Yellow

Tuesday is for all things YELLOW.

When I tried to think of the yellow things in the house I could only think of this cruet set my sister gave me.

Quite amazing how much you actually see because when I began looking there was plenty of yellow in the house.

Banganapalli mangoes.With the onset of summer the mangos have begun to appear. Alphonsos, Imampasand, Neelam, umpteen varieties of mangoes varying in colour, flavour, texture but all so yummy.

Turmeric or Haldi which is yellow adds colour and flavour to the potato masala. Food that's yellow is more appetising visually. ( Did that make any sense?) Apparently that's why we don't have food that's blue in colour, usually.

My collection of National Geographic magazines. Nestled amongst the books I found this happy chap - also yellow.

Thanks Leya for having Colour Week I'm being more observant of my surroundings and the things around me.

Colour Week - If its Monday it must be Green

Leya of Curious Bird is hosting Colour Week.

Its very simple - all you need to do is photograph things around you of the particular colour for the day of the week and post them on your blog. You would have to leave acomment on Leya's blog so she can do a roundup.Read more about it here.

The colours for the week are as follows

Monday - Green

Tuesday - Yellow

Wed - Orange

Thursday - Pink/Red

Friday - Blue

I'm photographing things around the house, so here's Green for Monday.

I've discovered I have a lot of green things in the house. R eats his museli every morning from this green bowl, the green plate is some of the first pieces of crockery I bought in Ahmedabad after we got married, I have three left.The bowl and plate are resting on my kitchen counter which is a black and green granite. Tea we love and the honey lemon green tea is delicious.

As an apartment dweller with no balcony I have plants on my window sill, so its a tiny garden. This is my bowl of water cabbages and the pretty white veined leaves of another plant I don't know the name of, anyone out there who does?

April TIF is now complete

I've completed my TIF piece for April. Here's a detail of the tree which symbolises an urgent need to change in order to avert a global climate crisis.

I hope Blogger will oblige and permit you to view an enlarged version of the image belowwhen you click on it. Some of the text is not clearly visible. In orange is http://www.climatecrisis.net/ and below that in brown is Earth Day- April 22.

Here are both the pages of the April TIF.

I'm happy to report that all the tussar silk, sequins, beads and embroidery thread came from my stash of craft things The base fabric for the piece itself is a laundry bag from a hotel, I've been recycling these laundry bags and using them as the base for all my TIF pieces. That's an attempt to walk the talk - reduce, reuse and recycle.

Progress on the April TIF

The tree which is in full bloom symbolizes change.We need to make changes and more educated choices to reverse global warming and the climate crisis.

Have to start work on the page on the left which will have more text. The tree made of tussar silk applique and sequins. All these are from my stash. I haven't had to go out and buy a thing thus far.
Detail of the foliage and flowers on the tree.The colours are loosely based on the palette for this month.

I think I'll have the pages for April completed by the end of the month.

Reunion to Remember

Boarding school and a decade of it together had brought us back together again,after a year of e-mailing, planning, scheduling, rescheduling and then going back to the original schedule - April 12th & 13th, just the girls, no spice or children.

Time to bare our souls, bitch and let it all hang out, we had an absolute blast remembering and reminiscing. Tea and cream horns started us off.Isn't it amazing what strong memories food can evoke? (Thanks COW for the supply of cream horns) Cream horns and elephant ears were for tea on Saturday or Sunday at school.Yum!
SOUP: The food was terrible
Chorus of voices : Noooooo! / It was fantastic / Just never enough./Remember eating K's coconut oil ? /Wasn't the jaggery tart fantastic! Does anybody make jaggery tart?/ What about the spinach on toast , what went into it?

Catching up on 20 odd years which have gone by since we left school. Nothing like sitting down and catching up with someone face to face even with the wonders of e-mail,skype and the web cam.( Age catching up with me, you think?) All of us had stories to tell of significant times in our lives - meeting the significant other/s in our lives, children, much to laugh about, must say we all have a fantastic sense of humour. Our memories are pretty good with T around no fear of forgetting even a teeny weeny detail.How many classmates do you know who can break into song and keep singing song after song. I think we surprised ourselves because we remembered the words of all the songs we chose to sing.

Discussions and tips

Vaastu tip we all took away from this particular discussion - money must be kept in the South West corner of your house.Did I get that right?

To set a perfect bowl of curd/yogurt put in option 1. a whole green chilly, option 2. stalk of the green chilly. Please try both options and see which one works for you.

Need for regular medical check-ups now that the Fabulous Decade lies ahead.

Needless to say with the photographic evidence provided what an important role food plays in all our lives and it won't take much to trigger memories of this weekend - Mysore pak from Sri Krishna Sweets, Kellogg's sugar free cereal and Slim milk, lunch at Fresco's and desserts made by Rahila. Mmmm Yum!

Safe trips home everybody. We're getting together again next year to amaze Thailand!!!!

In the mean time I hope everybody can have a fabulous reunion of some sort its quite something, I like to think of it as a spa for the spirit.

April - Take It Further Challenge

Around the time Sharon announced the challenge -"How do you see change? That is the challenge topic this month", and colour palette for April I watched the Oscar winning movie An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore.A bit heavy on facts and figures but they are required I guess to drive home the point that there is a climate crisis which has dire consequences for all of us but there is a little ray of hope which is heavily dependant on the need to change.

I think there will be a tussle in most people's attitude to change as far as climate crisis is concerned but I think there are so many areas where small changes can be made in our lives without actually affecting the quality of our lives.We really need to do all we can to make those changes.

Along with the credits for the movie An Inconvient Truth, lines of text appear on the screen which actually spoke to me more than the movie itself and I'm going to be incorporating it into my TIF piece for April. Here are some of those lines which I wrote down

"Are you ready to change the way you live? The Climate Crisis can be solved.
You can reduce your carbon emissions.
Buy energy efficient appliances - lightbulbs.
Recycle
When you can, walk or ride a bicycle
When you can, use light rail and mass transit
Switch to renewable sources of energy
Plant trees, lots of trees
If you believe in prayer , pray that people will find the strenght to change.
In the words of the old African proverb: When you pray,move your feet.
Learn as much as you can about the climate crisis. Then put your knowledge into action."

I've made concious decisions in a bid to reduce consumption of resources in an attempt to slow and reduce the climate crisis
I buy food and fruit which are locally produced and which are in season.
Shut off all appliances when not in use such as computer, television etc and never use the standby option.
Try and remember to carry a shopping bag with me so I won't have to bring more plastic shopping bags home. ( I need to do a better job of this one)
To buy stuff only if its necessary, find ways to recycle or help the process of recycling like separating my garbage. R's mantra which I like to remember when I have to decide whether I should buy something or not - there are things which are nice to have and those which you need to have.
Living on the ground floor is not at all bad in summer with the fan on, so each year when summer rolls around R's idea of an air conditioner in our bedroom is vetoed, 10 years is a good record I think!
We replaced our car recently and opted for one that's fuel efficient over those which make a statement and give you power and less kilometers to the litre of petrol.
I'm sure I can do more and must educate myself.

Now to the pages for the April - TIF
On the left hand page I'm going to have bits of text and on the right are the beginnings of a tree which is my symbol for change.

As in previous months I'm going back to my stash of stuff and using what I have.

On one of my web wanderings I came across The Story of Stuff . Take a look and if you, like me sees Global warming and the Climate crisis as a situation which needs to be reversed/ changed for generations to come I promise you, you won't be disappointed and watch An Inconvenient Truth as well.

Yogurt Fruit Cake

Ah Priya I didn't have the heart to disappoint you so here's what I baked this long weekend.Being Ugadi and all.

A Yogurt Fruit Cake.

I like simple straightforward recipes with no fancy gagetry or ingredients and quantities must be in cups and teaspoons etc, I won't attempt a recipe that's in grams or pounds,pints or litres. For one thing I don't intend investing in weighing scales i don't have anywhere to store it, conversions from pounds to grams drive me nuts, temperature conversions are bad enough and there's no getting around that because my microwave convection oven has temperatures in degrees C and most recipes are in degrees F!

This is a perfect recipe fulfills all my above requirements and what's more its illustrated in fabulous colour!!! How could I resist when I have my own little embroidered recipes project going on. Thanks Caroline, I really enjoy the illustations and views on your blog.

I made the cake with strawberries and mango. Yes, the first mangoes have begun to appear in fruit shops. I think a scoop of plain vanilla ice cream would be great with this cake.

To round off this post here's good wishes for Ugadi , ( the new year for Kannadiga's which was yesterday). Thanks Priya for the translation.

Hosa Dina New Day
Hosa Nagu New Laughter
Hosa Chiguru New shoots (as in shoots and leaves)
Hosa Kanasu New dreams
Hosa Daari New ways/roads
Hosa Jeevana New life
Hosa Varsha (New year)Nimma Jeevanadalli ellaHosathnanavu tharali

In your life, let the new year (Hosa varsha), bring all kinds of newness

Santhoshadha Ugadi! Happy Ugadi!

March TIF Complete

Here are the pages for March. I chose to explore running stitch. I discovered that a little thing like staggering the running stitch in consecutive rows ( page on the left) versus having them directly above the stitches in the previous row ( page on the right) altered the outcome and the kind of patterns which were created.

Details of some areas.

April is here and the challenge in one word is "Change". Now that I have three pages finished I must start assembling them into the book.

Slow progress on March TIF

Its slow progress on the March TIF. I still have to get one colour.

This is just work on one page, I'm trying to decide if I should work on another stitch on the other page or simply explore the possibilities of running stitch.

That's a bit of foil in the lower right hand corner. Intersting to see the effect of using a single strand of thread versus two or three. The possibilities are endless actually.

Happy Easter

The weekend which has just past has been a significant one full of celebration for just about everybody.Good Friday and Easter for Christians, Holi, Id-e-Milad for Muslims, Navroz for Parsis and New Year for the Baha'i community.

I boiled eggs on Sunday morning and wanted to decorate them with markers but R who loves boiled eggs could not wait for the decorating and photographing before he got to actually eating, so I decided to make Flan or Caramel Custard instead as the special thing to commemorate Easter and since seven eggs went into making it couldn't be more Easterish.

I had to modify the original recipe which Nioves used because you don't get cans of evaporated milk here. Nioves cooked Spanish food for me and was happy to talk to me in Spanish when she saw I was keen to learn.(My Spanish abilities are limited at best) Here's my embroidered recipe in Spanish for Avena which Nioves dictated to me.

It was a good weekend R and I watched the Formula 1 race , this weekend in Sepang, Malaysia- Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari won and on Saturday night we went to watch "The Bucket List". A great movie, Jack Nicholson is simply fantastic.Hope your weekend was memorable.

Happy Holi

Colour, Water fights - Happy Holi. These kids are having a lot of fun. They have all the ammunition for a great time - the boy in front is holding a balloon filled with water, one is holding a bottle filled with coloured water - wonder how that will be used? and the plastic water pistols and guns. Those clothes - no amount of laundering will get the stains and smudges of colour out, and the colour on their faces and hands will remain for atleast a week. What fun.

Take it Further Challenge - March

I've just finished the Feb TIF but I've been thinking about the challenge for March and really itching to start on it but I had to finish the February challenge first.

Unlike February where I was struggling to decide on form etc the March challenge that Sharon has set us is "Do you ever notice the little things, the small moments, the details in life? This months challenge is to do just that, pay attention to the tiny details. Sometimes the small things become emblematic for something larger........."

Well, as a result of the Lambani embroidery workshop I am now the proud owner of a beautiful sampler. Practically all the women participating in the workshop have embroidered a motif on the sampler which makes it all the more precious. ( Little bits of embroidery make a beautiful sampler!!!)

On examining their work I discovered that they use simple stitches like the running stitch which they call chuki, becomes the base for a composite stitch, or the detached chain stitch which they call potae is combined with other stitches to create a wider border.

Samples of motifs which have been created on a base of rows of running stitch which are staggered. The variety of motifs which can be generated appears to be limitless and I'd like to explore that in the challenge this month.

Three examples of the use of potae or detached chain stitch, arround a mirror, three rows of detached chain further enhanced with blanket stitch.

So I'll be exploring composite stitches with the colour palette for March.

February TIF Finished Finally!

The title of the post makes the Feb TIF seem to appear to have been a chore, but that's not the case. I was swamped with making 60 sketches and preparing for the Lambani embroidery workshop and I simply didn't get time to sit down and embroider.

The workshop got over on Wednesday and I got my chance to finish the pages for February.



Click on the image to get a closer look at the details.

Lambani Eye Candy

Take a look and tell me you don't feel overwhelmed. I love this, every square inch of the Lambani woman's outfit is embellished and personalised. Talk about making a statement.

The Lambani woman's outfit consists of a skirt or phetiya made up of five distinct bands and secured at the waist with a drawstring tie which hangs down embellished with cowrie shells and tassels , a backless blouse or kaachadi with the characteristic square mirrors embroidered on the front and sleeves and the veil called the chaatiya or ghungato which is a length of commercially printed or woven fabric embellished with a wide band of mirror work and coins.


I got caught up with photographing the embroidery so I don't have enough pictures of the jewellery which is an extremely important part of the whole look. Most of their jewellery is silver except for the nose ring which is gold.
The arm band in the picture above is made up of 25 paise coins and bunches of silver little bells called ghungara and the tassels to tie the armband on, have ghungaroos, cowrie shells and tassels called phunda made of acrylic wool.Silver anklets, 3 anklets no less.
Bangles from elbow to wrist, siver hair clips adorn a distinctive hairstyle. The older women have beautiful tatoos. I must photograph them too.


Applique, tassels of varying sizes made of brightly coloured acrylic wool, square and round mirrors, bells or ghungara, metal buttons, coins and cowrie shells all go to embellish the lambani outfit.
I'm not finished there will be a part two.

Cyber Fyber

I was alerted to the fantastic Cyber Fyber Exhibition while reading a post by Anna on her blog Serendipity .I was apparently not the only one because from what I've seen most people participating in The Take it Further Challenge are also participating in the Cyber Fyber Exhibition!

"CYBER FYBER EXHIBITION is an international event scheduled at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios, 808 Lady Street in downtown Columbia, South Carolina, USA from January 8th through 20th, 2009. The focus of this exhibition is to highlight the influences of Internet access for today's fiber artists."

Well, my participation in the exhibition is certainly the result of internet access and blogging. Blogland has opened up vast new vistas for me. Interacting virtually with people through their blogs who are geographically living half way round the globe is an enriching experience.

I'm trading ATC #81 and Postcard# 132 with Susan Lenz. By the time I got round to putting in a request to trade almost all 130 ATC's and 163 Postcards had been spoken for but I'm glad I'm participating. Now by some stroke of luck if I can be in South Carolina between Jan 8th and 20th 2009 the whole virtual to real experience will be complete!

Here are the ATC and Postcard I've created for the swap

The ATC is a little landscape - I think I was influenced by all the description of miniature paintings in "My name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk which I have put down for a while. The landscape is made of bits of tussar silk,embroidery and sequins. All hand embroidered and finished. The reverse has hand embroidered details of name, place, year and blog address on muslin.

The postcard has hand pieced tussar silk patchwork embellished with embroidery and sequins.The entire piece is handmade, the reverse has hand embroidered details of name, place, blog address and year on unbleached muslin.

Well I hope Susan will like them.I've had fun creating my first ATC and Postcard.I'll be visiting the post office in a day or two.

Can you tell if its Spring or Summer?

Can you tell? I think its both Spring and Summer at the moment.

You don't need the fan on when you are in the house but its hot out in the sun.

R commented "time for shorts its summer now" while waiting to go in for the matinee show of Michael Clayton ( I think its a great movie, 50% of the great factor is attributed to George Clooney, R found it too slow) and still at night ,we use our quilt.

Its all so contradictory weather wise but there are great things which result from such contradictions.

There's a strawberry glut - Rs.25 for a box of Strawberries.

My bowl of oats for breakfast gets dressed up with strawberries. Its Strawberries and curd ( yogurt) for a snack. Should I make strawberry jam? and preserve the goodness a little longer?

Season's must be changing when all the stores are having sales.My wardrobe is beginning its summer transformation- blue and white floral print cotton top. What could be better for summer, thank-you Kavita.

The 'Garden City' in Spring is a pretty sight when the Yellow cassia, Pink cassia and Jacaranda all bloom amidst all the concrete clutter which has turned the Garden city into the Silicon valley of India. For a brief period this beautiful yellow cassia will be the view from my window but once Summer unleashes its scorching heat then I can look forward to seeing monkeys on the microwave towers sunning themselves in the mornings and catching a cool breeze in the evenings. Still dependant on nature to tell me what season it is, here in India's Silicon Valley.
What season is it in your neck of the woods? and how can you tell?

Progress on February TIF

I've been struggling to give visual form to what I remember and this is what I've come up with.

If possible I want a little element from the previous page/month to occur on the next page/month so the feather stitch is the element which connects January and February.

The spiral form of the blue tussar applique symbolises change and the particular triangular form is typical of traditional Gujarati and Lambani embroidery. Ancient yet modern.

Next I appliqued a second spiral to symbolise the co-existence of ancient/traditional and modern side by side. So although dishwashers are available in the market everybody doesn't have one its more likely you have household help who does the washing up. Therefore a dishwasher is seen as a luxury whereas domestic help is not.

We don't really think about it ( until there's a challenge) because that's the way it is but I think it must be a startling fact for somebody visiting India.

Allison Ann Aller's comment on my first post about the February TIF has a fantastic example "Well this is very interesting to me. I love India and did get to visit once, for a month in 2001 to the Kumbha Mela in Allahabad. We went to Varanasi, too. I remember seeing a parade of camels passing under a billboard for high speed internet as we were traveling along the Trunk Road...thinking, what change this country embodies!"

Finally I'm going to embroider little lines which describe the traditional and the modern which co- exist quite happily. The first one is of Filter coffee a tradional staple in South India cafes like Sukh Sagar where there's just one type of coffee on the menu - filter coffee served in a davarah and tumbler and Cafe Coffee Day is a modern Indian coffee chain much like Starbucks which has an extensive menu of lattes, frappes and cappuccinos.

Folk Expressions

I have been asked by NIFT ( The National Institute of Fashion Technology, Bangalore) to participate in a ten day workshop involving a group of Lambani/Banjara women. The design brief put in one sentence would read -"This range “Folk Expressions” is contemporary in its proposition to create funky, light hearted, original accessories to wear and to adorn personal spaces with". Now that's my idea of exciting and challenging.

I've been trying out techniques to create fabric jewellery which the Lambani women can decorate with their distinctive style of embroidery as well as sketching and figuring out different products and theirdimensions.

The Lambani or Banjara are a nomadic tribe who inhabit the Deccan region of India. Their embroidery is colourful and combines embroidery and applique along with mirrors, buttons, bits of embossed metal, cowrie shells, white buttons etc. The garments which the women wear are simply fabulous, I'll get pictures and details of the embroidery to post once the workshop begins.

In the mean time here are a couple of pictures of the explorations I've been carrying out.

The "beads" are made of bits of tussar silk and strung on a length of orange cord. Stuffed with polyfil the beads are soft and spongy.

Details of some of the decoration on the beads with embroidery, sequins, beads and wrapping with thread.

Take it Further Challenge - February

It's almost the middle of February and I've just started work on the "pages" for February.

The challenge for February is - What are you old enough to remember? and you can take a look at the colour palette here.

I just got back to Bangalore over the weekend but I've been giving the Feb challenge some thought while I've been away in Madras finishing up the Zari embroidery project. It just struck me I still say Madras, Bangalore, Bombay and Calcutta but they have changed to Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Kolkatta respectively and I'm not exactly over the hill. It's going to be a while I'm sure before someone looks totally blank when I say Calcutta, then I'll know I'm over the hill!!! :)

So what do I remember? I remember India before liberalisation, we made practically everything or rather anything you bought in a shop was made in the country there was almost nothing imported, post 1980's the economy has opened up and there isn't much that you can't get here, you're spoilt for choice whether its a car - there was a time when it was either an Ambassador or a Fiat, a telephone - you had to apply and wait for years before you got a landline, today everybody has a mobile phone and now you have to upgrade to the one with the latest feature- colour display, 5 mega pixel camera, blue tooth, humungous memory and the ability to upgrade, touch screen.... now everyone's waiting for the iphone to come to India .There's more choice than ever before.

What I find interesting is that life in the city or larger town is like living another country, the whole pace of life is vastly different from the little villages and towns where I go to do my craft projects, its almost like stepping back in time.I hardly carry any cash when I'm in a city, I have a credit card but it would be useless in the towns.

Women in the cities choose a profession and today you can be whatever you want to be , but I remember a time when most mum's were home makers and a "respectable" job would be to be a teacher or professor. The man was the bread winner, divorce was unheard of, its all rapidly changing.

Tailors - they were the ones who made anything you wore unless of course you had a mother who made paper patterns and could cut and sew just about anything, the tailors are still there because they are the ones who make the cholis and blouses for your sarees and they have to be customised, readymade cholis becoming the norm are a long way off but for anything else there's store after store bursting at the seams with ready to wear garments for men, women and children. Can't complain the choice is there if you want it.

Globalisation - the new mantra is here too but I hope we can keep the unique qualities of the food, language,festivals and culture alive, while we make an educated choice of what's flooding into our lives from abroad - it would be intersting to see how we've modified and adapted things, giving them an Indian flavour a couple of decades from now.

I have my work cut out for me - how do I create a visual of all this rambling and remembering.

Check back in a day or two I'm sure I won't disappoint.

Art From The Heart

While reading a post on Free Bird Sings I was informed about a wonderful give away - what could be better than a book?

Catherine Matthews Scanlon is giving away two copies of her book, Art from the Heart.

To win a copy you need to write up a post about the give away on your blog and be sure to leave a comment here so she knows you're participating and your name will get added on for the lucky draw.

The deadline is Monday, February 4th.... three whole days to go!

Good luck you never know when you could get lucky. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.