Neither positive nor negative .... just neutral.

On the aforementioned Crafty Goals List for 2012 are a number of quilts, of which about half are baby quilts this year.

I have three pregnant friends you see, and as dire luck and happenstance would have it, all of these friends are due within a six-week time frame of each other. So to say that I have a mountain of work ahead of me in the next month (the first baby is due to arrive on February 12) is probably an understatement.

Luckily my baby quilts are a little bigger than a metre square, so they don't take too much time to put together. And two of the suckers are easy-peasy:

1. Number One is going to be a classic mix of new and vintage fabrics in a wonderfully clashing range of colours and textures
2. Number Two is going to be made up of Kaffe Fassett materials that are as bright as possible.

It's Number Three quilt that is posing a little more of a problem. It's for the Headmistress - she of perfect taste and quiet restraint. The Headmistress lives in a beautiful house which is elegantly decorated in neutrals. 

Neutrals. That's the crux of the issue. 

I don't do neutrals. I don't know how. And I don't have any neutral fabrics in my stash. 

The dilemma is actually causing me heartache. I want to start on her quilt but I haven't any fabric! I'm going to have to find a shop that specialises in elegant and refined neutrals - and I haven't the faintest idea of where to start. Can anyone help?

Maybe I could order something like this fabric set - it's in the lovely French Provincial style that French General do so well. It's about as close to neutral as I can stand. 

Many years ago I was in an Indian restaurant with a vegetarian friend, and he ordered a vegetarian curry. And when the curry arrived, it had chicken in it. And when my friend called the waiter over and politely asked how chicken could have found its way into his vegetarian curry, the Indian waiter waggled his head and said "oh but sir, in many parts of India chicken is considered a vegetable".... !! 

I feel a bit the same way. Red is a neutral isn't it???

Welcome back to Melbourne

It's taken me close to ten days, but I am FINALLY over the jetlag from India. Who'd have thought four and a half little hours could make so much difference? Not me, until I couldn't drag myself out of bed before 11am when I got home, which is unheard of.

You might be thinking that the first thing I did when I got home was start sewing, and you'd be right. And it would be logical to think that I ploughed straight into the 91 metres (yes! 91 metres in total!) of fabric I bought in India and posted home - but that would be slightly off the mark.

In fact I've spent the last week washing my 91 metres of fabric and hoping for it to dry in this cold, cold weather. When they make material in India they absolutely saturate it with dye, so it's imperative to do a warm water wash before you make anything, to get rid of the excess and ensure you don't accidentally dye other clothes or fabrics the first time you put your new thing into the wash. So, ten thousand tonnes of laundry later - and I'm still not quite finished, I have all the yellows and oranges to do yet - I am looking forward to breaking out my new scissors and using them with gay abandon on the new stash.

In the meantime though, while I was tapping my feet impatiently and drumming my fingertips as I hoped for more sun, I made this quilt. It's called Tangerine Dream, and I love it. Off to the Etsy shop you go, little quilt!

Travelling the SIlk Road to Jaisalmer

Deep in the blazing heart of Western Rajasthan, the golden city of Jaisalmer rises like a fairytale from the hill.

Maharajahs and kings lived here, and in fact still do - there is one in residence next door to the haveli I'm staying in. After Independence in 1949, when all the maharajahs gave up their royal status, many of them retired to their "seats", the district capitals in which they lived, and I have it on good authority that next door's king is probably not putting up with the cold showers and death-defying powerpoints that I currently am.

Jaisalmer is like the ultimate India. It's made from yellow sandstone and it glows in the desert sun - which is burning hot today, I've got my first sunburn after only 10 minutes outdoors with short sleeves on. It was founded in the 12th century and was part of the caravanserai trade route, because it's close to Afghanistan and Central Asia. 

Rising out of the desert is a single hill, and on top of it is the Jaisalmer Fort (every city has one), and about a quarter of the people who live here today live inside it. If you can navigate the hundreds of cows who sit curled up in the street like cats, it has a spectacular view over the surrounding countryside and desert sunsets from here are apparently the stuff of legend. 

Like everything else in India though, the fort is crumbling under the sheer weight of the people it supports - there are major issues with all the water that is poured through the plumbing system every day - about 12 times the capacity the fort was built for - and we all know what happens to a sandcastle when you pour water over it. That doesn't seem to stop anyone though, and there are no visible signs of conservation.

Given that this town depends on tourism, I wonder what will happen to it in the future if the fort is a wreck? Perhaps it will have to depend on camel safaris alone for its income.


Jaisalmer is also well known for its traditional handicrafts - mirror work, weaving, fabrics and woodworks - and everywhere you go there are touts trying to sell you something. I'm pretty immune to this kind of behaviour, which I think I can credit to the super-strength inoculation I got in Egypt a few years ago ..... if you can survive the hassle in Egpyt, the Indian hassle pales in comparison. 

And if you look past the hassle, what you see are the amazing people. The Indians here are very dark-skinned, with fine features, delicate little skeletons and fragile little arms - the women look like they'd blow away in a puff of breeze.

But they wear the most incredible hardware on their bodies: silver jewellery, rows of camel bone bangles up past their elbows, heavy gold necklaces, nose piercings connected to their earrings by heavy gold chains, hair ornaments of pearls and gold, it's quite astonishing.


Wearing your wealth in the form of jewellery is a long Indian tradition, and it takes particular prominence here in the rural areas, where many people still live in mud buildings with thatched roofs - if your assets are in things other than property, they are more practical and more portable too, if you'll excuse the pun .

Plus if you wear your wealth you always have something to sell, and for women who historically weren't allowed to own anything except jewellery, that is super important. It was how they displayed their value. Double plus, gadding about town with a treasure trove hanging off your body is incredibly good for your status, too.

For most of us tourists though, gadding of any kind is well nigh impossible in this heat. I'm going to take a cue from my canine friend here and curl up for a nap until the weather cools. 

Off on my Indian adventure

Here is the Taj Mahal, which vies only with the Egyptian pyramids for the title of Greatest Tomb Ever.

Today, I am getting on a plane and flying to India, and in two days time, I will be taking my own photo of the Taj Mahal and won't need to rely on Getty Images to help me out anymore.

(An aside: India! India! India! I cannot wait!)

I'm told that internet connections through Rajasthan will be sporadic and unreliable - so, I'll try to post as often as I can with wonderful photos and witty anecdotes of my amazing adventures, though I beg your indulgence if there are a few days in between with no word from me. I'll be thinking of you though, be sure of that.

So while there's silence over the interweb, think of all the fantastical things I might be doing instead.....

Picture me riding a camel, swathed in a sari; or reclining lazily by the side of a pool in a decrepit pink sandstone palace that used to belong to the last Maharajah. Picture me pushing past massive limpid-eyed cows in the marketplace; or slapping off the unwelcome hand of a too-friendly stranger in the crowd.

Picture me bargaining hard for fabric in the bazaar and shopping for salwar kameez!

The corporate slave set free

Ladies (hello!) and gentlemen (if there are any of you out there)..... today is an auspicious day.

Today I write to you as a free woman. A corporate slave no longer - the bonds are broken, the shackles unchained, the straitjacket has been removed.For the first time in my adult life, I have no job to go to.

This is quite something, as I have been in paid employment since I was fifteen. I worked weekends through my senior school years, I didn't have a gap year after school or uni, I went straight into full-time work at the age of 21, and there I have remained, bonded to the corporate wheel, ever since. Even when I finished work in Dubai, I didn't have the courage to take time off afterwards - no, I went right out and secured a job (I did the interviews via phone in London, as I recall) to come back to, and it started the week after I got home.

So here I am - officially unemployed - and it's equal parts "gulp" and "sweeeeeeet"!

The first thing I'm going to do is address a major life error. I've never had four weeks of consecutive holiday in my life. That is about to change. This week, I am packing for India, and on Saturday I take off for three and a half weeks. Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Jaisalmer ... I am going to drench myself in holiday and emerge from it nearly a month later, dripping with life.

I've planned this break as a deliberate liminal experience. In my life, liminal experiences - the time that marks the period in between the end of something old and the start of something new - are very important. I use them as an opportunity to think, reassess, consider life from a different perspective. They clear out the cobwebs in my brain, throw open the shutters and let in the light so I can see how the dust has settled on the furnishings. They show me where I need to set to work cleaning and polishing.

I think India is the perfect place for that. I love its filth and chaos, the colours, the vibrancy, and the heat - the heat! - is going to be wonderful.

In India I intend to write many lists. List of things to keep and things to throw out - both figuratively and literally. Lists of things to do when I get home (perfect the Victorian sponge cake, attempt to impose some kind of order on my wild back garden). Lists of things that make me happy (sunny days, and remembering old friends), and lists of things I want in my life. Lists of things I don't, too - those are just as important.

But before then I have one very important question to consider: three and a half weeks in India, what will I wear?

I'd better make a list.

An Indian Summer Dress

Our trip to India was not at all planned.

In April 2008, My One True Love was invited to present at a conference at the very last minute. He accepted the all-business-class-flights-and-accommodation-at-lavish-hotels-and-meals-and-sightseeing-expenses paid invitation as he rightly should have. How could he not? However, he then made what turned out to be the fatal error, and told me about it.

India! I screeched at him when he disclosed it. Six days in India! Where I have always wanted to go but have never been, I screeched at him. You're! Not! Going! To! India! Without me!

So there I was on a last-minute trip to India, without any time to see the big sights, and without any real time to visit far-flung places (we were only there for six days, three in Delhi and three in Bangalore). And that meant only one thing, naturally.

Fabric. Of course.

I love Indian fabric. Silks, cottons, batiks, damasks, saris, you name it, I love it. Loooooooooove it. And that's how I found myself in a fabric shop in Connaught Place in New Delhi, buying (among other things) ten metres of this astonishing mustard-coloured cotton with a red and ochre flowered print. (Yes I know ten metres might seem a bit much. That's just how I roll.)

It's sat in my stash up until now. When I buy a fabric I really like, it takes me ages to use it, because I'm worried about making the wrong decision/using a pattern that doesn't fit/ using a pattern that looks awful, etc etc. It's so precious to me that I become completely paralysed with adoration, and it takes months for the freeze to wear off.

This Christmas I finally cut into it, after about three months of toying with ideas in my head while I ran on the treadmill at the gym during lunchtimes. Hey, it gave me something to do while I worked out, I got to play with lots of different design elements, and it meant I went back to work feeling all warm and happy and crafty. Which is something I greatly needed in my job at the time.

I wanted to do a  long dress, pleated at the empire line - but not pregnancy silhouette - with sleeves. I had this old OOP Vogue pattern in the cupboard (a size too small) and after the months of thinking about the best way to make it, I decided to increase the pattern by one size and just wing the skirt.

It took me aaaaaaages to do the pleating at the waist in order to make the pieces fit together, but overall I am VERY happy with the look. I had to applique the feature band around the sleeves and the neckline, as it only ran down one edge of the fabric and I couldn't cut the pieces to use it. That was a long process, but worth it for the result I think.

So now I'm very proud - I've got a great dress, made out of an amazing fabric bought in situ in a foreign country, I've got the story to tell about the place I bought it from, where the Indian man behind the counter nearly fainted when he saw how much material I'd piled up, and the customs officers on the way back into Australia kind of interrogated me about the apparently "commercial" quantity of the fabric I had with me, and I wriggled out of it because it was seriously all for Personal Use, AND I even managed to find the perfect belt to accessorise the dress in the Boxing Day sales. Half price!

Cool, huh? Gosh I love fabric. And India.It's a fine, fine romance.

Wherefore art thou, mobile phone?

Lordy, I'm in all-day training today, in a tiny little room, with no air, and I think my blood has stopped circulating to my brain.

It's the continuation of a great day, actually, and I'm being super sarcastic when I say that (just in case it doesn't come across in text).

I started out by forgetting my mobile phone. Now, in order to make sense of the desolation this is causing me, you need to know that I work in a field where I am permanently connected to my mobile phone. I live through it. The world reaches me through it. I do my job through it. I practically breathe through the thing.

Without it, I am nothing. Nooooo-oooothing.

As we speak, it is sitting at home on the furry rug on my bed, chirping dolefully to itself and wondering sadly why I am not there to pick it up and cradle it between my ear and neck. I'm sure it's very lonely - we haven't spent this much time apart for a *very* long time. Perhaps it was the last time I travelled overseas and I had to switch the poor thing off for nine hours while we flew into smoggy, smoky India. It took a while to recover from that - refused to connect to the local network in a fit of pique, until I spoke soothingly to it and twiddled its numbers until it giggled.

BUT, (and this is the very, very small mercy that I am grateful for) at least it has my office building pass to keep it company. Yes, I also left that at home today, and so I am confined within my hermetically sealed building and unable to leave as a consequence. I have to borrow a friend's pass just to get out to the bathroom.

So it's just as well I'm in this godawful training, because without my phone I can't do any work, and without a building pass I can't leave!

There's a silver lining to every cloud.