Block Printing: The Process

Have you been wanting to learn how to block print? I wrote an article for the blog Oh So Beautiful Paper on the process of block printing, and it was published last week. I thought I would put it up here too, for those of you who have been wondering how it is done! What is Block Printing?Block Printing is one of the oldest types of printmaking, and has been around for thousands of years.  There is evidence that it existed as early as the fifth...

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Khmer Traditional Textiles

While in Siem Reap I did my second textile visit of the trip, to the Institute for Khmer Traditional Textiles, or IKTT. The center was started in 1996 by Kikuo Morimoto, a Japanese man who had studied Cambodian weaving and wanted to preserve the dying tradition. Since so many weavers were killed during the Khmer Rouge, Morimoto found a handful of people who could still remember the tradition to pass it on to others. Today, they have over 500 workers...

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Riding the Norry

In Battambang, Cambodia, we did a day trip in the countryside on the backs of motorcycles, ending our trip at the norry, a makeshift bamboo train that runs on the Cambodia Railway tracks. Cambodia has no good train system, but has a series of leftover tracks from when the trains used to run. So, people in villages started building makeshift trains to run on the tracks that could be quickly disassembled when a real train came (very slowly) in the...

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The Vine

After our disastrous stay in Kampot, we decided to ignore our budget for a few days and stay at The Vine Retreat in Kep (not that much over budget at just $35 a night), which came highly recommended. The hotel is set on an organic farm and serves up local food (not unusual for Cambodia, since it's much easier to get something grown nearby than from a big store or company). They have a solar-filtered pool, an outdoor bar where we have spent hours...

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Bad Travel Days

This picture of the ceiling was the only one I took during our two days in KampotFor those of you reading this from your office cubicle and wishing you could be traveling, I thought I would include this post about when things don't work out so well on the road.On Saturday, after visiting Push Pull, we took a taxi down to Kampot on the coast. I had been so excited to visit this little French Colonial town, and had high expectations for what an amazing...

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Push Pull

Last week was the first textile-related stop on this textile-related trip. My cousin's friend Meg works for Push Pull, a Cambodia-based textile cooperative that uses traditional ikat weaving methods to make contemporary fabrics. It was started when the founder was traveling in Cambodia and became friends with his tuk-tuk driver. The driver took him back to his village for a meal, where the founder noticed that everyone in the village in Takeo Province...

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The Russian Market

My favorite part of our two days in Phnom Penh was definitely the Russian Market. We started there on our first morning, and had so much fun that we went back for lunch the next day. The market is a huge maze selling everything from auto parts, t-shirts, and live fish to tourist souvenirs and pirated DVDs. In the middle are the food stalls, serving up noodles and other quick, cheap meals on plastic tables and chairs. On day one, we had a pho-like...

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I Ate a Tarantula

It happened....

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Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We've been in Phnom Penh for 36 hours now, and this city is beautiful. We've bargained at markets, walked along the river, eaten Khmer food, had beers on an outdoor patio, and taken a tuk-tuk tour of the city.The city is a lot more organized and developed than I was expecting. Despite the tragedies that have occurred here, you can still feel a lot of culture, and a lot of French influence, especially in the architecture (and the carrots and potatoes...

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