the virgin of la mercè.

there are many fun and game activities, music and theater all over town. however, one of the highlights for me is the wine sampling festival. less known wine producers take the opportunity to introduce their wines so you can find real gems and expand your repertoire of favorites.

it is also the official closing of  summer ending in a mega fireworks display.

adieu, until next year.

neki desu

south of machester across the channel

 at the height of the textile revolution, barcelona  was producing so many meters of cloth that it was dubbed the manchester of the south. neighborhoods were built around textile factories as self supporting communities where workers went to work  home and play without leaving the long shade of the factory.

all that is gone. even the beautiful industrial architecture, not to mention the production.  very little of that textile heritage has  found its way in the collective consciousness, hence textile means bed linens and tablecloths at its best.

for me it is always good news when i find someone who knows and cares.

the small model was found in an old fashioned underwear store.  salvador badia canales  has painstakingly reproduced a scale model of a semi automatic loom of early xx century and the store has it on display. 

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boxing day

controlled gluttony:

the view

      

octopus galician style                   steamed mussels                        

                                         fried sardines                             white wine

 then  last night we watched a documentary on lapland. we longed for the snow.

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little miss know-it-all

 old jeans dipped in indigo to see what it can do to them

yesterday after a very pleasant catch up with ruth and her new baby i headed to the fabric stores downtown in search of jean fabric. nothing fancy, just plain jean fabric.
store nº1
me: i'd like to see jean fabric
saleslady: here
me: but this is not the regular jean fabric.
sl: yes it is. been like this forever.
me: no it isn't this is plain weave, one over one under and jean fabric is twill, 1 over 2 under.
sl: well i don't know about that.
me: well i happen to know about that.thank you and have a nice day.
store nº2
me: looking for jean fabric
salesman: here you have it
me: do you have anything without elastan?
sm: no we don't, but it has always contained some elastan
me: ok can you picture a rugged cowboy perched on a horse wearing jeans of such a girlie fabric? i of course was thinking in rudder terms.
luckily  the salesman had some sense of humor and he chuckled.

thank goodness for the internet. located a  spanish online store that has regular jean fabric in 3 different shades of blue and 3 different weights.
no wonder why fabric stores here are closing down!


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oh so hip

yesterday coming out of the dentist office i saw two trees that had been subjects  of a textile action.

yarn bombing in barcelona! on a major thuway! pity no one noticed, except me that is.

ps.
have you noticed the new flickr uploader?

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there's no workaround for this post

no textile  to be seen, although the clever weaver could extrapolate the image to flax fields :)

the irises at the park were as gorgeous as the roses, massive flower borders mixed with lavender,

grasses and field flowers, pure delight. the beds of lavender, rosemary, thyme and sage were  driving the bees to ecstasy. too bad i missed the bulbs garden in montjuic this year.

iris album can be viewed here. and  thus we end up the flower power weekend.

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textile alchemy

dazzling.what an exhibit we have been graced with.
the caixa de catalunya savings bank  foundation along with the fondazione mariano frotuny in venice have designed a mesmerizing exhibit on mariano fortuny ( ny pronounced like one with a stuffed nose pronouncing an n) textile magician, fashion designer, master photographer, painter  and aesthete.
 the  exhibit comes with the bonus that it is housed  at gaudi's la pedrera's exhibition hall. just the walk up the magnificent stairs was a starter for delights to come.

we are all familiar with fortuny's sumptuous delphos dress, however, his textile production which included printing , dyeing, fashion  and lace design is not as popular. i am still under the spell of his velvets, and their jewel tone colors, tiziano and  venice in textiles. something i found fascinating was the velvet brocades with their metallic wefts woven in  what i perceived as a crepe structure.
other examples included velvets printed with metallic paints and silks printed with charcoal dust! 

 what a glorious nut he was !

drawing influences from eastern cultures and experimenting with materials, dyes and  processes he designed fashion  and furnishing fabrics from his atelier in venice from 1906 onwards.

 during this time he also created innovative printing procedures and  designed  the machines to aid in the process, accumulating around two dozen machine  patents. among these the pleating machine to create his pleated fabrics, that would be turned into the delphos dresses and tunics.

as i looked at   photographs of some of the pleated fabrics produced in his venetian atelier and then closely examined  the pleated dresses i  could establish a link between arashi shibori and his fabrics. a   link that was confirmed as i walked into another of the rooms to find katzome stencils from his collection. an exciting find indeed.

fortuny's  fashion designs were uniquely elegant  and liberating at a time when corsets were de rigeur. no wonder proust dresess the duchesse de germantes in a fortuny gown.
 also displayed there were simple silk tunics  reminiscent of morrocan djellabas  stencilled with richly decorative motifs and  gorgeous velvet capes in what i believe was devore printed.


i only had eyes and mind for  the textiles, but his photographs merit a second visit to the exhibit.and perhaps a third one to look at the engravings and paintings.then i'll see if i luck out on the exhibit's catalog, which was sold out yesterday.
somehow it seems that i won't be able to stop raving about this exhibit.


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loss of innocence

 seems that i can't close my wishful thinking mode because i want to believe all this weirdness will have to end sooner or later. yes we're happy when our blogs'  traffic grows. and it's comforting for the ego.

but that also means spam and weired followers. people who do not really care for textiles or what you do or say. i do not understand what they gain following. perhaps an in to see if your blog can get hijacked and used as a splog.as there is money involved i can see the lack of ethics and basic decency.
i suggest you delve deeper into your google analitycs.i was shocked with the filthy terms and keywords that were used to  browse through my blog. the last days of feb and beginning of march were notorious.

as jude of spirit cloth  recently commented :

"it might be nice to know what you are being associated with."

all's not lost as there are ways to curb it. you can find more about it here

and folks this is real time snow in barcelona march 8 at 2:30pm. i can hear you snowbirds cracking up. but this is the med!!!
it's not stopping so will go out and video it. more later.


Addendum: just be very careful as there are massive hijack attacks on blogs going on.
do not install any gadgets for the time being , as some contain malware codes.
there's a writeup here form one of the regular helpers in the blogger help forums

neki desu


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バルセロナのはなみ

Hanami in Barcelona. Catalan japanophiles will love the combination of the flag and sakura

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my colors

空きのうらにわ

Kyoto must be beautiful right now.
Hope i have not forgotten my にほんご。！

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Esta obra está bajo una licencia de Creative Commons.

summer sky

happy solstice!

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city girl goes wild

This is what happens when a city girl goes to a roseraie.Wild in the park.
i spent May day at the Cervantes Park in Barcelona.
The day was glorious and i made some interesting discoveries.

There was a David Austin in the 1950 who was responsible for the English rose varieties. That in itsef did not call my attention. What i found interesting was the list of names he had called his flowers. Lots of Shakespeare characters, literary heroes and heroines, English expressions such as cottage house and country living8 i could almost see the chintz LOL!) and one that made me think that he was putting his botanical expertise to the service of patriotism ;This scepter'd Island. i am aware it is a poem, but a highly patriotic one isn't it?

i love climbers most of all, and the chinese and noisette varieties are my favorites.
The flowers are small and in clusters and remind me of the roses that embellished walled gardens in the early 1900's.
i also like single roses.

When in presence of a rose bush everybody young, old, male, female stoops to smell it. A Pavlov reaction.
Also in presence of roses everybody acts as a retired golden ager :) :)

There are roses that mask themselves in to something else. i saw a cabbage wanna be, a clematis wanna be and a peony wanna be.

i found a rose darker than Guinee which was the darkest i had ever seen and i also found a violet blue one. Almost like a jackmanii clematis.

Roses need sun. Provided it is northen Europe sun. They fry on the plant over here.
Speaking of sun, i need to go back in late afternoon as the sun was too bright and the photos didn't come out to my liking. Not even after Photoshoping them to death.

If you ever come to Barcelona and like roses plan your trip for late April or early May and save half a day for the park. You will not be disappointed.


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