My creative journey on my sabbatical in India and beyond
It started as a bit of a joke. My neighbours wondered if my obsession with barbies was kinky or weird. I said both. And on my way to Thessaloniki I was in a newsagent at Savidor train station and found a Barbie with a furry (lilac) coat. So I bought her and took her on lots of adventures. Particularly around the Museum of illusion and deception. We both had a lot of fun together.
Whilst on holiday in Thessaloniki with my son Tobias, I woke up early every morning and made 17 purple dreamcatchers. I now give them away – I let people chose one they want, so I need to replenish my stocks and here is record of them before they go. I bought some metallic paint, puff paint, heart stickers and oval stencils at a local craft shop. I have also used some shells from the beach and some plants I also collected whilst there. I took with crayons, an in pen and some other felt-tip pens. I found some pins in the apartment too. Besides plants I picked, I used flowers from tea. All made 10 – 12 May 2024.
It is very easy to take these home from a restaurant. They are from New Zealand and supposedly good for arthritis! I cleaned them out and divided them into a left hand pile and a right hand pile. I found this piece of wood on my travels around Jaffa. I filled the left handed shells only with foods, spices and flowers from my kitchen.
Glued, lined up and ready to receive foods!
22 in order from left to right. Indian masala tea, hibiscus, green split peas, mallow flowers, chilli seeds, sunflower seeds, desiccated coconut, black peppercorns, sage, sushi rice, walnut, clove, poppy seed, saffron, pickling red peppercorn, cardamom, mung beans, pine nuts, caraway seeds, sesame seeds, Himalayan salt, nutmeg.
I lined up the right handed shells in size order and glued them together with my glue gun to create a solid object. It could be used as a paper weight – but who uses them anymore? I leave it in my garden as a decorative piece.
For a long time, I have been wondering what to do with my collection of zips. I have had them for years and clearly I am unlikely to use them. They are also very long. I asked Benji to lay them out in a suitable colour order.
Here it is complete. All of them are sewn at the top to create a loop and then placed on the bamboo stick. The beads and hoops at the end are just for decoration.
My plan was to open the zips to various lengths but it is quite high for me to reach. So they remain steadfastly shut.
I was given some material from a friend of mine Lior. She had come to my craft evenings in Jaffa and was gifted fabric from a friend of hers who used to visit a holocaust survivor who loved textiles. She had recently died and wanted to know if I would like some of the fabric. I took a big bagful and left even more behind. Lior recently got engaged and I made her a challah cover with some more of the fabric – see here – https://howtimegoesfasterasyougetolder.blog/challah-covers/
I had an idea of making my lovely neighbour’s child Raphael a kanuka present and what better than a book? I had a few pieces of different coloured felt and the fabric I chose had animals, fish and plants and so voila – I made the book below. I used puff paint to write the names and messages.
I gave it to Raphael and we lit the menorah all together and sang all 5 verses of moat tzur.
I have had these 5 pieces of Bedouin embroidery since I bought them on my gap year. They are very beautiful and it is time to incorporate them into something so they see the light of day! I found the pompoms in an art shop and the colours matched and my friend Galina suggested displaying the fabric with something in between them. To weigh down the pompom strings, I used beads and some chimes from another project. To hang the embroideries onto the wrapped bamboo stick, I used the clips I used for my exhibition when I displayed all my artwork I had done on my sabbatical in India.
Laying out in the right order some of the bits and bobs of my hanging. I didn’t use the cowrie shells in the end.
Planning decisions once I had wrapped the stick and finished off the ends.
I really enjoyed making this hanging. I have floundered what to do with the embroidery pieces for many years. It was time!
I would often stay in my brother and sister in law’s house in Ra’anana. The downstairs bedroom needed a little bit of excitement added to it so I designed a load of wall art, and bought new bedding, as well as crocheting a rug. I also went a bit mad and brought some red Turkish coffee and tea cups! I used as many box frames from The Works – a stationary and craft shop in the Holloway Road, my daily journey to work from Highbury.
These are abstract postcards all in red or red hues. The postcard from UCL is part of the collection merely because of the colour!
I have always been (well recently actually) obsessed about prime numbers so made these 5 frames using all the lower ones under ten (2, 3, 5, 7) and my all time favourite 19. I had a lot of fun with my glue gun.
Doing this project led me to go mad collecting and buying in cheapy shops pretty much anything red which made a welcome break from purple.
I have had these and other Bedouin embroideries I bought on my gap year in Israel when I was 18. I have never really found a good use for them and they look very nice inserted into these Pakistani pashmina shawls. I love joining together countries who have no diplomatic relations – in this case Israel and Pakistan.
The floor in the room needed some softer furnishings so I used up some of my stash and crocheted a red rug with different colour red fleece inserts and some knotted in short tassels.
Whilst I was busy crocheting the floor covering with my stash, I was visiting Cappadocia with my son on his return from Irbil. I loved these bright red typical Turkish coffee cups, tea cups and incense burners.
I even bought the bedding so everything would match. You can’t call me a control freak – actually you can. What fun doing a NON purple project!
I went to Brighton for a course. It was sewing with fine stitches and laying organza fabrics one on top of each other. I drew a basic pair of hands and did as instructed. This formed the back of the challah cover and on the front I used details to represent Harry and Gemma’s places of interest and importance.
The hands represented their union and as this was an engagement present the ring finger had a ring on it. I have always liked using patterned floral fabric.
The hands make up the back of this challah cover.
In this section I am representing Brighton with its very big LGBTQ+ community where Harry, Gemma and I spent some fabulous time together not long before they became engaged. The flower is a peony from a collection of flowers on card I have had for many years.
This image is an embroidery I have done of Harry and Gemma on a car roof dancing in the sunset on one of their holidays.
I do so love trees and this one has pink beads at the end of each branch. And there is my signature spiral too! Also some more colourful cards – this time with roses.
I have chosen these patches to represent Tel Aviv as I know that Gemma and Harry have spent a lot of time there. As have I – well now I live in Jaffa!
Gemma adores dogs and I bought these (and more) sets of dog postage stamps in Brighton from a philatelist. It also has a little package of heart that I had made using a special shaped cutter in the bottom right hand corner.
The entire front of the challah cover. At the bottom it has 7 (obviously my favourite lower prime number) triangular flags! Like a lot of my newer challah covers the idea is that this cannot be washed and so all the stains will tell a story. A bit like wine stains and matzo crumbs in a Haggadah (the book we use for the Passover Seder.
I have always loved making Challah Covers. The only reason I know we cover the bread on Friday night is so that when we first bless the wine the challah’s don’t get upset. But of course there is a real explanation! The cover represents the layer of dew that enclosed the manna and kept it fresh during the Exodus! There we go…..
I make them as they are uniquely Jewish and textile based and I have to say most of the commercial ones are rather dull!
My friend Galina found this rather plain challah cover. I asked her to chose the colour and yarn for the tassles, if she wanted a bell (she did!) and she wanted me to add some pink puff paint to match the single thread of sari ribbon in the tassle which was bright fuschia pink.
Tania is one of the most generous people I know. I have stayed at her house in Hove with my family and friends. It is truly delightful and very interestingly and tastefully decorated. It is such a treat. I wanted to make her a challah cover and beach huts seemed like a good theme. I dyed the white cloth I had blue and used some blue strips of cloth to make the beach huts. Some even have mezuzahs!
Betsy, my good ,friend who had a batmitzvah with me late June 2023, requested a nature themed challah. So I painted the other half of the white cloth green and entrapped some lavender and other plants I had collected from Sukhat Shalom Shul in Wanstead by sewing it in and trapping it under silver organza.
Lucy had a beautiful piece of drawn thread embroidery she had had for decades in the USA. We felt it could be turned into a challah cover and I backed it with a gold lame fabric and tassels made from cotton, gold thread and mohair. Such a lovely project to be part of!
I went round to Gabby and Osho with his mother and grandmother for a wonderful Friday Night Dinner and they didn’t have cloth napkins or a challah cover – so I rectified that – using a curtain my neighbour Ada gave me!
Caroline FC was the whole reason I started on the purple journey and although I had made her lots of purple things with dogs this is the first challah cover! It is a dreamcatcher with keyrings to represent her, Adam, Joshua, Arieh and Eli in order of age (from left to right or right to left!).
My sister-in-law gave me some fabric from her mother for a table runner which she never used. She didn’t have a challah cover but now she does!
Using fabric from Senegal, I made Justyn a challah cover not long after he was divorced. The cover itself was pretty simple but the tassels, which I made, were a nice and chunky navy chenille thread with silver for the tassel heads.
I gave Ollie a choice of challah covers and they wanted one with the fabric I bought from Senegal with white tassels. This is for their engagement party! Mazel Tov……
I made a purple challah cover for my lovely friend Rebecca who is almost my twin and has hosted me to have meals and stay and lend an ear for more years than I can remember. This challah cover has bound multicoloured yarn, chenille, wooden flowers and felt hearts. The lilac ribbon hides my label.
This is a challah cover I made for friends Caroline and Marc. They use it every Friday night and I have repaired it also over the years. I couched chenille yarn to make the central shape.
There was a very nifty weaving studio in Hackney I went to with Tracy – my sister in law once. Tracy forgot her glasses and couldn’t really see what she was making. You could also book a slot and do some free style weaving at other times and this is my own weaving with purple yarn for my sister in law Marian which I took to Israel in Spring 2019. The studio was run by Francesca Kletz who was recently on the BBCs Interior Design Masters 2024. Here is some https://www.thejc.com/news/features/interior-design-masters-francesca-kletz-wants-to-be-the-joan-rivers-of-decorating-kput32yg
Continuing the purple theme in Spring 2019, I went for a number of meals with Susan accompanied by my son. This challah cover has lots of flowers, looped yarn and some spirals of chenille yarn. The back was woven and you can see it poking out on the front.
In a bright pink phase, I made this challah cover for Beattie using fabric I painted and used heart shaped prints, and sewn on motifs from India.
This is the challah cover I made for the community in Pune during my sabbatical early 2020. I painted the fabric, quilted it and it had a single tassel as well as saying Shabbat Shalom in Puff Paint. Here is the link to this challah cover in my original sabbatical blog. https://howtimegoesfasterasyougetolder.blog/the-pressure-is-on-must-get-as-many-projects-completed-as-possible/
This challah cover was for Lior and Yoni. It is made from fabric that Lior gave me from a collection of a Holocaust survivor who loved to collect fabrics. She died of old age. In this I have entombed a huge number of Bougainvillea petals which may well fade over time. One tassel has a bell. The card said not to wash it but for the stains to tell as story over time.
I made this challah cover for the Valmans. I went there for Friday Night Dinner in Ra’anana and I found out Persha loved lighthouses and shells. So I used the fabric that Lior had given me and ensnared some shells and the lighthouse.
I made this slightly mad purple collection of ribbons with a gold painted centre for Deborah’s 60th.
This was made for Devorah for her engagement using purple fabric and flowers from India.
This challah cover for Natalie was for her 50th. It has prints, wooden flowers, glass beads and a little bag as well as paint puff decoration.
This was a rather dark challah cover wedding present for Jonny and Jessica!
Using up lots of stripes of fabric, I made this as an engagement present for Jade and Adam.
This was a very special challah cover for Ayala and Ben and their kids. They gave me my cat Bobbin. There are all sorts of things trapped under the organza such as beads, earrings, cat broaches, hearts, stones as well as sumptuous silver tassels.
This is a challah duvet. I made it years ago. Not sure for whom!
Carly dislikes camping. Actually, she really hates it. Which is odd. Carly considers herself to be a naturist and therefore, by rights, she should at the very least enjoy camping to a greater or lesser extent. But she doesn’t. It’s not that she hasn’t given camping a go. Oh yes, she has. But really the whole overall experience was ghastly, she complains, and never, ever to be repeated.
When she grew up, she never went camping. It wasn’t her family’s sort of thing. They just didn’t do camping. Probably because they were a teensy bit snobby. Actually, they went on very sedate holidays by the sea. Carly does remember one terrible occasion where she was insolent and saw the back of one of her parent’s hands. This incident happened in an elevator in an Orlando hotel and was forever known going forward as a “Florida Lift”. In fact, this wasn’t a seaside holiday but a Disney one. All Carly remembers were the size of some of the local population. Every family had at least one ginormous member.
Carly tried quite hard to reject this way of life when she left her parental home. Like many things young adults do when they want to break away. It is saying that these are my values and mantras, they are different from your ones, and I am sticking to them. For the most part. Until the values swing back the other way to be almost identical to the original parental ones. But when Carly became a parent, she wanted to be alternative and different. Her son Tobes is convinced this really is the case. He informs everyone that Carly made him left-handed, so she could be seen to be flying in the face of convention. He thinks she only did it to support her over-the-top personality. But really? Carly frowns. She didn’t bind up his right hand to ensure this outcome. Nor did she stand and beat him with a stick until he used his left hand competently. And how does he explain the fact that he is left eye dominant and kicks a ball (now very occasionally indeed) with his left foot? Tosh. Tobes is left-handed because it is in his genes. Carly’s mother and sister are left-handed. Carly doesn’t need to do additional ridiculous things to fit in with this “stereotype”. She just is alternative and different. End of.
So, Carly never went camping with her family or as a child. And she wasn’t a brownie or girl guide. She isn’t sure why not. Her sister was. Maybe the troop only took left-handed girls? No that clearly is nonsense.
She does remember camping in a huge tent, that was more like a yurt, in Morocco. She was there with her boyfriend, Ades and their travels seemed to coincide with the “World Peace Games”. This hadn’t been their intention and it was a very minor affair as only three other countries turned up. Bizarre. But staying in this yurt with about 29 others was strange and weird. A bit like the games. Surreal. Yes, it was surreal. Her only other time she was in a yurt was for Cornelia and Wilhelm’s wedding. This a rather fun and strange affair. It did mean you were only there for the day. No sleeping under canvas. Phew.
Carly does have a problem remembering stuff. It is not like things aren’t important to her. They are. But she is pretty sure that when new information is fed into her being, old stuff has to exit. She is like a hospital inpatient ward at maximum-fill bed capacity. So, she is pretty pleased with herself for remembering three true camping occasions. Yes, she was able to pull them from the deep recesses of her mind. Good. Well good she has remembered them, but the experiences were sub-optimal all the same. Unfortunately, there is no getting round this fact. All three were pretty ghastly. Worse than suboptimal. She still has no idea why after the first time she allowed herself to be manipulated into repeating the experience. Who is she kidding? Can you be self-manipulated? The bottom line is humans are fickle creatures and Carly is no exception.
Decades ago, she camped in Becca and William’s Donga wood. This was in deepest, darkest Dorset. Bill owned a wood and let it out to the Donga tribe sometimes. They roamed around nude. Carly was a bit upset they weren’t going to be around. They had been told to vacate the woods for this particular weekend. The weather was inclement to an extreme. Bill put up a tarpaulin to shelter the five couples he had invited. Carly was convinced that she and Ades were the most tent and camping naïve. Both had sedentary careers whilst all the other couples seemed very much to commune with the land. And they all lived locally. Despite the best efforts of the weather to ruin the camping, Carly and Ades were nice and warm in their tent. But there were lots of crashing noises all night long. In the howling gale, all Carly could assume was that there was a MAM (mad-axe-murderer) on the loose. Carly imagined this MAM was slashing through their tent roof to slay humans. In reality it was probably coming from twigs falling. Carly was totally traumatised then and vowed she would never camp ever again.
But surprise. She relented. Mostly because she convinced herself that camping wasn’t too bad. Her memory is shocking. So, she decided to take her own children and her left-handed sister’s children to Canvey Island. They had a five-man tent and a kid’s one from Ikea. It was all going to be sooooooooooo much fun. Things got off to a bad start as the roof box on the Volvo estate catapulted itself off its brackets just three minutes into their journey. Back to the drawing board. Well actually just back to putting the roof box on correctly. So, they loaded up again and there was no further incident with the car. Two adults in the front, three kids in the back (squabbling) and two in the boot. Oh, and the dog Jake a collie/whippet lurcher-style dog.
The kids weren’t that helpful putting up the tents. Jake barked at everyone and anything, so things got off to a bad start again. It drizzled most of the time and the only local entertainment was crabbing. Not great when you are bunch of Jews forbidden from eating seafood. The kids were too young to be allowed in pubs and it was too wet to light a fire. Oh dear. Another failed camping experience.
The final trip that springs to mind was when Carly and Ades went to Scotland. They drove up in Culfy – their red Nissan Cherry. But in the whole trip they only spent two nights camping. They had the curiosity and flexibility of youth, but the midges proved too much for them. To be bitten in such a relentless way when it wasn’t even hot felt like they’d been cheated. Instead, they stayed in cheap hotels and relegated the tent to the deepest, darkest caverns of the Culfy’s boot. One memorable day they were in a café in Fort William having pizzas. Bizarrely Carly flipped her one over. It’s not that she routinely looks at the underside of her food. But she did then. It was covered in fluffy green mould. That was it. They packed up and sped south to return to safety at home. They interrupted a friend’s romantic endeavours by returning early. He was staying, allegedly, to look after the cats. But he felt he could multitask. Carly calls her cats her feline devotees. Carly does often have delusions of grandeur. Anyway. “So sorry to have interrupted” murmured Carly who was devilishly happy to have run away from midges and mould.
These piss-poor camping experiences have been quite enough for Carly. She and her new boyfriend David have made it conditional on their relationship continuing. No camping. Under any circumstances. Ever, ever, ever. No fickle changing of minds. Meow.