So I am up at the crack of dawn looking at the beach in an empty restaurant getting together my second blog of 2020. It is a very pleasant setting but for some reason the ants are out in full force. Climbing up my legs, arms, face and laptop screen. It is all rather irritating and itchy! On this blog I am covering soap, flowers, a house and cowrie shells.
Soap shavings
There was a great shop in the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmadabad. I went a bit mad with buying books – about Gandhi (in cartoon form which Toby and I have read). And other books about how to draw elephants and simplistic cartoon people. They also had some soaps.
And yes, I found a lavender one. I have made a lot of lavender soap at home – using dried lavender flowers from John and Stephanie Cooper’s garden to embellish them. And I was going to bring my soap ingredients with me but I decided this was silly. I had planned to bring my knitting machine (too large to fit in the case in the end) and my sewing machine – too heavy and currently being put to good use by Amy Lowenberg who is studying fashion! Also, there are loads of sewing machines here but mostly using a pedal foot without electricity.
Back to the soap. One of my projects was to do some soap sculptures. But this would require a lot of soap and I only had one bar. On one of my mad purple shopping trips I thought I would buy a peeler. But the closest was pink and it was only 10 rupees!
So, I decided I should peel or shave the soap. They ended up as lovely spirals. I didn’t even cut myself.
I put them on a white piece of paper and then put string around them to contain them and squish them in. Ultimately, I had a rather large ball of semi-random shaped soap shavings that is still usable!
House Building
Once in a rickshaw in Ahmadabad on my way back from Gandhi’s Ashram I obviously felt moved by the experience and for some mad reason bought a house building kit from a street girl who accosted me at a set of traffic lights. It cost 100 rupees and was made in China! It was light and I wanted to make it with Betsy as she would be the only one of my three children who would be up for any crafting activity.
We took it to La Plage restaurant recommended in the Love Goa book I had delivered by Amazon to Pushkar! La Plage has seriously amazing French food. (https://www.tripadvisor.in/Restaurant_Review-g1010240-d1993297-Reviews-La_Plage-Mandrem_North_Goa_District_Goa.html).
We had a wonderful meal there and Betsy rather turned her nose up at my joint house building project but as it was New Year’s Day and we had arrived an hour before any food orders would be taken we sat drinking wine (me) and having a virgin mojito (Betsy) making this house.
It didn’t really take that long and we decided as we were going to walk back the 4 km to our hotel, we would leave it there. It was smaller than I had imagined but that is the seductive power of thinking I had got a bargain.
I was originally going to paint it purple or put spirals on but thought – you know what – this is a charity project and I am doing it with my 18 year old daughter so hey let’s just do it as it is!
Cowrie Shells
I have always loved these shells. I found them in a haberdashery/stationary shop in Ahmadabad and at 120 rupees I wish I had bought a few packets but I was about to go on a flight and had only paid for excess baggage of 15 kg so it was time to try and restrict myself.
I used them in three main projects. Firstly, I glued them onto some stiff lilac A4 card. I had thicker white but felt that the lilac would enhance the place colour of the shells. Also, I had ended up with a load of silver bells. My lovely spiral jungle jelabi project had been packaged up whilst I was travelling in Kutch in a bag in Ahmadabad. I had thought to leave it where I made it in The Camel Lodge near Ranakpur, Rajasthan but changed my mind and decided I should ship it back to the UK and then I could display it for everyone to see in my exhibition. Silly me. It was made from plants that weren’t dried out and whilst wrapped in protective plastic the whole thing went totally mouldy and had to hit the bin. I am so upset with myself for clearly not thinking it through. I should have left it in the open in Ranakpur or let it dry slowly in the open atmosphere.
Anyway, I did neither but did manage to retrieve the bells and clear off the black tarnish from the plant mould. I sewed on the bells at each end of the cowrie shells and enjoyed photographing them around the resort we were staying in North Goa – Beach Street Eco Resort (https://beachstreet.in/).
Secondly, I decided to make another felt cuff. Again, using only odd prime numbers like the one I had made before from small violet tiles (see Primes – mosaics, poetry, gemstone fruit trees and spiral mobiles posted Boxing Day). This time I sewed most of the cowrie shells using the bead holes and also put on some silver bells. I made a fastener out of a bead and some purple string. I like the off-centre way it lays.
Finally, I was in another stationary/craft shop and bought all the purple tapes they had. They are rather dodgy to be honest and have a number of patterning faults as well as not being very sticky but they are fun and I enjoyed using my last three cowrie shells. I placed them each at a different angle on my lovely new 400 gm white paper on top of three different foil squares used to wrap handmade chocolates. I then divided up my tapes and made three borders for these foil squares. I keep having to re-stick them but that is part of the joy that they really aren’t sticky at all!
Flowers – metal and plastic
I wanted to use some metal to emboss designs on my theme. The brass I bought (see earlier blog) was too rigid and thick to use and so I thought I was use disposable aluminium foil containers.
I bought eight from Sonu who has a juice bar in Pushkar. I spent ages smoothing them out and getting my hands really quite dirty but they were too thin and pliable for embossing so with the necessity of an oncoming box to fill to ship back to the UK, I decided that I could fold them in the way you make fans, tie them with copper wire and turn them into a flower display. They fitted the prime theme.
I had fun photographing them in the wonderful Haveli I was staying in and they could be packed up pretty tightly and shipped off. Phew their very presence and my inability to know what to do with them was problematic so hey presto they were sorted. The small flowers were made using some small squares of foil I had bought in the Swad hardware shop in Bhuj used by chocolate makers. I still have about 80 pieces left but they take up only a small amount of room and I am sure I will utilise them later on.
I have added in some plastic flowers here as I photographed them at the same time. I got the seven of them for 100 rupees in Manek Chowk one evening. They have now been turned in to decorate a hat (see Half Way Round up on 3rd Jan – Chanukiah blog) and also part of my dressing up to look like Maite Ribelles in the Gran Hotel – wait for a later blog – I have almost finished the 66 part series in Spanish – this forces me to watch it and desist from knitting!
Purple Flowers in the North
by this I mean Rajasthan and Gujarat!
Having this great camera really can make you go wild and take so many photos. Luckily my colour palate has limited this to purple and related colours and thereby contain my photographer’s enthusiasm.
This is partly due to having a great camera (thanks Adrian) and for being here for a while and noticing them. The only main problem. Really, I have no idea of their names. And I am not sure there is an app for recognising flowers like Shazam is for music.
Silly me. Of course, there is an app. In fact, several. But here is the crunch. I am not sure I want to spend hours uploading photos and increasing my screen time further. Especially as the flowers are on my personal computer and then I will need to send them to my phone and that feels not only irksome but unnecessary. Am I being sacrilegious to not care about the proper names?
I know some are morning glory, there a handful of dark purple pansies and a number of grasses. There are even some which have yellow flowers but purplish seed pods. Anyway, I hope you enjoy them!
I am now off to do some shopping, get a coffee, have a smoothie bowl for lunch and a proper indulgence – a pedicure. Wearing sandals all the time does take its toll on your feet!
