When not visiting camels I did this!

I stayed for a week at the Chamel Charishma Lodge https://www.camelcharisma.com/camel-experiences/. It is committed to supporting the welfare of camels as they are dwindling in numbers. They support local herders by buying the camel milk from them at a much higher rate than the government prices (three times). They only milk them once daily and they have their calves with them for a year.

I was the only guest there which meant I was looked after on an individual level but also escaped all trappings of making polite conversations with other tourists. There was limited WiFi by the main office and every morning I woke to the sounds of deer, cows, dogs and lots of monkeys. Early morning yoga on the roof with the sun rising was sublime. I only do this for 10 minutes because as you know I don’t like to get too bogged down with commitment – well other than knitting which I can do for hours!

Santa also hennaed both my hands and feet.

And she made a purple dessert for the first time – beetroot halva and I made borscht for all of us. And there was pomegranate juice too!

Now on with my stuff…..

Jungle Jelabi Mobile

A group of six of us went out for lunch towards the end of my stay in Pushkar. When we were leaving the hotel we had been to for lunch, Leo pointed out the seeds of the Pithecellobium Dulce known locally as Jungle Jelabi seeds because he knew I was on a spiral quest.

I collected about a dozen but returned the next morning to collect enough for me to have 19 strands each with 7 spiral seed pods. I bought another dream catcher hoop and painted it dark pink with the pen ink. That was a waste of time as I covered the whole of it with the special tape, I had bought out recommended to me by Renee from our knitting holiday in January to help keep our place with knitting patterns. It is called Washi Tape.

I made 9 strands with 14 seed pods attached via a slip knot. There was a longer gap in the middle to hang over the hoop. I fixed each end with 4 small silver bells and a crimp. I then made a final single one of 7 seeds and bells and used the other end to make the mobile hang up from 4 sections (12 o’clock, 3 o’clock etc).

I locked all the strings in place with the Washi Tape and used it to separate them out roughly evenly and hey presto a 19-string jungle jelabi mobile.

I photographed it all over the camel conservation place and took videos too.

Plasticine

I was going to give the two packets I bought here away as I just didn’t know what to do with it. It only cost 75 rupees for each packet (80p). But I decided in the end to take the purple out of the packet and mix up turquoise, red and a light flesh colour which made a murky aubergine colour.

I then rolled them into sausage shapes and twisted them round this way and that. I fixed the breaks where I had got carried away and over twisted it.

I then slowly twisted the two colours round each other. Firstly, it looked like a pair of chromosomes coming together to replicate.

I then repeatedly twisted them round each other and then then I squished them together and turned them into a new, fatter murky purply aubergine spiral.

This could stand up. I then squished the whole caboodle onto 220 gm white paper. First, I used a glass as a rolling pin, then my right palm and finally my right middle finger to make a gerbera type flower with 23 petals.

Of course, prime rules. I have placed this ‘creation’ on a piece of heavy white paper and will bring it home.

Small purple beach balls

This has been more of a photography project but I really enjoyed both the spontaneity of buying them, blowing them up listening to BBC History of 100 object podcasts in the sun as I couldn’t crochet because of my extremely swollen finger (a combination of a bee sting that I had madly scratched – so self-inflicted really).

I enjoyed photographing them with the people working here, in the sun, in water to see the reflections. I bought two flower ones and five stripy ones to continue the prime number theme.

One evening we played a bit of volleyball without any rules or a net!

Then Gelabi who is a cook and cleaner brought her one-year old grandson and he totally loved the balls.

He kicked them about and threw them down. It was wonderful to watch his wonder and I gave them and all my spare colouring stuff to him on my departure.

Feathers

Feathers

I decided to write a poem about feathers. A while back I wrote a poem about an impenetrable gun metal emotional box of all my vulnerabilities and imperfections.

I wanted this gunmetal box to metamorphose into feathers. As usual with my poetry, I did a mind map to get the creative juices going. It was easy even for me to draw a feather! One section of my feather poetry mind map was human uses of feathers. I had picked up a number from the five chickens here and interesting it was possible to make or illustrate all of them. The poem will be released in the poetry section later on – well I need to write it first!

I didn’t have enough for a feather pillow but I did photograph the small fluffy ones.

I knew that there aren’t feather pillows here in India and brought two with me but this (again) was over the top so I sent one back. I prepared some purple and black modelling clay and inserted all the large plain feathers as a headdress which I will leave behind.

I displayed the prettier feathers with lace and ribbon to represent feather fashion accessories.

I finally made a very elegant feather duster which I have left here as an embellishment in a camel leather vase and will probably never be used for its intended purpose!

I think this will have to do for this blog although I did quite a bit more in Rajpura but there are already 30 photos, two videos and one rather heavy poem so I will spare you more!