I really can’t quite believe it. I just looked at my Delhi return flight tickets. I left in October and am returning in March. Hah, that should be six months but it was in fact just four. Halloween to St David’s Day. But what a time. And like all good things, it must come to an end.

Cushion Cover

I once went on a course with my friend and colleague Faye Gishen one Sunday morning to make cushion covers. I had done a load of sewing by then but I learnt two new things. Firstly, how to make a cushion cover with a cross over at the back so no need for buttons or a zip or ties. Secondly, how to turn 90-degree corners nicely without snipping off the corner, using a knitting needle to poke it out and have an unintentional hole.

So, for this cushion I used both techniques. It was the very last of my fabric. Meenaxi was going to use it to give me as bags for her leaving present to me of her organic brown rice, milled in the machine she had just bought, installed and done puja on (see blog earlier this week). Also, the fabric was a bit too stiff for rice bags. But perfect for a cushion cover.

I thought also I would apply the two sets of bought pompoms from the Samrat store to one of the corners. For the photographs I had to stuff it with all manner of things for it to be filled out appropriately.

Wearing Barbie Masks and Painted Masks

In Dorabjee’s supermarket in Pune besides getting some interesting cheeses and mosquito coils, I also bought slime and a packet of 10 Barbie eye masks. This was perfect. We could use them all. I invited (ok cajoled) all the staff at Andeshe to put on first a painted and then a Barbie mask. Shama is the owner and her mother Meenaxi spends all day on the farm weeding, planting, cooking, baking and sewing, Pratab her diver, Bishnu who runs the place, milks the cow, makes the food and his wife Ganga who helps out similarly but also does laundry.

Together, they have made my final three weeks here beyond amazing. We have cooked together in the kitchen and over the fire pit last night I cooked my salmon which I had marinated and stained purple with beetroot. Meenaxi does a huge amount of the cooking and has made me try all sorts of things like dry chutneys. In return I have asked her to sample my oat/date/banana/milk and other smoothies for breakfast. And she has joined me with a thimble of white or rose wine in the evening. I have had a small glass – not a thimble!! She is as busy as a bee and we have managed to co-exist extremely well. She has been able to fill up bobbins for me on her ancient foot treadle machine and today she used the machine to make two purple bags with 500 g each of organically grown, hand sorted and de-husked, unpolished brown rice. Such a wonderful leaving present (see the Cushion Cover blog above) with Johnny in the picture.

Large Dyed Yarn (and Balloon) Enclosed Montages

This series started as Meenaxi suggested I mend the yoga mat I was using here which had threads fraying off the sides. It was made from water hyacinth roots which has recently been designated a pest plant as it takes over other wildlife in rivers and lakes. It is often made into similar products to banana fibre but it is much wider so mats and large bags lend themselves to this material. Anyway, I realised that it was much better to remove these spare threads and make good the sides. So, I dyed these cotton threads and imprisoned them on a piece of A3 card. I also was given the mat as a present so that was shipped home for me to continue my yoga in London.

I have done a further four more including some candle wicks I have dyed on separate occasions, my furry fluffy yarn which was lilac and is now purple and spiky and not at all soft and furry! Finally, I have incarcerated some balloons from my pool project which all burst pretty early on in the process. One morning when on a run with Johnny I found a bit of balloon on the roadside at the end of my run. I could tell you it had blown for miles but I do short runs – in fact just like I do short yoga sessions of either 10 or 15 minutes. But they are regular. Short and sweet. Like me!!!

The bottom edge lace is from Samrat Craft Megastore which is a treasure trove of all sorts of wonderful haberdashery and other items. And with the usual huge number of staff members. Hilarious to go in there and be served by about 20 young men. So delightful.

A Way of Using up Flowers, Copper Wire and Yarn Mobile

Well this is true but it isn’t a very engaging name. It reminds me when artists name their pieces “installation 1” or “drawing x”. It feels a bit lazy but also not very imaginative. So I can rename this. Spiral Fun with Fur and Flowers Spiral Mobile. At least that tells you what it is. Nomenclature is hugely important. So is how you name your files. When I am sent CVs to mark up (mostly from doctors in training or medical students) it is really unhelpful when it is labelled CV.doc! It brings me back to using abbreviations and how you lose everyone really quickly but using pretty much any abbreviations. Gosh all this nonsense to return to!

But back to this quickie project. I had all the bits and it is rather like going shopping when the money in your pocket is burning a hole! And there is a sale on….

I had a length of copper wire. The last bit. I was going to make this into a flower headdress. But really, I would never wear it. It reminds me of when Nicola, under Meenaxi’s tutelage, dressed me in a saree. I told them I planned to cut up the material and make several other garments. Then they firmly put me in my place! They suggested I could wear it when I had the exhibition of all that I have made here. I plan this later in the year. And everyone who comes can choose to keep a piece. Really, there is way too much stuff that I have made here over this four-month period and this way everyone gets a bit of purple. And so, I will keep the material to wear it as a saree. But I still won’t wear a headdress. Purple or otherwise!

Hence, I made that into another spiral mobile. I have so many now I think about it! Gosh, Carly. Using the word “hence” feels very pretentious. But I am bored of using “so“……

Charitable Project – Free Johnny

I took an overnight bus from Hampi to Pune and got down at Chandani Chowk. From there a lovely family booked me an uber that I paid for and off we went via very dusty and poorly maintained roads to Andeshe. An hour later we arrived and the big gates opened and Johnny, an adolescent male, who looks like a cross of my friend Rebecca AD’s dogs Doris and Ruby, sat there chained up. He seemed friendly enough and over the course of the next 18 days of my stay, I planned my free Johnny campaign. Firstly, this is not my dog and secondly, this is not my country to be critical about how they train their dogs. Bishnu (who was wonderful but had limited English) told me he had already killed one of their cats (but actually that was the other dog Jack) and that in two months’ time they would take him off this chain lead. So, I did what I could. I ran with him every morning. I took him upstairs on the veranda where he could run around safely off his chain. I bought a lead and some tennis balls for him. Then I listened to this podcast https://www.npr.org/2020/02/03/802422904/when-things-click-the-power-of-judgment-free-learning. It was about training animals and humans with clickers and mentioned Pavlov.

So I had some left overs of a rather heavy cheesy meal I had made for myself that the staff at Andeshe wouldn’t eat (and I had maxed out on it already) and used this as the food reward for Johnny. I banged the tin with a metal spoon loudly three times and gave him a mouthful of the food. Delicious. I did this repeatedly over the course of a few days.

And empowered by Nicola Pawan, Meenaxi’s daughter-in-law, who was visiting for the day, I just let Johnny off the lead. He didn’t roam far but he was totally fine off the lead and came rushing up to me at the sound of the three metal spoon bangs. So job well done. Phew!

Purplised Papers Sewn on Purple Paper and then onto A3 White Card

When I am dyeing bits of yarn or what I believe to be cotton pre spun rovings but are actually candle wicks for religious ceremonies I will collect the paint that drips off on paper so as not to dye the ground of where I am staying. Some of the patterns, which by their very nature are random, are rather lovely. Often much lovelier than the yarn I have set out to dye! I cut them up initially and made it look like a three-page book you can open.

Then I thought I would carry on the prime theme and made further “book” pages of two, five, seven and 11. But herein lies the problem. We had decided to oil the machine. And I had already sewn onto spare fabric to ensure that no oil was dripping through. But oil on paper is much more obvious and especially the smudges from my slightly oily hands! But as always you can cover things up which is why the images with five and 11 “pages” have extra bits rescued from the bin to cover up these smudges!

But this makes them all the more fun. I had to wait for a further trip to Pune to Venus Stationary Traders for more white paper. But I was in a hurry and of course only glanced at the labels for the paper. This is not for watercolour but for oils and has a rather irritating finish which means everything slides around – well probably apart from oil paint which I am not using any more. That got sent home ages ago when I had the epiphany that I am just not an artist! Hey ho. Yet again you live and learn.

Luggage Tags

Yes, these are very useful. And as I like going to Paperchase and there are only so many passport covers you can justify buying, therefore, I am a bit of a luggage tag magpie!

Also, I have made them in the past at my holidays at Craft Retreats – on the last one with Anne Kelly. These were purely decorative and the one I made in Limoges lives on my bicycle bag. They are useful in identifying your luggage – like ribbons on the handle at the airport.

I went to Samrat in Pune and they have lovely wooden oval disks and Bishnu drilled some holes into them. I painted each side with a different colour of my six purple shades of acrylic paint. Then I applied some left over scraps of brocade and decorated them with glitter puff paint. Each of the tags had an additional tassel or pompom. They aren’t really useful as they are too delicate to go in the hold and don’t have any useful information on them! But they are pretty….

Rangoli

Rangoli is an art form, originating in the Indian subcontinent, in which patterns are created on the floor or the ground using materials such as coloured rice, dry flour, coloured sand or flower petals

I have always loved rangoli and I first saw some when I went with Ramees to the Ranakpur Jain Temple. On my travels I only saw it commonly displayed in Anegundi, Hampi. I did practice there but I scrapped the whole project until the stencil idea came about. I just wasn’t dexterous enough!

I kept vacillating between doing rangoli or not! I even paid for this lovely image to inspire me.

Ragu gave me some ground up stone that you use for rangoli and I bought some purple powder to mix with it but try as I might I just didn’t have the ability and, of course, not much patience to learn. I even went online but it just felt that I couldn’t get to grips with holding enough of the powder and releasing it slowly enough.

Then when I was on a market street in Pune, I saw some rangoli stencils. Silly me. Just because I cannot dribble this material slowly out of my hand to make intricate and pretty patterns, I can still use stencils. And then it came to me in a flash. Those mosquito coils. Again, two projects for the price of one. Brass rubbings (ok mosquito coil wax crayons rubbings – see previous blog) and rangoli stencils. All for measly cost of a packet of mosquito coils I could buy for 34 rupees. I would get 10 coils and could make a load of both stencils and brass rubbings. Whoohoo.

Day in the Life of a Baby Purple Shisha Pipe

I am staying in this really cool part of Delhi. It is one of the nicest AirBnB’s I have ever stayed out. It is old and filled with wonderful furnishings and lovely windows and doors. Loads of attention to small details I just love. Last night I saw a shop full of bright coloured glass objects and was drawn in. It was entirely dedicated to shisha pipe smoking. I have never even smoked a normal cigarette! But I found a lovely small glass purple one for 290 rupees and bought one. Today I decided to take it around with me so you can see what I do on a day to day basis here!

As a final round up of some of the things I have made lists of…..

Podcasts.

I have would recommend these…..

The clearing

The life scientific

Hidden brain

The last days of August

Dirty John

Dating while grey

Science Vs

Fake Heiress

Serial by This American Life

The Reith Lectures

Stephen Fry – 7 deadly sins and Great Leap Years

Incarnations: India in 50 Lives.

Story cast – What happened to Annie? The hunt for the Brink’s-Mat gold.

Modern Love

The world in 100 objects

Anthropocene Reviewed

TJ Frog A podcast for people who love knitting, Dorset Buttons, creativity & Scotland, especially the Highlands & Islands.

Dessert island discs

In our time (Melvyn Bragg)

Tunnel 29

The ratline

Murder in the Lucky Holiday Hotel

The missing crypto queen

Solitaire worked out 7/121

20^th Nov, 23^rd Dec, 29^th Jan, 9^th, 23^rd, 25^th and 28^th Feb (seven – how bizarre – my special number besides 19 here). And played 121 times! February must be my lucky month…..

Books read

The butterfly room, Lucinda Riley

A princess remembers, Gayatri Devi

The French gardener, Santa Montefiore

A gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles (only to page 60 – that is the rule I have with Betsy before you can stop reading any book)

The man in the crooked hat, Harry Dolan

Transcription, Kate Atkinson

Ramayana, The Epic

Gandhi, my life is my message, a graphic novel as a cartoon

Windfall, Diksha Basu

City of the beasts, Isabel Allende

Bombay brides, Esther David

The road home, Rose Tremain

Secret of the lighthouse, Santa Montefiore

On Green Dolphin Street, Sebastian Faulks

Turtles all the way down, John Green

PS, I love you, Celia Ahern

Hullabaloo in the guava orchard, Kiran Desai

I did three overnight bus trips and three internal flights in the four months. And I went in cars, in tuk tuks, in kayaks, on scooters, on bicycles but not on camels or horses. I also swam, ran and walked. I didn’t do any silent retreats. Actually I was only silent when asleep. I laughed and cried in equal measure and to excess.

Hotels stayed at (19!)

Rajasthan

47 Jobner Bagh, Jaipur

The Mosaic Guesthouse (Amber Fort, Jaipur)

Dia Homestay, Pushkar

Ranakpur Camel Lodge, Rajpura, Sadri

Gujarat

House of MG, Ahmadabad

Viventa Vadodara, Baroda

Bhuj House, Bhuj, Kutch

Devpur Darbargadh Homestay, Devpur, Kutch

Mangaldas ni Haveli II, Ahmadabad

Goa

BeechStreet Eco Resort, Mandrem

Casa Susegad, Lotalim

Vivenda dos Palhaços, Majorda

Dudhsagar Plantation, Karmane

Olaulim Backyards, Olaulim

Karnataka

Uramma Cottages, Anegundi, Hampi

Maharashtra

Andeshe, Mulshi

Hotel Sagar Plaza, Pune

Shantai Hotel, Pune

Delhi

Sarai Khas 1 @ Hauz Khas Village (AirBnB)

and of the 133 ideas for projects I have managed to do 89 (another prime number). Whoohoo

Each of these folders was part of a blog post.

The End

Nah, not quite the end. I was sent this wonderful poem by my friend Jacqui. I just love it!

The Invitation; a poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.
 
It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
 
It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
 
I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
 
I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.
 
It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
 
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
 
I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”
 
It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
 
It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
 
It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
 
I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

TTFN – as you know I detest abbreviations but here I am breaking my own “sacrosanct” rule!