Thursday, August 30, 2012
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Rangoli-196
21 dots -5 rows. Leave 4 dots on each side and place 13 dots-4rows, leave 4 dots on each side and place 5 dots -4 rows. See the picture above for dots. Join as shown.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Rangoli-195
Here is one more chain Rangoli.
This is 14 dots 2 rows to 2 dots. Join as shown. This is simple and easy.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Beautiful Butterfly
Every day when I get up, the first thing I do is roam around in my small garden, talking to my plants and practice my singing. In that way I can sharpen my singing skills as well as spend time with my plants.
Today I found this on one of the plants:
So beautiful. Isn't God's creation so beautiful?
See its big eyes and long curved tongue.
I think I can put this under "photography" media of my Butterfly Sampler
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Bindi-The Forehead Art
Part-6
My previous posts are here:
Here are some more designs with liquid Bindi.
Here is the Mango design.
You can see the snake and conch shell designs.
Watch out for more in my next posts.........
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Saturday, August 11, 2012
New Arrivals
Hi friends! Its long time since I posted. Actually, I had sprained my arm badly and could not do much.
Added to that I had a very hectic schedule at work place apart from attending marriages, house warming ceremonies (this is the season for all auspicious ceremonies). With heavy rains, it is difficult to complete simple chores. So that keeps me away from my hobby projects.
Well my arm is on the mend. I have not fully recovered but better. Because of the heavy rains, my garden is full of weeds. Needed lot of cleaning. Thank God I got some one else to clean it up for me. This being the Monsoon time, it is time for adding new plants to my garden. Re-potting, pruning, preparing the plants and trees for fruiting and flowering is not an easy task. One has to battle with lots of pests and that too with safe envo friendly organic pest controls is a lot difficult.
I have some new arrivals for my garden. Just have a look.
Orange coloured double petaled Hibiscus.
Lilac coloured double petaled Hibiscus.
Yellow Button Roses.
I need to take them out of the plastic bags and plant them in my garden. But I could not resist to share with you all.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Painting On Fabrics-Sea Creatures-2
My previous post on the topic is here.
I was talking about the sea green table cloth. These are the fishes I painted on the four corners of the cloth a little away from the fish in the center.
This is how it looked.
You can see that the cloth is stained, lost its beautiful sea green colour with many washes. I just use it as dust cover these days.
Watch out for what I painted on cushion covers and diwan set in my next posts
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Family Time....The Indian Way.....
Who says we cannot make some time to enjoy with our family and friends even in the midst of such tight schedules and deadlines to be met. Get together with friends and family can be fun and inexpensive. At the same time we may be able to acquaint the younger generation with some of our traditions and impart some moral and ethical values.
Well the Monsoons have brought in heavy rains, which made us keep to our homes. So this week end we made most of it. My niece loves corn on cobs like me and this being the season for it, we wanted to have little get together and enjoy it.
Starting with the monsoons, the corn on the cobs are sold in the markets. They are very tender now. Unlike the sweet corn, our Indian corn is not sweet but still tasty. It is generally eaten by roasting over coal and dabbed with salt and lemon juice. These days we have our street corners, picnic spots and markets filled with vendors selling these roasted corn. Some of them even visit our residential areas with push carts laden with corn cobs. We can choose the one we want. the cobs are then de husked and roasted over coals to our liking. He than dabs it with salt and lemon juice. It is really yummy to eat hot roasted cobs when it is raining and chill out side. It is also quite healthy.
So, on Sunday afternoon, my niece wanted to try her hand at roasting of these cobs on coal. I used a clay tray filled with red hot coals, as I don't have the traditional clay stove which is used for cooking with coal.
We had fun sitting on the floor around the tray (it kept us warm) roasting corn cobs, talking about our school and college days, how we enjoyed roasting these corn cobs, potatoes, poppadoms, sweet potatoes, jack fruit seeds on coal and eat it with our friends and cousins. We also watched Ice Age - we all love it and don't mind watching it a hundredth time.
Every Saturday afternoon all of us friends used to meet at my place and enjoy such snacks. Or else I used to cook some new dish which was tested by them all.
It was the same when I used to visit my aunts or my Gran. In the after noon, all of us used to sit in the open veranda in the back yard. My Gran used to roast the cobs on the coals in a big mud stove constructed with mud bricks and coated with clay and cow dung. All of aunts, uncles, cousins and friends visiting us would have a great time. Women would sit in a group and gossip about their in laws, recently performed marriages in the family, or the arrival of a baby or clothes and ornaments. Men would have their own group talking about, politics, sports and current affairs. We children used to eat more than our quota by pinching a little from mom or dad and end up with stomach aches in the night, with lot of scoldings from our elders. But my Gran used to have her home remedy ready to pacify us and put to sleep. by next time we would forget all this and be ready to stuff ourselves again with corn cobs.
Hmmm my niece was so very happy that she could roast the cobs herself. She was bouncing up and down as if she landed with a great jack pot. She listened to all our child hood memories. It was really fun to bond with our family. My niece learned the traditional way of roasting the corn cobs and enjoyed it too. That did not cost us much but achieved a lot.
How we roast the corn cobs the Indian way, you can read it here:
Happy Monsoons to all of you.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Basque Stitch-2
TAST-2012-Week 29-Basque Stitch
It rained here cats and dogs for the past few days. The skies were highly overcast. It rained most part of the night and in the evenings with heavy drizzling through out in the day. In such a weather it is really difficult to attend our daily chores leave alone any thing else.
Still I just tried a little doodling.
Here it is.....
1. Stitches with space in between2. Stitches close together
3. Stitches with beads
4. Basque Stitch with Fly Stitch
5. Slanting Stitches. The bottom part was difficult to work. I don't know weather I got it correctly or not.
6. Basque Stitch with one sided Feather Stitch.
Need to work out a lot on this stitch. I do have lots of ideas but I don't think I have the time now...So I will note them down and work when I am a bit free....
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Painting on Fabrics-Sea Creatures-1
My first passion always was and will be painting. I feel so happy when I have a paint brush in my hand. I don't mind painting a wall, a door or a window grill work, or on paper or fabric. It is somehow soothing to simply paint a surface with all your concentration. I even like it better with my favorite music playing along. Even now, when I am depressed, or feel low, I either, paint or head to kitchen to experiment some new dish. It sort of makes me forget everything.
I used to paint a lot on paper which later on I made into greeting cards and sent to my friends and relations.
But when I discovered painting on fabric, it was a totally different experience. Painting on fine muslin cottons is different from thicker ones. Similarly painting on crepes or nylon is different from silks. Well there is lot of scope for experimentation and I did lot of experiments, learning something new each time. Of late, somehow, I don't find that much time to hold a brush, let alone paint.
This one is one from a series of sea creatures, I painted on my cushion covers, divan set and table cloth.
There is something magical and mystical about the sea creatures and the sea itself. I love to paint fishes.
This is very old and it has been washed so many times, with lots of brushing-so the paint might have peeled of in some areas.
I just loved the expression of this fish-all jubilant and that's why selected to paint it. The back ground fabric was a very thick casement fabric. It is very difficult to paint and if not painted properly, the paint will peel off on washing.
The colour I chose was sea green (or blue?) since I was painting sea creatures. I used pearl colours too (for the sea grass) but its shine cannot be seen here.
This I used this motif for the center of table cloth. I will post the remaining ones in my next posts....so keep an eye on my blog.....
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Basque Stitch-1
TAST-2012-Week-29-Basque Stitch
This is one of the simplest stitches. It is easy to stitch and once we make a few stitches, it is quite rhythmic- something like knitting. This is one of my favorite stitches as it is easy and there is lot you can do with it.
Here is one of my attempts:
29th Week's challenge announced by Sharon in TAST 2012 is Basque Stitch. Visit her site here for more info:
Here is one of my attempts:
I used this stitch to decorate the neck and pockets of my kurtha. The fabric is pure heavy cotton known as Khadi-that is hand spun. You can see the colour in the below pictures better.
I made a mistake here. I could have followed the curve while stitching at the neck. But somehow I did not. So it is broken. It would have been more beautiful if I had followed the curve with out a break. But if I remember this was my first attempt and that too with out much practise.
A closer look at the stitch. I used tow stitches of Basque -one with yellow and the other with green.
Here is a look at the stitch around the pocket. Here I used single stitches inbetween the green one.
A closer look at the stitch.
This was one of my first attempts long time back-years ago. Now I would love to do a sampler. Let me try it and post it....Keep a watch on my blog.....
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Flower Arrangement
With fresh flowers...
This is a small terracotta tray filled up with water. The petals of yellow Chrysanthemums and red coloured marigold flowers and few leaves were just thrown into it-not arranged in any particular order. It is a mosaic of colours but the beautiful smells of the flowers fills up the room with an interesting fragrance.
One can use one these terracotta urns and trays available in various shapes and sizes. We can also paint them according to our requirement.
Reorganising my Blogs....
Of late I don't have much time on my hands to pursue all my favorite things. This blog is one of them. I have lots to share with you but the major problem is time. So I am not able to take proper pictures of my work and write my posts. One more problem is the erratic power supply. In monsoon season it is quite common that power supply is stopped when there are heavy rains or strong winds. With high surges in power, I am worried about all my gadgets. So posting of tutorials and my work is taking time.
I knew that I needed to organise my blog properly as it looked very cluttered and all of you are finding it difficult to browse through my blog. But again lack of time was the reason I could not take it up till now.
I was actually confused as to where to start or what to do so that you all find it easy to browse and still am. As you can see I have already started reorganising. But it will take some time for me. I am not much tech savvy and also am slow. So i can do it slowly and steadily. So bear with me please.
I would like to thank Ms Sony Patel, who took time to point out certain things, which gave me courage to start this reorganising. Thanks a lot Sonyji, your suggestions have helped me a lot.
Thanks a lot to all my friends who visit my blog and take time to leave comments and suggestions which all help me a lot.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Rangoli-193
This is 5X5 block. Developed into a bigger design as below.
We can add more blocks depending upon the space available to us.
Watch out for more in my next posts....
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Baby Mahi-It happens only in India...
UPDATE:
Baby Mahi passed away within few hours of her falling into the well due to lack of oxygen. Her body was recovered after 90 hours of very tiring rescue operation.
My heartfelt condolences to her bereaved family. May God give them strength to face such a tragic situation. May her soul rest in peace.
My salute to the army team who worked relentlessly in the rescue operation.
I am really not out of the shock yet. Yes the chances of baby's survival were very remote. She fell into the well on Wednesday and we came to know of it on Thursday. By then we knew how difficult it is for some one to survive without oxygen, food and water. As the rescue continued hour after hour, the chance of survival was becoming dimmer and dimmer.
But then being humans, we have that little spark some where in our heart called hope.
Now when it comes to the responsibility of such a tragic incident, everyone was after the government or the administration. Yes, they do have responsibility.
But what about, the baby's mother and father, what about all those who were living there? Were they not aware that there was an abandoned bore well there? How can they allow their children to play in such an area?
Are we all citizens not responsible for such things? Can we not take care of our homes, our children and neighborhood at least? Is it enough to think that it is someone else's responsibility and keep quite? Ultimately isn't it us who are suffering?
Especially children. They don't have parks or play grounds to play. They don't have time from their studies and other activities to play. They don't have safe environment. The child abuse is on the rise. Even if the children survive all these, there is still the threat of parents forcing them to become an engineer or a doctor or some other thing even against the wishes of the children.
With the big joint families fast disappearing and the small nuclear families on the rise where both parents work, the children are fast losing the security and the feeling of safety in the family. The parents are not able to cope up their own stress. They still try to give their children the best. But is it enough to provide the children with only material benefits? No doubt it is a difficult choice for the parents with poor and lower middle class backgrounds.
Now there are no grandparents or aunts and uncles to take care or interact with them daily. With whom do the children share their insecurities or fears?
In olden days children felt safe and secure as they had elder cousins, aunts, uncles and grand parents to look after them. The parents never had to bother in most of the cases. The grand parents and other elders in the family played a major role in teaching them, the ethics, moral values and life skills so that they grew up to be happy and able humans. They could adapt themselves to any situations. OK! big families have their own problems, but in times of difficulties one always had the emotional security.
Now most of the the children brought up in small families are growing up as insecure, selfish and stubborn individuals, very reluctant to adjust or share with others.
So where are we headed to? Can we still sing the song....It happens only in India? May be all such things happen in only in India???????
So what is the solution?....How do we provide our children with a safe and happy environment?.....
Friday, June 22, 2012
Please Pray
In Manesar town near Gurgaon, 4 year old little girl named Mahi has fell into 70 feet deep bore well at around 11 pm on Wednesday. Even after 45 hours, the child is struggling for survival and has not yet been rescued.
How shocking and difficult it is for the child. I just can't even dare to imagine it. We are all praying for her safe rescue. Please! All those who are reading this post do join us and pray for her safety. Ask, your friends, relatives who ever it is to pray for the child.
Let us just hope that she is rescued safely. Miracles do happen.....
Vine with Berry
Quilled Berry
Here is one simple quilled greeting card created by me long time back. For the vine I have used paper twine in dark brown colour. These days I don't feel well and with heavy rains our power supply is erratic and sometimes voltage is very high. So I am not able to post much, though I have lots to share with you.
Do keep an eye on my blog.....
Monday, June 18, 2012
Welcome Showers
At last, it rained yesterday after such a long summer and that too such hot days. We all- especially my plants were eagerly waiting for the Monsoon to arrive. It teased us for two weeks but then yesterday when it rained what a heavy downpour.
It is now cool and wet. I lost some of my precious plants to the heat this summer. Water scarcity and continuous high temperatures were the reasons. This year we did not have those showers which we have in between the hot spells. Thank God. Now I will wait for a few more showers and then take up gardening. I am already on the job of cleaning and getting ready for new plantations.
But these down pours do affect our power supply. Entire week end the power supply was erratic and with huge fluctuations. I could not dare to touch any appliance for the fear of the surges in the power. Yesterday almost entire evening and night, we had to manage with candles.
Thats how i could not post anything. well got to go, catch up my sleep which i missed last night....keep watching my blog ....
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
My Fabric Painting
These days I am spring cleaning. I am going through everything, books, my papers, most of all my clothes-weeding out what I feel is not necessary or worn out. But you know what- some how most of it again creeps back into my closet or storage space, Some I feel I can't throw and some my mom feels so. It happens every time I start spring cleaning. But this time I am really weeding out some of it.
Well during the process I am organising my hobby projects-many unfinished but some finished ones. I am trying to draw a to do list so that I can finish off all my pending projects.
Here is one of my finished projects-fabric paint on odhni(scarf) done for my sis long time back. I even forgot it. Actually there was a time, I was much into painting- any sorts-from doors, windows, grills to fabric, paper....:). It is easy to paint than hand embroidery. These days, I don't have the time and I prefer to use natural light for painting.
Hmmm the above was a scene from ancient Egyptian murals. I used very bright colours. My sis wanted something unique to wear for a get together in her college. I painted this on a white cotton scarf. Hope you like it.
I should take up painting once again....I love the feel of the brush on my fingers and playing with colours..there is a something soothing in the act of painting, body, mind and soul...engrossed in it...I miss it very much...
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