Behaving Badly in my Bookshop

A couple of days ago I was caught out by the store detective in my local bookshop. He didn’t march me off in handcuffs for purloining books, but did ask me to put away my little notebook and stop writing down details of a book I had been browsing. I have to say I had no intention of buying the book, right there and then, though if I’d been able to get the title down, who knows in the future? But a bookshop is hardly a library is it? Chastened, and blushing to my roots, I put my notebook away and left immediately. (Who's the loser though?)

The handicraft book I had been looking through attracted my attention with unusual photography and an intriguing title – which I now can’t remember. All I can share with you is the one word I got half scribbled down – temari.

Not the Japanese manga character Temari, who apparently can summon an instant beheading charm with the swish of a fan, but the ancient and aristocratic art of making and decorating small hand-held balls. When this craft was introduced to Japan from China five or six hundred years ago, the royal ladies used wadded up strips of old kimonos to start the ball shape, which they then wrapped round with silk threads. Over the years they added elaborate needlecraft stitches and wrapped patterns to the surface of the ball, while putting little bells inside. These exquisite decorations and playthings have always been highly prized objets, and while making temari is an increasingly popular handicraft in the West, in Japan modern day temari artists must study for years and pass grueling tests before deemed worthy of the name.

Traditionally, if you are given a temari, you cherish it for the affection and loyalty woven into it by your friend. If a child, your mother gives you a temari at New Year, made very special by the carefully written wish for your future happiness she encloses in the ball as she wraps and sews the complex design in brightly coloured threads which also express her hopes for your vibrant future.

The temari in the picture here were made by Diana Vandervoort at www.diynetwork.com.

As kimonos are in short supply, crafters tend to use styrofoam balls to get a perfect shape. I think that's far too prosaic, much prefering the suggestion that you recycle old papers or even old socks - at least then I could tell my husband I do know where the odd ones end up!