Like most people, Carly has a number of different ways to become inspired. She used to think she could only really do this when away on holiday. For sure it helps with partially silent writing retreats. That means she just has to get on with the business of writing, as that is how these holidays are billed. But she usually starts with some rituals to get the creativity going. She chooses three angel cards and writes about them. For instance, the three words might be gratitude, knowledge and power. She interprets them in her own personal freestyle, but also, using the official meaning the accompanying explanatory booklet provides. Then she moves on to play a game of patience with real playing cards. She will often light scented tealights as these help too. For the last few years, when on holiday, she uses handmade A5 card to make 2D dreamcatcher pictures. She has made several hundred, and once photographed and uploaded to her blog, she sets about giving them away. They are always based loosely around the colour purple and often have buttons or beads as well as bits of nature encased in embroidery thread. They don’t take long to make, and people always take one when offered. It fills her with a lot of joy to think of her purple offerings all around the world.
When she visits her friends in Limoges, she squirrels herself away in their workshop, which is full of fabulous sewing machines including a Sashiko machine. This does an elegant running stitch. She often doesn’t plan exactly what she will do, but for sure she loves to use this machine. But she must be very careful as a needle alone costs €500! And Carly is a supreme klutz. She wonders if she has dyspraxia. She certainly drops and breaks a lot of items. She always thought it was because she was rushing around hither and thither, but maybe not. Whilst there, she recently learnt how to make patchwork woodwork. This was really fabulous. It houses all her keys and hangs up by her front door. She has put together all these lilac blocks which are glued and embroidered together. She has decorated it with old keys and steampunk clock parts. And, of course, lots of hooks for keys. And, hey presto, now she never loses them!
For a very long time, Carly felt she needed the distance and permission granted by being on holiday to get going. But that wasn’t really the point of moving to Israel in her late 50s and not working there. During regular training sessions with the marvellous Miri, she can let her mind wander and freely associate. This gives her the ideas behind her projects. She then needs to have some time. If she tries to allocate a whole day this becomes overwhelming. And she needs to her steps, have her second coffee, deal with one totally annoying Israeli bureaucratic issue. So just a few hours clear of what her daughter Boo calls Admin Nonsense she can get going on her imaginative projects. Often, she has more than one project on the go at a time. But that is fine. It makes more sense to get out her glue gun and get busy on a variety of things. She feels that being in a state of contentment really helps. When she is angry, she doesn’t feel she can be productive. She wants to have the right level of energy, her mojo activated, but for her to also be somewhat serene too.
Often, Carly is inspired on the back of something completely unexpected. She was recently sent a video of how some family in England had made completely over-the-top preparations for Passover using foil to cover absolutely everything – the walls, the floors, the ceiling and all the appliances. The video was farcical and hilarious. The tradition is to completely change over all sets of crockery and cutlery, which is like a massive spring clean and a lot of hard graft. Carly remembers fondly when she did this. However, most people only have one oven, fridge and larder. So, it is usual to give these items a good clean and there are various rules about what you do. For instance, to enable the microwave to be used over Passover, you just need to heat up one glass of water at maximum power for one minute. But for the oven, and especially the gas hob you need to cover them in tin (aluminium) foil. Some do it very delicately whilst others are rather ham-fisted. This is rather a fun word to include (ham) when describing a method for obeying a Jewish rule!
And whilst Carly certainly could undertake this task with care and precision, she felt it really was a waste of her precious time. Her method was as speedy as humanly possible, but at the end of Passover, certainly the foil had pretty much disintegrated. Hey ho. On this video, sent to many people a family had covered the entire surface of the kitchen with foil. The chairs and tables and fridge and oven and microwave and drawers and every single surface. It was making a funny point and Carly had been wondering what to do with her five voodoo Barbies and now an idea came to fruition. She would make them live in a home that was made completely kosher for Passover. She had recently been to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and for not too much money had picked up a set of doll’s furniture for four rooms. All flat-pack as if they were from a mini-IKEA, the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedroom. They would be about the right size for her collection of these five small dolls Tracey had kindly brought her from South Africa. There is nothing Barbie about them at all. But Carly doesn’t really care about that. She can designate them as she sees fit. After all, she renamed Princess Peach as Pez Barbie. She hopes Meital, who make Barbie, don’t sue her. But she is small fry, and Carly is hopeful they have their eyes on the big guns. Like Donald Trump and King Charles. She is not (unfortunately) in that league!
Then there was the small matter of the spray paint. She went to her local art supply shop for those who indulge in street art and graffiti. Silver is the most popular colour and almost invariably out of stock. Don’t other customers realise that Carly is now in a panic? She cannot spray the whole art piece gold. It would look tacky and have nothing to do with Passover. In the end, she found it in a garage. She can never really understand in such a vibrant country as Israel why all the cars are monochrome. White, silver and black. Ho hum. How very dull. She recently went with Debby, who was buying a new car, and she settled for pillar-box red. Thank goodness Carly has friends, who are bucking the trend. So, she was ready to start. She assembled all the doll’s furniture and sprayed them all silver as well as the canvas she had found on the street. She used her glue gun to attach all the items in each room on the canvas. She kept them roughly in four quarters according to each room. And made all the textile accessories like rugs, bathroom mats and table runners out of tin foil. The next design issue to plague Carly was whether she should stick them on the canvas as if they were on the floor or perpendicular and coming out towards the viewer. She compromised and stuck them randomly. And being a person of haste and poor planning, she had put the picture string at the bottom of the picture, but that was easily rectifiable. She also glued the five dolls in place. One in the bath, one at the dressing table, one in the bed, one at the dining room table and one popping out of the kitchen sink. Carly showed restraint and didn’t put one either in or on the toilet. She is rather pleased with her ability to contain her exuberance. She is rather delighted with the end result, although items do sometimes fall off. But Carly whips out the glue gun and gets busy sticking. Besides her labelling, sewing and knitting machines, her glue gun is utilised very regularly. Recently, she found coloured glue sticks. One set were opaque and the other set glittery and transparent. Oooooh, so much joy from something quite simple!
The one thing that she will always tackle almost immediately is mending. She just loves this. She is the mender for all her friends. Some are much clumsier than others and repeatedly rip their clothes. She is happy to alter clothes to fit her friends. But this is only possible if they have actively lost weight or shrunk with old age. Her favourite thing is to repurpose clothes. And this has given her carte blanche to give items a new lease of life. And, if they don’t like it, they tend not to say. She only really knows her mends have been successful if she sees her friends wearing them. It does mean these friends do think she must be the repository for all their unwanted but previously loved fabrics. She tries to say no to the truely ghastly ones. Sarabeth gave her some really old and worn-out tapestry which Carly was unlikely to ever use. But then Carly suggested she make some cushion covers for Sarabeth out of the material. She was delighted with them and commissioned loads more. Now the fabric is all used up and so everyone is happy.
Carly’s friends wanted her to turn her mending into a business – Carly’s recreations. But Carly just likes mending for friends. She is, however, setting up a Jaffa Port Repair Café. This is only second one in Israel, and it will be fun to be part of a large international foundation. Carly can then mend items every month for total strangers who will, hopefully, in turn, become friends.
