Vacation Craft Classes

When we are on vacation, I like to learn about the local crafts and take a lesson when possible.  When we were in Bali last year, I took two batik classes.  In Okinawa two years ago, we took Bingata and weaving classes. We couldn’t pass up the opportunities for hands-on fun this year in both Kyoto and Okinawa.

The Kyoto Museum of Traditional Crafts – Fureaikan offered a class in Surigata-Yuzen, Kyoto’s stencil-dyeing technique.  Ted and I both chose to make a pair of coasters. First, our instructor demonstrated and we learned the two important things were: not to have too much dye on the brush and kuru, kuru (move the brush in circles).

 

When we were done with the dyeing, the instructor ironed our coasters to set the color and we had a nice souvenir to take home.

 

 

 

In Naha, Okinawa, we decided to try the Ryukyu glass blowing class offered at the Naha Traditional Crafts Center. It was a little scary because it was so hot, but exciting too. We dipped the hot glass in water to make a crackled look.  We also had to roll it and expand some tongs to make the open top.

 

We came home with these two blue (not quite perfect) glasses. We really enjoyed both our classes.