How Time Goes Faster As You Get Older.blog

Talking to Harry about recently we agreed that you always feel ready to come home at the end of a holiday. In many ways this has been like an extended Indian craft holiday and I am excited to be coming back although not for the weather or actually having anywhere permanent to live! But that will rectify soon – the home NOT the weather I suspect!

Spiral Cut Out Paper Mobile

Over one lunch I mentioned to Meenaxi that I had a list of 133 different ideas I could undertake whilst here but had only done 77. We looked at the list together and she empowered me to do some more myself – like this cut out one and others she would help me with – like baking and origami.

So, I took some thin purple A4 paper and drew my interwoven “mosquito coils” onto the paper and cut it out using my shockingly bad 70 rupee knife.

But it did work and I ended up with 6 long coils. I thought I could hang them from some copper wire I still had. I covered this in the lilac, purple and white chenille and then hung the six spirals from the central knob. It now hangs with the two other purple mobiles and the weaving hanging.

A simple project which will be easy to pack and gets me up past 77 completed ideas! That now ticks off paper cut outs!

Lilac Pair of Candle Wick Dyed Montages

In Ahmadabad I bought a bag of cotton to take home for my colleague Giles Armstrong to spin. This is very much Gandhi’s city so I wasn’t surprised to find this bag of cotton. More recently in Pune I found small bags of what I thought were pre-spun cotton that you take home and don’t need to card but just spin. I have used my acrylic dyes to enliven them. When at Andeshe I asked Meenaxi to translate the product information for me and she told me that they are candle wicks used for religious rites! I should have possibly worked it out as they are in lengths that are a bit short as cotton rovings for spinners!

I have used these dyed candle wicks in a variety of projects such as the purple car escape route project and the encased fabric project. Earlier on I tried to use it as a yarn to crochet into Sam’s hot water bottle covers but unsurprisingly it kept breaking as it really is meant for oil lamps. This meant I felt justified in buying more novelty yarn! Whoohooo!!

My selection of sticky tapes is really coming to an end and I have promised myself and you the blog reader – NO MORE. There. I have put it in SHOUTY CAPITALS which as you know you read at half the speed of lower-case writing. When I teach presentation skills, I do this by giving handouts to the students this short poem about one of my favourite characters.

Slinky Malinky

Is blacker than black

A wistful and wily

Adventurous cat

He had bright yellow eyes

And a warbling wail

And a kink at the end of

His very long tail.

The students then have to answer the following comprehension questions!

What colour is Slinky Malinky?

What is Slinky Malinky?

What colour are his eyes?

How is his wail described?

What is at the end of his very long tail?

Half the class has this poem in UPPER-CASE and half in lower-case. It is clear how much faster you not only read lower-case and absorb it as you scan the text and use the fact that some letters are “above” the line as in b d f h k l t, some “below” the line as g j p q y and some have dots too (i and j). 

Point made (emphatically) and rant over!

Hot Water Bottle Covers

This was a commission – well I am not being paid for it but when you are avoiding doing something a commission is a welcome distraction (avoiding knitting a spiral dress which I have kyboshed as a project but continue to feel guilty about it!)

I have made them for my friend and colleague from UCL, Sam. Last summer I stayed in her beautiful house in Tuscany near Lucca with Betsy. We did very little there – a trip to a warehouse to buy second hand clothes in Lucca, a trip to the seaside and another one to a lovely river. Oh, and we danced in the rain. I was nude and Betsy (of course not being such an exhibitionist) wasn’t.

Sam has three hot water bottles and can you believe it? NO COVERS. A great knitting and other crafting project. So, I made all three using materials I had made or bought out here. She gave me the dimensions and I presumed they were metric and not imperial. Phew they were. One is made from this trusty sheet that has come all the way with me from Pushkar (Nov 2019) and has been painted over and over and over again! I could use the sewing machine here and used my dip dyed twine for the ties. The other two are knitted. One has a different front and back because the yarn I got in the market at Panjim, Goa was used in other projects (the Heading west to Pune post on the spiral seed mobile that remains at Olaulim – 11^th Feb 2020). They have been fun and quick and hopefully (for Sam at least) useful projects.            

Spirals all over again!

My last spiral piece was pretty long and complex having met the lovely Lawton family in Olaulim. It is funny but lots of people on my journey here have pointed out spirals to me.

This is a collection of three sets of spirals I have photographed. I did recently mention mosquito coils that I used to inspire and understand how to do spiral paper marquetry (Post Valentine’s…… 18^th Feb 2020).

The second are a spiral I created in my bedroom at the Hotel Sagar in Pune which then turned into a pompom project (see blog Trying so hard…… 20^th Feb 2020). And finally some savoury snacks I have had quite a few times in India.

I wonder how I will manage back at home to let go of this prime/purple/spiral obsession. Maybe I will just carry on and think back fondly to my time here. What a wonderful experience. The kindness of Indians and other travellers has been boundless and I am so grateful. It could have been a very lonely experience coming here at the end of a very long marriage but it has been empowering and I feel hopeful for the next forty years! I have good genes (23andme confirmed this) and all my grandparents died in their 80s and 90s so I plan to do the same.

Thanks to everyone who has helped both here in India and at home. I am eternally grateful. And to my children who all made the arduous journey here having to get visas and no direct flights. I hope I was worth it!

Andeshe in Photographs

I read about Andeshe whilst I was staying near Hampi in their sister place – Uramma Cottages. I knew it was pretty remote and didn’t have any WiFi but I didn’t believe them!

But it was true – no Wifi but as I have this blog and loads of large image files to upload I bought a dongle for my PC. And I went into Pune town each weekend so I could spend Shabbat there, be in a busy city and speak to my kids, my mother and a few others!

But the rest of the week from Sunday to morning to Friday was spent in this wonderfully remote place. Bishnu and Ganga cooked and looked after me as did Meenaxi was the wonderfully sprightly 80-year-old mother of Shama the owner.

I milked the cow on my first morning and helped with cooking and certainly had a big part in choosing what I ate. I could sit upstairs in the huge shaded veranda over looking the mountain or remain downstairs on a very comfy sofa listening to loads of podcasts also looking at the said same mountain.

I felt the tranquillity of the place, being looked after but left to my own devices with no pressure to visit this or do that left it open for me to finish up and also start and complete a large number of projects. I thought I would be lonely here but it was just perfect. I think one of the things l liked best was the best ever stocked linen cupboard with a soft linen kurta for me to wear every evening!

Whilst I was staying Meenaxi took delivery of a machine that is used for preparing brown rice. After it was installed I was part of the Puja ceremony which was attended by staff and neighbours and they set it up to start work.

Another Tassel Mobile

Whilst in the sprawling covered bangle and jewellery market in Camp, Pune I was drawn to yet another series of purple tassels. Really this must END. Like now… but they were cheap and so cheery. I had a message from someone at my college who liked my other tassel mobile so this inspired me and gave credence to this latest purchase.

But the rings of the tassels this time were small and I was stuck in Pune for a few hours before getting to all my tools and supplies. But I had bought a box of wonderful dried fruit squares from near where I was staying as a gift for the people who had invited Meenaxi and me over for lunch. I knew this was a gift they would like as they had had some at Andeshe one evening for dessert! It came with a bag with rather nicely made 12-inch handles. And now that bag has none! Shhhhhh. I shall cut up the bag and wrap the box with the sweets in them and put some flowers on top and no one will be any the wiser. And this rope/paper handle was just perfect for this latest tassel mobile. Whoo hoo.

The flowers in the middle to keep the tassels from moving up and down the rope handle I have used previously as the stamens for my felted flowers. But this time, I went a bit mad a bought several hundred for a cheap price and need to use them up…..

Chakra Entry

The seven chakras have finished but I shall go around them again with who I was in that second round and who I want to be!

Back to the root chakra. This would now correspond to the ages between 49 and 56. Just where I am right now. In fact I am at the end of this. So what has been going on? Gosh lots and lots and lots. I became a professor and I got divorced. My kids all turned the age of majority and all are currently at University. So some is good and other bits could be better. And my oh my. Lots of time to think about that when you are here alone. And all those hours spent making things does mean it can go round and round in your head. But I do like being this age. I know who I am and I hope, going forward, I will be the best version of who I can be.

Back in the wonderful Andeshe after the weekend in Pune with all its buzz and zest for life. Here it is a slower pace apart from my rather short run with Johnny. I think of all the Johnnies I know. None of them is quite as skittish as he is! Probably a good thing…..and for the record. Back very soon

Never let it be said that doctors aren’t competitive. They are and I am. I am on a mission to finish up as many things as possible. It is nearly as bad as an obsession about purple or prime numbers or spirals. To fit everything in as I am running out of time and want this blog to be completed by the time I leave Delhi. To that end, I have posted six projects this time!

Crossword Montages

I found load of white cubes with purple letters on them in a craft shop. Obviously, I had to buy them. But I also had to make some meaningful words with what I had. I started with the Prime/Purple/Spiral I had written up in large letters in my fabric books.

Then I managed to do another one “Carly goes on sabbatical”. By now I was running out of letters but you know it is easy to turn K into R, and also a P into an R. Also, I inverted a V and made and A as well as a T into an I. I used my new variegated yarn (a type of dip dye chenille acrylic yarn from China) to fasten them onto the A4 card using hand stitching. Below this I sewed on some sumptuous brocade on the sewing machine. This is a lovely project to fiddle with as the brocade is splendid, the chenille soft and the letter beads can move around on the horizontal axis!

Two others were my all time favourite animals (dog and cat) and the place where my sabbatical started – Jaipur.

Shell Toy – Alvin the Alligator    

I am not sure why I was being thick. With Alvin I could tick two more things off my list. Making a toy and a shell sculpture. I woke up early and started piling shells collected from the beach at Majorda, Goa when Harry was with me last month. I used my puff glitter glue to hold the structure together including two cowrie shell feet painted with purple nail varnish. But being impatient and clumsy I dropped it on the floor making a big glittery mess.

So I decided I should do it more slowly. Hmmmmmmmm. This really is difficult. What I did was to have some other rather tedious projects that needed finishing up and once I had say sewn for about 15 mins I could add on another shell or two. I found this piece of wood on the farm and built up Alvin over the day – 20.2.20 (cool date!). I made him a necklace and used up all the tall spiral shells in my small collection as part of his headdress. He rests on a small piece of wood so he doesn’t topple over and he sits on a small piece of lace befitting for a rather gorgeous beast!

Balloons

I had found some packets of purple balloons along the way and carried them with me until inspiration struck. In Andeshe there was a natural pool which loads of frogs who would leap about in the evening. I decided to blow up the balloons one morning with help from Meenaxi, Bishun and Ganga. It was a race against time because they would blow about in the pool and hop out the side to get lanced by plants or they would just spontaneously burst in the sun.

I blew up over 50 and had the foresight to quickly video them and jump into the pool to photograph them before they were all gone. The whole sorry exercise from beginning to end was about three hours but it was great fun and I have a wonderful memory of these balloons dancing about the place.

I asked Meenaxi how to spell her name in English. As a school girl, her teacher told her it was much easier with an x than kshi! So, she has a “x” which is rather supercool. Our small and rather scruffy dog we call fuggly (fabulously ugly) is called Graciex where the x at the end is silent. Funny but possibly pretentious?

Even More Random Montage – for real?

These were inspired by using some purple nail vanish I had found somewhere in a shop in India. I used this to first paint the cowrie shells – seven of them! Then I used it to trap some light feathers I found by the pool whilst I was staying at the Sagar Plaza Hotel near the David Ohel Synagogue in Pune.

Whilst staying there I was able to indulge in my love affair with Indian street food. I had a masala dosa (30 rupees) for supper one night and onion uthappam (40 rupees) the other night. Both washed down with a milky sweet coffee for 20 rupees.

I backed the fused blue glass I had carted around with me. I had made this on one of my many fused glass workshops run by Karen Davies in her home in North London (http://www.heartsofglass.co.uk/) that I had dragged various people to accompany me including Betsy, Neeta and Billie (both work colleagues) to. I wanted to do some glass fusing in India but didn’t find out about it! Well I didn’t really try either. Anyway I brought this piece with me and wanted to use it in a project. I painted the back with my purple nail polish to purplise it. Gosh is that a verb? I think this is what I have been doing the whole time here. Purplising everything. It would be purplizing if I was American but I am not!

One other montage used four packets of bindis and another seven Hanuman “gadas” I had brought previously. These gadas are the weapon that Hanuman carries about which is shaped like a giant orb. I was rather pleased I could thread them onto this very furry yarn. I rolled the excess into spirals which reminded me of Rajasthani men who sometimes grew enormous moustaches like this!   

Challah Cover for Ohel David Synagogue, Pune

The purple theme all started off with a challah cover* present for a friend. It isn’t even a year ago. It was Caroline Foley-Comer who, when given a free rein of colour, asked for purple. She is a potter and when I went to stay with her and her family for some of last Passover, she kindly threw some pots for me to paint. We also went walking with her dogs Archie and Chewy. So, we can all blame CFC for this total obsession. Nah. I don’t want to blame her because I have taken the purple obsession as my own! Only I am to blame. She made an initial suggestion. Anyway, last Passover I made four purple challah covers in the end. Once started, I do like to continue. I even spent a great half day at London Loom weaving a purple backing! And a challah cover really lends itself to textile art which in addition has a use and purpose. I have made so many over the years. Sometimes they are in fuchsia pink and others they are more like a challah duvet with quite a bit of stuffing!

I went off to the centre of Pune for my second shabbat and had promised some purple food (beetroot halva) which they enjoyed and to give a talk – clearly about purple. I made the session interactive. Firstly I asked their name, where they were born (Pune, Mumbai/Bombay and Ahmadabad) and their favourite colour – no blacks, browns or pinks but all other colours. What purple foods could they list? I read the poem about the old woman who wears purple by Jenny Josephs (in my first blog post). I did touch briefly on Judaism and purple but there really isn’t much there and my rabbi in London had gone away! I was able to link my roots (Ashkenazi and beetroot) with their roots (Sephardi and halva) – thanks to Haim Ganzer for that nugget!

Back to the challah cover. I used some of the remains of my trusty bedsheet from Pushkar. I have used it for so many projects. I had enough to back it was another piece of cotton sheet. On the front I sewed on 19 dip dyed long candle wick lengths I had erroneously thought were cotton rovings to spin! I had a spare tassel for the front, some pretty lace for the top and I wrote Shabbat Shalom (have a peaceful sabbath) in Hebrew in silver puff glitter paint.

* This cloth is used on Friday night and Saturday during the day time to cover the bread known as challah. 00 03 04 06

Lilac Pair of Odd Montages

 These very much feel like scraping the barrel so to speak. I made them at Uramma Cottages in Anegundi, Hampi as a way of trying to finish up my stash of stuff to make montages. I had run out of white paper so used lilac card I had brought with me from London. I became obsessed about completing the metallic foil chocolate covers I had bought in Swad, a hardware shop in Bhuj mid-December. These are just a random pair. I hear my daughter using the word rando to describe some of my friends. This could be seen as dissing them but for her I think it is endearing. I think she rather likes “randos”.

These two are only a pair as I have designated them as such. There is one with a heart from a necklace from Hanuman’s temple I had bought with the specific intention of chopping it up and releasing the beads for a life not around someone’s neck! This was the central heart motif which I was able to fill with beads. The tape holding the foil is from a tiny mini roll which surprisingly actually sticks and only cost five rupees! The other one is made using a felt needle holder. As I broke so many, I had all these spare holders but kept only this one. I enjoyed decorating the dark brown copper foil and the cowrie shells with black glitter puff paint. Not really much more to say!

7^th Chakra – crown

Take in some cleansing breaths. Taking all the new and all that is good for you. And breathing out all that no longer serves your body.

Breathe in light, breathe out tension, breathe in love, breathe out fear.

This is your crown chakra located at the top of your head. It is represented by white, gold or a clear light. It is the centre for trust, devotion and happiness. It is where we find out deeper connection with our higher self and something greater than who we are. Fill up with light as you feel this deep connection with yourself and all that is around you. You are safe, creative, confident, loving, open, trustworthy and brave. Let this light run through you and all around you.

Let these be your affirmations for today

I am pure love and light

I am at peace

I am connected to all that is

I trust that I am protected

Feel this light all around you. Enjoy your day.

My seventh chakra corresponds to the period from when I was aged 42 to 49. My children were growing up and my career was wonderful and stimulating. It was everything I wanted it to be. I was supported both at home and work to seize numerous opportunities that came my way. I felt that I was really growing as a person and felt fulfilled. Maybe that is where I went on a separate journey from Adrian?

It almost feels insurmountable to finish my projects and get these blogs out! I am going to at least double this week. Slog on Fertles! And therefore, obvs, back soon!

Whilst most of you are getting up today I will be heading off to Pune or Poona for my final (promise really!) set of supplies for my last week here in India. I just need a bit more paper, some mauve fluffy pompom balls, a bit of lace, some leather for a luggage tap and a marbling ink if I can find it. And then I will complete my projects, ship them off next Friday and head to Delhi for my last weekend. Then whooosh home!

Postscript

I have quite a few projects to load up on my blog so there will be at least five per blog and some extra blogs to fit everything in. My plan is once I get on the plane home from Delhi my blog is then history!

Machine Stitched Fabric Montages

I was still carrying round the remains of my trusty “dust” sheet from the Dia Homestay in Pushkar from November. It had lots of colour and some rather interesting mirror patterns. Also, the treadle sewing machine here in Andeshe was a joy to work with. I tore up five different sized pieces of fabric with interesting motifs and I sewed them onto purple paper and then this onto the larger A3 paper.

I became increasingly confident with my sewing skills so the last one I made had a rather intricate spiral sewing pattern. Also, these are completely flat so they should pack easily and travel well! Here’s hoping…..

Pompoms

Another sort of disaster project. I am writing this early evening and my dismay at my pompoms is slightly alleviated by the wonderful frog song I can hear outside!

But back to pompoms. I really do love making pompoms. Foolishly I had bought some new-fangled device in the Purl Soho shop in New York when I had a perfectly serviceable pompom maker at home. It was expensive and doesn’t really work and of all the things I left at home I wish I had brought with my tried and tested pompom maker. Before I came to India, I used up all my blue yarns to make a very long pompom chain for Betsy to have at Uni with 17 pretty large pompoms. It is in the communal part of her flat as decoration for all to enjoy (so she tells me?!)

So, I made some pompoms at the time of my tree bandaging/bombing project early on in Pushkar. I remember specially bringing a very large ball of yellow as this is a good contrast colour for purple as it is opposite on the colour wheel! I don’t even like yellow and all I made was one not-very-round pompom before I dispatched this lonesome yellow ball back home in the first shipment!

So I have made 13 but couldn’t bring myself to make any more. Really, I need to throw away this new set but it was sooooooooooo expensive! And then I happened to discover a bag of 60 mini pompoms (also not overly round!) on my trip to the Samrat Mega Store for the measly sum of 50 rupees. Each pompom cost lest that a rupee each! I strung them up and photographed them and they are off in my final shipment. Phew. Pompoms over and out.

Maroon Bangles with Five Different Craft Inserts

I have posted about the lilac glass and very breakable bangles last time. The ones in this particular project were maroon and smaller and plastic and didn’t break!

I wanted to devise a way using my trusty purple string to demonstrate five different crafts I could do in the middle but where the bangle was integral. The most obvious was the dreamcatcher as they always use a hoop! I could quite easily devise a way using crochet as you hook your yarn, I could just as easily hook around the bangle to start and finish. Next up was macramé which again often uses a pole for the beginning and end. And weaving would need a frame anyway so this was easy!

This left knitting which is my favourite hobby. I worked out a way which was rather clumsy. Ordinarily I would have looked this up online but this was before I had a dongle making it then impossible. Funnily, the knitting one is my least favourite!

I placed in the middle of a large sheet of A3 card and used my favourite stamps in a spiral fashion around them. I photographed them on my delicious pink floor covering which is made from dyed banana fibre and then outside the veranda.

Tassel Mobile   

These are easy and super quick to make. Also, the veranda here at Andeshe is very large and so I can hang this up all the time whilst I am here. It keeps company with my small woven spiral hanging and the purple key-ring mobile made in Hampi. It has since been joined by a spiral paper cut out mobile – to be featured in a later blog!

At the Samrat Mega Craft Store in downtown Pune, I yet again went mad collecting all things purple. I had to buy all the tassels in pairs (the rules!) and wasn’t sure what to do with them. I also had these rather pretty pale lilac cloth flowers that not only would fit in between the tassels as there were six of them and seven tassels (prime!) but also ensure the tassels stayed well-spaced apart. I used one of the lacy tapes from Anegundi to hold up the banana leaf pole.

Water Based Photographs from Hampi

There is no denying it. Everywhere you look around Hampi it is stunningly beautiful with so many huge and magnificent boulders. They were just there every waking moment. Colossal and imposing. I am sure they could tell a story or two!

These are a short series of photographs based around water. One evening I took a coracle ride to see otters but instead saw successful fishermen/people and wonderful birds flying in formation all in the same direction and sometimes with the moon as the backdrop.

Anegundi was connected to Hampi via two river crossings. Each small boat would shuttle backwards and forward charging 20 rupees per person per crossing and 20 for a bike. This could be a pedal bicycle or a rather large motor bike. They could fit at least four motorbikes on at one time. And this boat could not have a deep hull as the river was really shallow. This meant my trip out was in a coracle (round boat) which is what the fishermen used too.

On one return boat trip I spied a spray of water and knew if I circumvented it I could find a rainbow at some point going around it.

6^th Chakra – third eye

Breathing in all the good and exhaling out all the bad. Let go of any expectations you have. Start to relax the body, the mind and just be present.

Breathe in light, breathe out tension, breathe in love, breathe out fear.

This chakra is located is between your eye brows. It is the seat of your intuition – your third eye. It is a place of knowing. When in balance you are able to see all things clearly. You trust yourself and that the universe is guiding you to manifest your best life.

Let these be your affirmations

My mind is clear and focussed

I listen to my intuition

I am connected to my higher self

I trust that the universe is guiding me to my best life

I live in the light of my truth

Take a moment to sit and be still. Be calm today going forward.

During this period from aged 35 to 42, I was very much a mother to three small children. We had cats and Jake the dog. It was hellishly busy but I always wanted a fourth child but try as we might this never happened. This was the end of my days as a registrar. One funny story from then was being crash called to resus at night. As I entered the hospital something made me look down and horror of horrors, I was wearing my bra on the outside of my clothes. A lucky escape! I had completed my doctoral thesis and been appointed a consultant paediatrician with a major commitment to teaching. Wonderful and fulfilling. 

Signing off as I need to prepare for my last craft shopping trip. But first there is running with Johnny the adolescent dog here. We are often accompanied by Jack who is the old timer here (another dog!). Then it is yoga and a swim in the natural pool. Last night I had a good peer at all the frogs who clearly hoof off whilst croaking loudly before I make my morning entrance. I have made some recordings but I cannot seem to upload sound files!

And of course breakfast. I have been making banana/oats/milk/dates smoothie every morning – just like they have in Bear and Wolf! Gosh I miss all that fabulous coffee. Bring it on! I think I will be at Bear and Wolf (https://www.bearandwolfcafe.com/) or Campbell and Syme (https://campbellandsyme.co.uk/) at 0730 on 2nd March and then at 0800 at Cricks Corner (https://www.cricksand.co/) the very same morning. I think I will just spend the day floating around coffee shops before I think about tackling my NHS email. Oh let’s hope my password has expired…..

So there is a little bit of hype here in Pune for Valentine’s Day but really nothing of substance which, to be honest, is a relief. I have run away from the fantastic organic farm about an hour outside Pune to stay in the city for the weekend. Going to the synagogue was a wonderful experience and I said next week I would bring homemade beetroot halva (purple food!) and give a talk about something……

Also I bought a load of food so that I could do my own cooking in Andeshe (https://urammaheritagehomes.com/properties-pune/andeshe-homestay/) in preparation for my return. I also really craved some sourdough bread and pasta. Here are some strawberries I bought too. Look at their size. The smell and taste were just fandabulous.

This blog is a smorgasbord of random projects starting in Pushkar and finishing up with some I have done here. I shall start with a bit of a hotchpotch one!

Obscure Jewellery

As I am coming to the end of my sabbatical there are a number of projects which don’t really fit in anywhere else. This is a small one that I have called “obscure jewellery”. Mostly because I like the word obscure. I have done a number of other entries on “regular jewellery” including cuffs from felt and cowries and rolled brightly coloured felt spiral earring for instance.

This includes two projects. One was a bracelet I bought from Manish at his Traveller’s Boutique coffee shop where he told me I should name a price for this bracelet! I gave him 200 rupees in the end. When I was yarn bombing (well bandaging to be honest!) the vines in the Dia Homestay in Pushkar I would put one piece of yarn onto this bracelet as a memory of each yarn.

The second is a broach made using amethyst chips I had brought with me and used a broach template with black velvet as a base you can see peeping through.

Finally, I photographed this bluey purple necklace I bought at the Anjuna flea market with Betsy way back in Goa, subsequently dropped and broke it. All the beads have been used in multiple projects most of which I have already uploaded on my blog!

Paper Marquetry

I have always liked the cleverness of wooden marquetry. I know my father feels the same and with a life time in the furniture and design business I know he has made a few pieces. However, my temperament is not suited to the painstaking art of wood marquetry with various veneers!

This reminds me of Shadbolt’s. This is a veneer company that we used to pass on the North Circular Road on our way and return to seeing Adrian’s father Norman and step-mother Jean. They always had a veneer of the week. It was such fun as it was changed regularly and often. That building was eventually knocked down but the joy of the internet. Here is a YouTube video of Shadbolt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-bOdWEixdg) and one picture of Quilted Maple!

For those not in the know veneer is like a shaving of wood which varies depending on the tree and other factors. As a child I remember playing with large selections of these on a beaded aluminium chain.

Back to my ideas. I wanted to make something out of the paper I had brought in India. It was handmade from cotton pulp. I wanted to use a spiral design with two contrasting pieces of paper that would slot in together. I then realised that the smoke mosquito coils were made in such a way that you could pop the two apart. I tried my design first with purple paper and tracing paper but it didn’t work.

I studied the mosquito coils more carefully and hey presto I was able to make some quite large paper marquetry designs.

I learnt as I went along so that there was no slippage and the two spirals would fit together. I did a smaller A3 one on paper with random stitches to hold it in place and one free style that I don’t think worked well.

Then I went bigger and made two A2 sized coils. The first on tracing paper which I stitched by hand using a kantha (running) stitch. The second was made using four A3 stiff white paper that I sewed together with a small gap so I could fold them to package them more conveniently. I sewed this one using a very stiff foot singer sewing machine in Anegundi village. It was in Ragu’s house who was my guide for one morning and also had the kitten Rosie. It was a fun project to plan and execute and three out of four satisfactory projects is ok for me!

Weaving

I wasn’t sure how likely it would be to weave in India. I knew that there are lots of home looms large and small but usually they would be mid-way through a project. In the end I had an idea that I wanted to do a small spiral weaving project using the string I had brought and the other string I had dip dyed in several purple related colours for my spiral weft. I used cardboard that came with one of the packets of A4 paper as the loom! I had to use the knife I had bought for 70 rupees that isn’t really strong enough but it did the job in the end. It was a pretty quick project and not one bit like the rest of the photos of weaving.

The following photographs were taken inside weaver’s homes in villages outside Bhuj, Gujarat. The one I spent most time in was Bhujodi, where there were shawl and carpet weavers who make to order and also make up their own designs.

Bandini

Technically bandini is not weaving. It is really teeny weeny tie dye knots but I love this video and so it will have to go with this weaving section.

My most memorable weaving was a pair of braces I made out of red and black on a large handloom whilst I was learning my obstetrics at Newham hospital in the late 1980s. I managed to work out how to put in letters into the weave and they said “Adrian’s Braces” for the left hand one and “by Fertleperson” on the right hand one! I wonder where they are now and anyway no one really wears braces much anymore. From that same loom I wove a strip of black and white checks which I still use to display all my earrings. I even brought it with me here to India and hang it up as I am mostly in a place for four days or more!

Lilac Bangle Montages

I had bought a dozen bangles in Anegundi without any idea of what I would do with them. From this same shop I bought a meter each of five decorative purple textile brocades. The boy working there after school spoke really good English and was super helpful. I brought them with me from Hampi to Pune and decided they could be shown off well in the middle of a bangle.

These ones were made from glass and nearly all of them had a crack so the brocade could ameliorate this by being sewn over the crack which I had also glued. I used the lovely rubber stamps I bought for virtually nothing (as compared to the ones I commissioned in Pushkar which were expensive and didn’t work!) with the rubber stamp ink which stains absolutely everything around the edge. A simple but effective project I feel!

I photographed them on the mini trampoline. This reminds me of the big one we had in our garden in Highgate which was sunk and used a lot by kids and Bryn (tricolour collie) when someone was playing on it. This is a mini one like I used in Hiit Girl in Highgate. This stands for High Intensity Interval Training. I became obsessed with it and went all the time from January to June 2019 until they closed down! On this particular trampoline which is on the large veranda outside my room I do 131 (7 x 19) every day!

5^th Chakra – throat

Let your whole body relax. Take some cleaning breaths. In through the nose and out through the mouth. And start to let go of all expectations, any thoughts you may have and be here, be present in the moment.

Breathe in light, breathe out tension, breathe in love, breathe out fear.

The throat chakra is located at the centre of your neck. It is responsible for our communication and expression. When in balance you will be able to express yourself clearly and honestly. With each outbreath let go of all that does not support your truth.

Let these affirmations be your affirmations.

I communicate with myself and others confidently and with ease

I vocalise my feelings

I have an important voice in this world

I communicate clearly and truthfully

My truth is love

Go forward into this day with love and truth.

This fifth chakra responds to the age from 28 to 35. In Sebastian Faulk’s book “On Green Dolphin Street” the main character Frank alludes to the fact he is still not quite there yet as a person. The book states ‘The city made him feel he could be many people, that in his middle thirties he was nowhere near the finished version of himself, and that even if he ever got there, that too might turn out to be provisional – not a stable compound of temperament and experience, but a bundle of momentary inclinations’

For me this was my period of becoming a fully fledged paediatrician and having lots of fertility treatment and it working for me to have our three wonderful children Harry, Toby and Betsy.

So, a totally (in the end!) great time for me because being a mother was always the pinnacle of what I wanted. It was more important to me than any other role I played, was playing or would play. I next enter this chakra when I am 84. This is cool!

I will be home in less than a fortnight and I need to make sure I have done as much as I can with all the products I have with me. And to stop getting drawn into stationary shops just in case! But I have decided on a final shipment from Pune before I head to Delhi for my flight back so there is some wiggle room for more things to make and ship!

Actually I stayed in Anegundi on the opposite bank to Hampi and made all this stuff there!

I cycled to quite a few temples in Hampi and enjoyed the hippyness of the Hampi Bazaar area. But mostly I came for the stunning scenery and to stay in Uramma Cottages (https://urammaheritagehomes.com/properties-hampi/uramma-cultural-residency/) which came highly recommended. Every morning I ran around Anegundi village and my highlight was seeing Rosie the kitten.

Hampi Foil Vase Montages

Having a Bendick’s mint at the end of a Friday night or Shabbat lunch meal is commonplace for me. They are vegan and so can be eaten following a meaty or dairy meal. And then you make a miniature wine goblet out of the foil and see if it holds liquid. Best to use water as it rarely does!

These foil goblets inspired this project. Also, I still had all these foil squares to use up – the ones that feature in many of my montages and are for bespoke chocolatiers to wrap their products up in. Funny that you aren’t supposed to end a sentence with a preposition but the word wiggly blue line doesn’t come up. Just like you are allowed to use forums as the plural of forum rather than fora and antennas instead of antennae.

I digress. So, I have a series of my five different coloured foils turned into vases each with three flowers in them. There are cowrie shell flowers, string flowers, flower flowers which were originally white and dyed a mauve and a purple and one final one with beads bought in a necklace at the Hanuman Temple.

The short tape on the sides was from a recent stationary shop trip to Panjim in Goa. Super tacky I think!

Montages inspired by the Hanuman Temple at Hampi

Getting up early to cycle to Hanuman’s temple in Hampi was a treat. It wasn’t a hard climb and it was well before the heat of the day. On the way up there were some fabulous photos of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman.

At the top were the various groups of people as mentioned in the purple key-ring blog previously. The monkeys weren’t bothered where people came from or what size of group they were in. They were only interesting in stealing stuff!

By the roadside, I bought stuff for my purple key-ring mobile and three Hanuman charms that feature here in these montages. Before I got to the shop keeper there was a sign up with how much to pay for various Hindu prayer offerings (pooja). Some were exorbitant. I hope they worked!

Hampi Montages Large

I think these are my favourite out all of these montages on this blog. I had some new A3 thick white watercolour paper and I had found a formula of sewing on objects that I enjoyed whilst listening to podcasts. Currently, I am enjoying the ones by Stephen Fry who is witty and clear. A joy to listen to!

The seven plastic flowers are for an aquarium and were actually quite difficult to sew on as they were 3D and wouldn’t really behave all that well! I loved imprisoning the feather/s and sewing in the pretty corsage flowers I had previously dyed purple and mauve. The millipede was fun too! The series should fit my rules. And be a prime number (most of my montage series were of five and sometimes three but never six! But I had six ideas and six pieces of card. And what are rules if not to be broken!

I finished them off with the lovely spiral stamps using stamp ink which stains everything! But does stamp nicely. Here I used spiral trails.

Hampi Montages Small

Can one have favourites? Well obviously not with your children. That just is forbidden! But with montages then for sure. This is my least favourite of the four sets.

Probably because it doesn’t particularly speak to me. Also, I hear my New York friend Bernice Rubin speaking to me. She was the only one of you brave enough to call a spade a spade. Everyone is so polite and encouraging about what I have made here.

Even those of you who have commented upon my openness to where I feel I have failed – like in drawing and painting. But Bernice told me my montages could be improved. Yes she challenged me. Great, because that is what I feel we should all do a lot more. Then we would be genuine and authentic.

Anyway. Back to this my least favourite set. A hotchpotch of random things on bit of foil! And looking at them now Bernice is right. This group really is dreadful but it completes a set and even the runt of the family is part of the family! Also displaying them in a very small size means you can’t really take a good look at them!

4^th Chakra – heart

Release all thoughts and any expectations you might have had. Take some cleansing breaths. Exhale all distracts us from living our true authentic self.

Breathe in light, breathe out tension, breathe in love, breathe out fear.

The heart chakra is located at the centre of your chest. It is where we give and receive love for ourselves and others. Love exists regardless of any situations or circumstances. Your heart is the window to your soul. It is where you give and receive love.

Let these affirmations be your affirmations

My heart is open to give and receive love.

I deserve endless love just as I am.

I love myself unconditionally.

I love others unconditionally.

My heart is open to give and receive love.

This fourth chakra corresponds to the years from 21 to 28. What were you doing then? I was qualifying as a doctor and getting married. All new and exciting. But was I ready for all these challenges? For sure I thought so. Maybe I feel more reserved now about this. I am sure this is because I have just got divorced and thinking about retiring as a doctor in the foreseeable future. And I probably still wasn’t a fully formed adult at that stage. But maybe I just want to rewrite my history. However, for sure, I certainly remember it as an exhilarating time.

I think I have decided to stay in this totally idyllic and wonderful place outside Pune for at least another week, maybe two. It is different in every aspect from my life in London and my planned life in Tel Aviv/Jaffa. It is organic, rural and peaceful. I feel well looked after and with my dongle I can be in email contact with people. I am, however, going off to the big, fast, expanding city of Pune to spend Shabbat!

Not to that Osho place though!

Having had an eight day stint in Hampi and seen what I wanted to see and made what I wanted to make – well apart from my dreadful attempts at rangoli (temporary pavement art with ground up white or coloured rock) – I thought it was time to move on. It feels like staying anywhere between four and eight nights in each place works well for me. After that the food seems quite samey as I am mostly off the beaten track with street food (yum and cheap but not always particularly nutritious) and the food at the homestay/hotel.

So I took another overnight bus. But getting there was pretty hair-raising. We had left with plenty of time in a tuk tuk. Which broke down and had to be swapped. And then joy of joys there was a festival and lots of dancing and people and traffic policemen with whistles not really getting the traffic moving. I arrived a the taxi point with 15 minutes to spare – enough to rush up the street and get six pani puri – wheat hollow puffs filled with a spicy potato and doused in an even spicier sauce. You have to eat each one in a single large gulp or you get the liquid spilling down your top!

This blog has five projects and pretty much completes what I have done in Goa or beforehand. There are some Hampi projects too!

Another spiral seed pod mobile

I had learnt my lesson. Nothing made from nature comes home with me. The last one I made in the Camel Lodge went mouldy and was binned. I made one on a similar vein but left it where I had sourced the seed pods (Olaulim Backyards).

I had gathered a really interesting piece of tree in Dudhsagar which I partly covered with lilac yarn. I have called it yarn bombing but really it is bandaging to be honest! This provided a perfect nest to keep the batteries and switch for the blue set of tiny neon lights that I was going to put on this mobile.

I again used an embroidery hoop, 19 strands of waxed thread each with seven seed pods per strand. To make it easier to pierce with a needle, I soaked the seed pods so they opened out but curled up again once dry.

At the bottom I used some beads held together with a silver wire twist used for sandwich bags. In between each of the 19 strands, I put a double length of a very bright mauve acrylic chenille yarn. This mobile really spoke to me. It had a blue light I had originally wound round a tree in Pushkar but Marie preferred the white one. So, this blue light was finding a new home. I liked the very Indian juxtaposition of the bright rather over-the-top acrylic yarn with the seed pods from nature. I made it at the end of my time at Olaulim Backyards and I am not sure where they hung it up!

Goan Sewn Postcards

There was a supermarket near where Betsy and I were staying in Mandrem, North Goa. We bought a few bits and bobs there and really liked some large postcards. They were modern painted versions of Hindu gods and other Indian icons – cows and tuk tuks. She kept some but I don’t think she ever sent them. They are nice just to pin up on the wall.

I cut most of mine up and sewed them onto nice thick white card. I sat in a comfy sofa looking over the river where we could kayak in Olaulim Backyards taking a break from fighting with the manual sewing machine that I was using to make my three fabric books. I liked the idea of sewing on the cards using some interesting yarns like Tencel from my stash I had stocked up from the Finsbury Park iconic Handweavers Studio. I also enjoy cutting things out and I could edge the five of these montages with tapes going in different directions and not just square as in all the others I had made. I realised that to sew them on effectively I would need to first make a series of pin holes around each image so there weren’t untoward pin pricks coming up from the back missing where they were supposed to go! I have used this technique going forward with a great number of later projects here – see the Hampi Montages Large series in the next blog.

Purple car

One day in Mandrem, Betsy and I decided to rent out a scooter. I let her practice all morning solo and we went off together in the afternoon where I was riding pillion. Besides scooting to lunch, I had a load of flowers to photograph as I had taken a long morning walk alone. I had also found a shop that sold a purple toy car so that was another must.

I have photographed the car and already put many of these on my blog but it is quite a photogenic car and it is now all sewn up and so immobile.

The pathway is a very long uninterrupted spiral which is kept in position by couching stitches. The string was originally beige twine and I dip dyed it before sewing it down here. The car is now forever locked in and cannot feature in any other photographs as an embellishment. But all good things come to an end. All this sewing took ages. Enough time to binge out and enjoy the podcast by Sky News – What happened to Annie? Brilliant.

Purple Key-Ring Mobile

One morning I was up early. Ok let’s be totally honest. Every morning I was up early. Nah. Every morning, always and forever, I am up early. But this time I was up so early I had read my book, done my yoga and still had enough time to leave to go the monkey temple. It was a cycle ride of four kilometres to the base where you start the climb. It was very early and still dark so I attached my torch to the front of my bike. As I was nearing the base, I was completely rained on by insects. It was like cycling through a shield of flying bugs but I was glad as I know that insects have been significantly reduced in number worldwide.

I parked up and started my assent. There were quite a lot of large colourful posters of Hanuman the monkey god on the way up (see next blog for these photos). I was going as fast as I could and was rather disappointed when I reached the step that said 476. I thought I had only done 100 as I knew the total was 576 steps. But joy of joys I only had 100 to go. At the top there were three groups. Loads of Israelis, quite a few Russians and a few odds and sods like me! The monkeys there were very adept at taking biscuits you offered but also stole water bottle, unscrewed them and drank the water. After sunrise I made my way down and was so excited to find a stall selling all sorts of trinkets. In particular I found seven purple key-rings. I have sorted out their hairstyles with some rubber from balloons I have with me (for a future project) and threaded them on some sticks so they look a bit like a hanging mobile for a child’s bedroom. Using a simple stitch, I made a spiral macramé tape to hang this mobile up.

Random Set of Montages

These were made in Olaulim using a variety of central pieces. Part of the joy was having bought thick 400 gm card so that glue doesn’t cause the card to warp. As always, I was beset by very unsticky sticky tape and worrying about whether seed pods would work in the long term and not go mouldy.

I had spare textile pieces from my fabric books.

I think the one I like the most is the skull. This was an iron on badge I had brought from the UK. A few years ago skulls were very trendy and so I bought loads. But Betsy refused to have her school/uni bag decorated any further and so I was left with this lonesome skull. I had carried it around with me for months and so now was the time to seal its fate. As it happens, I found a spare piece of purple felt for a petal that was no longer needed so I gouged out some eyes and put on a piece of mirror for a nose.

There were in total seven in this series but I didn’t get around to photographing all of them together and they are now in Highgate as they went in the end of January Goa shipment.

Aside on shipping stuff home….

Now that was an experience and an expense! In Pushkar they charged 250 rupees per kg. In Ahmadabad 400. But my first quote in Panjim, Goa was 1,600 per kg! Oh my gosh. So, I went to the post office which was much more reasonable. But it needed to be put into boxes and wrapped in a white sheet, the address put on with a marker and sewn up by hand. The man was pretty elderly and watching him threading the needle was like extracting teeth but we got there in the end and so far one has arrived! These two boxes with a total weight of 16 kg cost 8,000 rupees so not so cheap!

3^rd Chakra – solar plexus

3^rd Chakra – the solar plexus chakra – yellow

Take a few cleansing breaths. Taking in all the good and all the new and exhaling all that does not serve your highest good. Breathe into areas that feel tight and release that tension with every exhale. Find complete relaxation in your mind and body.

Breathe in light, breathe out tension, breathe in love, breathe out fear.

The 3^rd chakra is located in the solar plexus just above the navel. It is the seat of our ego and where we draw seeds motivation for our dreams and desires. When in balance we are able to appreciate people and all things around us.

Let these affirmations be your affirmations.

I am a powerful person.

I am in control of my life.

I am happy and peaceful.

I choose not to let fear hold me back.

And remember as you go on with your day, in all situations choose love over fear.

The chakra corresponds to the third seven years from 14 to 21 when you really are being released into the big wide world. You often think of yourself as being an adult but this isn’t really the case and there is still another four to five years until you will be your adult self but society releases you out there whether you like it or not. I do wonder if I was fully formed then? I certainly thought I was but I am now having second opinions about this when I look back on this time. Certainly, peer relationships were of utmost importance. But they are still now at 54!

So this is it for my first Pune post. There is no wifi (really none at all!) where I am staying so I have had to hop into town in search of a dongle. No mean feat when I am really staying 25 km from the town with the worst roads imaginable! But success…..

They steal food from your hand at breakfast and take water bottles and open them. Amazing!

I am staying outside Hampi in a small rural village called Anegundi. I wander around singing the song about their hometown in Fiddler on the Roof – Anatevka (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWiRetxeviw). They are both poor but the kids are happy. Muslims and Hindus live side by side and join in each others celebrations but don’t tend to intermarry. The children are outside playing all day with no shoes. I was told this was cultural rather than because of poverty – they wear them in the morning for school. However it is much hotter here than Anatevka. They are both small agricultural villages with the same number of syllables and start with Ana….. Anyway I keep singing the Anatevka song as I wander around here!

Fabric Books

Knowing I was sending home a shipment from Goa meant I really had to put together my fabric books. These are like a personal journey of what I have been doing in India and also there are some items that I had brought with me specifically to put inside them. I wanted to make three and prepared the paper from wallpaper, crepe paper and tissue paper in Pushkar.

All were stiffened with glue and tracing paper. They would be 10 pages long and all the paper had to be protected by thin organza. And backed with fabric too. However, I couldn’t find organza and so bought a thin stole with gold embroidered circles I was going to cut up for this purpose. It was too white for me so I dyed it off white with tea.

I persuaded Pirkko from Olaulim Backyards to source a sewing machine for me as I was going to stay there for over a week. However, her machine she had lent out was returned without the presser foot. So, a friend of her lent her one for me. It was an old hand operated Singer. By the end my right-hand biceps muscle was pretty sore but I did have three finished fabric books.

I had learnt how to make fabric books on a week’s holiday in Limoges at Fran and Phil’s wonderful Crafty Retreats (https://www.craftyretreats.com/) with a marvellous tutor Anne Kelly (http://www.annekellytextiles.com/).

I placed all manner of things pertinent to my time on my sabbatical. I cut up cards people had given me to wish me luck, some old music, lots of bits of vintage textiles, fabric from Anokhi and lace from Slanchogled that I had previously dyed in Pushkar.

I used ribbons I had brought with and flowers I had bought to decorate items here. I had also (ridiculously) bought a whole load of wall paper of 16 different dogs from our downstairs toilet in our family house in Highgate which we sold at the end of October 2019. In Pushkar I coloured them all in with a variety of purple pens and each dog had a small “collar” sewn on. I also put in some felt I had previously used to make some jewellery in the Camel lodge and quite a few business cards I had picked up in India along the way. There were also some things I had picked up in the streets (and washed) like old fabric scraps (lilac) in Pushkar and some spotty paper purple tape in Devpur.

For the back I used the sheet I was given in the Dia Homestay so I could paint there without making all their floors and tables purple.

Some parts of the backing fabric needed extra embellishment and I used acrylic paints and some puff paint as well as sprays of small plastic and paper flowers I had picked up in local stationary shops. I also used the stencil I had used on paper and fabric in Mandrem, Goa. One book had a very long thin leather tie and other two used the gold embroidery fabric left over from the stole from Ahmadabad.

These will be lovely memories not least because of the hard work to get the machine to work!  

More montages

There are going to be several inserts like this. Finding 400 gm lovely white A4 water colour paper really has been a blessing here. It means you can glue things on it without it warping at all. Because the tape is often so unsticky it needs to be stuck down additionally! More importantly I do them when avoiding starting other projects.

This set was made at Vivenda dos Palhaços in Majorda, South Goa. This series is a bit of a hotpotch of bits and bobs. Using some stuff up and trying techniques like inserting niqab pins (dark pinky purple!) into a felt shape without pricking myself.

There is a bit of a heart theme with the felt heart I had brought out from the UK, a heart necklace I had bought with Betsy in Anjuna flea market and accidentally dropped and broken! This meant I could use the centre piece here but also I could utilise the black beads in other projects. They feature in my latest spiral mobile (see future blog) and of course more montages. The shell one photographed in the group shot has switched category and appears below!

Shells

These were made from shells collected when Harry came to join me in Goa. He would sit on the sunbed reading his book and I would wander off to collect shells on beaches around Majorda in South Goa. Some I painted with a dilute purple paint. Others I put lashings of thick acrylic paint. I picked shells with spirals or some that were still joined in the middle. They reminded me of butterflies. There were long thin white ones which were the remnants of the central part of the long spiral shells and they looked like hollow teeth.

I made them in Dudhsagar Plantation (http://www.dudhsagarplantation.com/) because I was avoiding doing my felting which I had set myself to do! Once all the shells were used up, I had no option but to do the felting!  

I photographed them in the early evening in this lovely and remote and pretty basic place. But I met some really interesting people here and felt a bit of a spice plantation expert as I had done two already in Goa with Betsy (Tropical Spice Plantation – http://www.tropicalspiceplantation.com/) and with Harry (Savoi Plantation – http://savoiplantations.com/) and Ashok showed us around his plantation. Here I saw pineapples for the first time (see blog on words with three Ps from 21^st January 2020).

Felting

I have been felting for many years. I always explain it to people that riders would originally put fleece between them and the camel under the saddle, ride across the desert and by the end of the journey the pressure and heat (as well as a bit of sweat I suspect) would have turned the fleece into felt.

For a long time, I did wet hand felting and even did a short course with Tania in Ireland but it is wet and hard work. Often, I start it off by hand and then resort to the washing machine. This means the job gets done and the felt is nice and thick but you don’t really have much control over it. I made a lovely grey felt hat with a white hatch work pattern and black edges I wore for ages.

More recently I have been on a needle felting course in Dunstable with Nic Cremona (an excellent tutor) where I made a dog which was dogish-like but not something I think is great! But I will return to further workshops (https://www.theworkhousedunstable.co.uk/) It does take time. I can be slow when I am knitting and crocheting but most other things, I like to be fast! Needle felting is very repetitive and you do get three dimensional results. And, as Sarah pointed out (see below) it is good for getting out any aggression! It is a bit like sculpture with wool using a hammering technique. I am just not sure that I am good at it? A bit like my painting!

So, I brought quite a bit of kit out. Felting needles and reverse felting needles – you do this at the end to make it look a bit scruffier but my work is scruffy enough without this extra level! I also bought pipe cleaners, a block to work on and quite a large amount of a lilac and purple merino fleece from the Handweavers Studio. I sent the block back a while earlier as I had a yoga mat which would serve the purpose.

Whilst in Dudhsagar I met Sarah who was volunteering and she was a felter. I felt inspired and off I went. I did have visions of making something pertinent to my theme. This large opening which was like a huge mouth and spiralled (solidly) down as a long hollow tube with kinks and turns. I just couldn’t work out how to do it so settled on making five flowers of three petals with stamens. I also made the stalks made from fleece covered pipe cleaners. I made five smaller flowers of lilac and five slightly larger ones of purple. Making flowers ensured the 10 vases I had bought and painted would be of use. I had bought them to satisfy a market spending need (all 10 came to 280 rupees) but I am not sure they will end up in pieces?

Also, I could utilise the excess fleece for packaging my montages so it all left India via my Goan shipment at the end of January 2020. A big phew! And a few needles – well two as I had broken five with my exuberant felting!

The Sacral Chakra (2nd)

Take a few cleansing breaths. Deep inhales and exhales. Notice any areas of tension and breathe into these areas and let this tension go.

Breathe in light, breathe out tension, breathe in love, breathe out fear.

The sacral chakra is our second primary energy centre. It is the centre for creativity, relationships, emotional body and pleasure. It is orange colour and it is 5 cm below the navel.

We need to let go of guilt that we have in our relationships, in our creativity, in our sexuality and in our emotions. Imagine releasing all guilt making room for joy and pleasure.

These are sacral affirmations.

I deserve pleasure in my life

I reawaken my passion

I release all guilt

I surrender to this moment

This chakra corresponds to the second seven years from aged seven to 14 when you are forming relationships and the world is becoming a much bigger place. You move from your close-knit family and community to having peers who become increasingly important. I will enter this when I am 56 in just over a year. Please take joy and peace forward into your day!

I shall be heading on from the wonderful temples, boulders and fields of wet padi this weekend. I have enjoyed the slow way of life here. The children who play outside after school asking me for “one school pen”, the women washing clothes outside every morning as few have plumbed inside water sources let alone washing machines and the men wearing dhotis for the most part (but over long shorts!).

I decided that a combination of lots of old and often semi-ruined temples combined with boulders that looked like they had been sent down from some outer galaxy would be good start for my last month in India. I wanted to do some rangoli. These are temporary pavement decorations often in white but in colour for festivals usually found outside peoples houses. They use ground up rock and my guide Regu gave me some of his stash and I bought some purple powder paint to alter the colour for two rupees. More of that in a later blog.

Being in India with my time now coming to the end, I have decided put in a small entry about chakras. Today I have decided to blitz out on the seven short meditations I have downloaded from my Yoga Studio App. It also ties in with some of what I learnt at Kitty Masala Yoga in Mandrem, Goa early January 2020. This will be the penultimate entry before my general blurby sign off.

This blog will be a totally photographic one. Of course all the images in this blog are photographs (occasional videos) but this particular initial February one will be only of photographs where I have been either inspired by nature or have photographed things in my theme or items I have arranged. I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Early mornings in Goa

For those who know me I am up with the larks. This has continued throughout my time in India. And for some reason early mornings in Goa seem to have been especially lovely. I have also fiddled around with my camera making it deliberately out of focus to enjoy the special light at the that time. In Olaulim Backyards (www.olaulimgoa.com) I really loved seeing the mist on the water which continued on from blue hour, golden hour and through sunrise. It was frankly magical.

The other photos were taken at Dudhsagar Plantation which was very densely planted and one from the time I spent in Mandrem fiddling around outside the room so as not to wake up my teenage daughter! In fact, I still fitted in a 90-minute yoga session at 0800 at Kitty Masala and returned to find Betsy just about waking up!

Fabrics

I have always been passionate about fabrics. As a teenager I used to make most of my clothes and on my gap year I had (what I thought then!) was a fantastic idea. I would buy a roll of 20 meters of material and design a whole load of separates that could be worn individually or as layers. It was white fabric with a slight slub and each piece had an individual decorated small piece of embroidery or bead work. I still have a few pieces – two tops (one with smocking and the other with bead work). I never went commercial with my idea and I am not sure it would have come to much.

Anyway, my main reason for going to Gujarat was to chase textiles and I wasn’t disappointed. Best as an all-round introduction to the textiles of Kutch was the Living and Learning Design Centre (http://shrujanlldc.org/) outside Bhuj. This not only had loads of different sorts of textile and embroideries but personal stories of those who made them and a hands-on guide with textiles in various stages of embroidery so you could see how it was made.

All these textiles are from a vintage shop in Bhuj. They are all small samples which I went on to utilise in different ways. They are taken in the early morning light on the roof in Bhuj House.

Purple Goan Flowers

I went a bit mad photographing flowers in Goa. Clearly some of the purple ones I saw I had seen in Rajasthan and Gujarat but many were new. Also, I saw quite a few poking up through bits of sidewalks or roaming around the five different properties I stayed at whilst I was out walking or running. Being in each place for the minimum of four days meant I really had plenty of time to seek them out. Like last time I posted purple flowers, I have not tried to name them. I know there are apps but preparing this blog and watching Money Heist in Spanish on Netflix means I spend enough time on screens as it is. To be honest I have really whittled down my collection of purple flowers here! But I have done this in terms of novelty, if I like how the picture looks and if it is a novel flower for me. Enjoy!

Purple flowers with Laku the dog

Being so obsessed with purple I collected a number of fallen purple petals from some lovely flowers in the Olaulim garden. I had already bought five small vases from the market in Mapusa for 150 rupees. I had washed them with a very dilute paint so that the pruple in the spiral ridges would show more. I was going to use them for my felted flowers (see later blog) but thought they would be good for this short project. I also collected a few similar yellow flowers as a contrast (yellow is opposite on the colour wheel from purple so they enhance the colour of each other). Laku decided to sleep on my veranda that morning in Olaulim so he is in most of the photos. It was quite tricky to get him to lie down when I placed flowers on his back (so there aren’t any of them!) but he did tolerate the coconut pot near to him with flowers in it.

The Root Chakra

You have to imagine this as a meditation practice

This represents the divine within us and all around us. We are one. So you begin by breathing all the good and all the new and on your exhale release all that no longer serves you.

Breath in light, breath out tension, breath in love, breath out fear.

The root chakra is right at the base of your spine. The colour is red. You are safe, stable, grounded and secure. This earth element represents security and stability. This is your foundation and connection to the physical earth beneath you. To grow to your full potential you need a solid foundation. You can say the following to acknowledge this.

I am grounded and connected to the earth and all living things.

I am balanced, stable and secure.

I am rooted in my truth.

The chakras can be connected to periods of our lives. The root chakra represents the first seven years from our birth. This means that during that time we are provided with security that will last us a lifetime. As there are seven chakras once you get to 49 years old you start all over again. So I, at 54, am back in this root chakra for another 15 months.

Well done for wading through far too many photographs but really any flower that didn’t make an appearance would be so sad! I am now settling into life with the temples and boulders but haven’t made the crossing as yet to Hampi. There is always some excuse to do a ride in a coracle, cycle about the wet padi gleaming in the sun or walking round this village with lots of women weaving, knitting and crocheting with banana trunk fibre.

I felt very mixed about Goa when I arrived. I was seeking warmth and it certainly has this. But it felt very different from the rest of India. More finished off and it was much more expensive. I have spent more than double here in one month than I did in Rajasthan. But having two kids and flights at peak times does really set the cat amongst the pigeons financially!

But the Goa pace really grows on you and I realised that I really like staying in places for between four and nine days where the owners are on site and there are about five rooms. This means you often eat with other guests but have freedom during the day to do your own thing. I shall be sad to be leaving.

Logo ideas

One thing I wanted to do was design a logo to fit with my theme – not the now morphed purple, spiral and prime one but the original one – How Time Goes Faster as You Get Older. It was going to be in purple or its shades, and it would heavily feature spirals and if I was going to do a series of them in a particular medium then it would be a prime number! I did five or seven in fact.

I started off on the beach in Mandrem, north Goa. This was an easy place to do this as were staying virtually on the beach and our particular part had no deck chairs or cafes on the sand. So, this meant there was ample space for me to do some sand drawings or rather swirly spiral shapes using my fingers in the wet sand once the tide went out. Some people did come up and ask me what I was doing but mostly this was in Russian and so I just had to shrug and say I didn’t speak Russian.

I then did further logo ideas using water colours, acrylic paints and drawing them on the computer. I photographed them around the very pretty place I was staying in Majorda, South Goa at Vivenda dos Palhaços (www.vivendagoa.com).

So, the bottom line. I had fun making up these logo ideas and no I don’t have a preferred one that I could decide is my logo favourite. So, my logo ideas will remain as that. Ever changing.

They have to be free flowing, fluid, purple and spirally often with dots. Because if you can’t draw (and really, I can’t and cannot be bothered to learn) then dots and swirly shapes are easy. Even for me.

Post soap shavings project

I wasn’t sure what to do with the soap that I had shaved and used in the spiral soap shaving project (see earlier blog on 7th Jan). I squished a load of the spirals together and thought I could make some montages using some glitter netting I had bought in Margao. I had bought some new stick on jewels and I still had a lot of my original washi tapes to use up. It is a fun project but it needed special packing with fleece to protect it to return to London.

Spirals

It was quite early on that I realised my understanding of the my them about How Time Goes Faster as you Get Older would embrace spirals as central.

Of course, as it is one thing I can doodle and so being able to draw spirals would be an added bonus. Actually, a necessity when you are as rubbish at drawing as I am! This particular project was started by Amy Russell who is working with Casa Susegad to increase their social media footfall.

She went around taking photos of spirals for me. Oh, and Rory the kitten she has been charged to care for!

Once you start you can go a bid mad seeing spirals everywhere. Especially in Goa where many people have wrought iron gates often with spiral designs.

And spirals abound in nature too.

I decided that as frangipani is my most favoured flower scent here, I could do another project with them if I made them into a spiral and swung them about on a swing. I did also twist up the swing but that video really is too much. Just them swinging backwards and forwards is enough!

And then I met Robb Lawton whilst staying at Olaulim Backyards (and he got the whole spiral thing so I have three links connected to him and his sons). Robb was an engineer but is now retired and a keen cyclist and pianist. Here he is playing https://soundcloud.com/user-489434128/the-windmills-of-your-mind the Windmills of Your Mind – yup pretty spiral I think? Well enough to fit in the theme! One son (Tom) is an inventor and I love his solar powered spiral made from plastic waste dredged from the sea (https://www.tomlawton.com/) and the other (Will) is a musician and composer (https://www.willlawtonmusic.co.uk/). I was drawn to his piece the Golden Ratio. This is found everywhere in nature and here is the simplest explanation I could find. The Golden Ratio (also known as the Golden Section, Golden Mean, Divine Proportion or Greek letter Phi – φ (uppercase) ϕ (lowercase)) exists when a line is divided into two parts and the longer part (a) divided by the smaller part (b) is equal to the sum of (a) + (b) divided by (a), which both equal 1.618. Reading it back through maybe I don’t really understand it! And even if the golden ratio isn’t really a spiral the lower case letter phi ϕ is certainly spiralish! So the Lawton men are very creative but I loved the Lawton women I met (Lynne – Robb’s wife and Katie his daughter who runs Bhuj house where I stayed whilst in Gujarat).

Water and Rainbows

One morning after my run along the nature trail I was having my breakfast when I noticed some the nearby foliage was being watered. It was a lovely sound but when I went closer there were rainbows to be seen and photographed. And as we all know. One of the colours is purple!

I loved the way the camera catches the water and the dashed linear lines of the rainbow.

Next time I will be in the final month of my sabbatical. I will start in Hampi in the Indian state of Karnataka. This has loads of temples and boulders which look like they have come from outer space.

I am staying in Olaulim Backyards with the following….

Savio and Pirkko who own this wonderfully serene place. Then there are their teenage children who often help out (impressive for teenagers!), other guests and ……

a donkey, a goat, a pony, three cats, four dogs. This morning I saw frogs jumping around and I am told there are fish eating crocodiles in the river but they are shy and haven’t been spotted recently. Mantra, the donkey, has a distinctive bray which people often record for their phone ring. Currently I have dogs barking on my phone to distinguish it from the other iPhone rings at work! I think I would quite like a woodpecker actually. The donkey eeey-ooohr would scare people when my phone rang.

Painting and Drawing

I used pens, charcoal, pencils, felt tips, crayons and oil pastels. I tried to copy the designs that I had made from the Spirograph I made originally. I did them all super quickly. Often holding more than one pen in my hand at a time.

Overall, I was very disappointed with these drawings. It brought home to me loud and clear that I cannot draw. It felt I had done too many and that I was careless and not really describing what I want. I think it is bound up in doing things as quickly as possible when I don’t feel confident in them. So, my knitting and crochet are really good and are slow. Anything I have ever made in knitting with big needles and thick wool which takes only a short amount of time, I don’t really like. So, it is really no surprise that I feel I am not good at something, rush it and then get disillusioned.

I even had a try at electronic drawing on my Microsoft pro laptop and was more pleased with this than my drawings on A3. I think I had even chosen such large pieces of paper to do a huge drawing as quickly as possible. Drawing sabotage.

In Boroda (Vadodara) after I had done my washi tape circles, I felt confident to try and tackle the paintbrush again! I did a practice with five different brushes that I bought for applying makeup – I only wear lipstick and eyeliner and because I cry so readily rarely mascara. I drew first round some circular shapes. I used the foam pad (to apply eye shadow) and this worked well. There were small gaps and I used all the different purples I could muster up. I used the djecko felt tip pens which you could blur with water and also worked well but only on this small practice one. I wonder if they have just run out! I also tried with the permanent markers and surprise they didn’t water down or bleed out at all! Silly me. Then I used the applicator most similar to a paintbrush with one colour which I watered down until I reached the edge and this was one of my favourite techniques. Finally, I used the rouge brush but it should really only be applying rouge – rubbish as a paint applicator!

In the end I only did two final pieces – the one with the foam eyeshadow pad and the paint brush with increasingly diluted colour as you reached the edge of the paper.

Feeling slightly more confident and mindful I really cannot continue carrying around the large fixative spray, I did some similar charcoal drawings. Firstly, on lilac paper as my white is running out. I chose which pencil (of the rather inferior ones from Tiger!) worked best and did two finished pieces I think are passable.  

My final pieces were made at the beginning of my time in Goa using a stencil that I had bought in Ahmadabad. I know. Not really drawing or paining but rather filling in!

As it was so hot in our room I moved to a yoga tent and Betsy came with to paint (on paper and herself!). The only problem was when she used acrylic paint on herself which was difficult to remove and I needed her to model in my Tatouage project (see blog 14th January 2020 Getting into Goa).

They aren’t really painting or drawing but I think I have come to terms with my inability to paint or draw. There are some further ideas for a logo which I will post in a later blog. To be honest, I just don’t have the patience!

Scooting about the Place

I knew that we would rent a scooter when Harry came out as he has done this before, is proficient and has had riders on the back. Also, we were staying pretty off the beaten track so getting a scooter was a given. However, Betsy was keen we rent one too. We did it for a day because that was enough stress for both of us and to be honest, we were in the thick of it and didn’t really need one. But I did travel on the back of it to take photos of purple Goan flowers! And we went off to a shop that sold bindis so I could make some more art projects with them. We also went to lunch at Kitty Masala where we had some smoothie bowls.

When Harry came out, we bit the bullet and hired it for six days.

I tried it tentatively once and then Harry suggested we go for a longer trip and he was very encouraging and we made it! Phew. Having a scooter meant when Harry came, we had a lovely time visiting way off grid places and having fun.

Coins

I had decided that the next project to be completed was felting. I had carried along the fleece, felting needles, pipe cleaners for far too long and I was over half way through January and the time had come. But I had forgotten how to felt – well actually I hadn’t but I really wanted to carry on my montages using my method of foil centre and tapes around the edge.

I had a collection of five different Indian coins and so they sung to me more – use me, use me rather than the felt! The coins weren’t purple.

Had never been but they would make a nice centre piece on the chocolate foil pieces I was using. I have made so many of these montages but the foil just isn’t running out! The tapes have and I am now a regular at any shop that says paper or stationary or gift on the outside to buy yet more rather unsticky tape! I managed to make the coin project last a whole day along with reading, yoga and swimming in the nature pool whilst listening and saying hello to the frogs rather than start on the felt. Worse still in my head was, by complete co-incidence, another felter staying there for me to check on techniques. Even worse for my procrastination self. Yes not a usual state but the felt was really getting to me!

Obsessions with Goan Purple

Arriving in Goa with all the colour was magical. North Goa had some purple – flowers and lots of clothes for sale to tourists in my sabbatical colour! But moving to Casa Susegad was like a dream come true. The whole place was painted various of my long list of purples. I shall spare you and not repeat the list now. But some of the words like heliotrope are lovely!

I enjoyed taking photos of the staff who wore a bluey purple uniform. It was unusual as nearly all the staff were women – most places seemed to have employees who were all men. I noticed how the owners (Carole and Norman) had very personable relationships for their staff having known them for many years. They told me best to take the photograph of them at 4pm when they all sat down and had chai!

Other photographs were taken at the time of day when the light can be said to be purple or anything that caught my attention. Nothing too serious. Just an mild obsession!

Over and out this Tuesday morning at the end of January 2020. I am busy with my sewing and felting (I did get on with it in the end!) as well as some more sticking (of course) for my next shipment later this week.