House This!!!

House This!!!

All these days I have been trying to take some time out to be able to pen down a few thoughts for my blog but the election fever in the state, A's posting to Odisha on Observer duty and my own transfer on the day he left meant little respite for days to follow. Little N has shown understanding well beyond her years (she's not even 14 months as I write this!) while Mamma discharges the election duty and stays away for hours on end. Once again as I find myself in complete solitude after the day's work and as little N sleeps peacefully after chasing peacocks all day, my thoughts wander back to the days when A was still in Tripura and I endlessly pursued a zillion hobbies to keep my hopes from fading and my energies creatively channelized. 

I had brought along with myself M-i-l's book EASY EMBROIDERY by Lis Paludan and had wanted to start on some work of my own too. The way her book is written, it seemed like a matter of patience and practice before even a novice could embark on embroidery project of sorts. One of my two initial choices was the embroidered houses which seemed simple enough to begin with.

During the recent visit to my parents' house in Delhi, as I looked at the houses I had made, I reminisced about the winter evenings I spent confined to my Agra house all by myself and doing embroidery for hours on end. My dear friend P made an interpretation of the same work too and if it were not for the countless happenings in her life these days, I could have showcased her work too.

The work comprises of 11 houses stacked in three rows of 3-4-4 respectively. In the bottom row for example, the outline of the houses is done with black running stitch, the rooftops are done in pink asymmetrical running stitch, blue satin stitch, yellow chain stitch and dark pink and red chain stitches respectively from left to right. The doors are mostly in chain stitch while the daisy flower petals are done in french bullion knots. The marigold flower and the windows of the second house from left are done in buttonhole stitch.

The Bottom Row

The Middle Row

The middle row too comprises four houses done in outline black running stitch. The roof of the first left house is done in a mix of buttonholes and french bullion knots while the windows are outlined by chain stitch in two colors. The chimneys of all the houses are done in chain stitch. The roof of second house has a double outline done in chain stitch and filled with satin stitch, windows are filled with buttonhole circles and double chain stitched door is adorned with french bullion knots. The third house from left is a classic example of chain stitch and buttonhole stitch while the herringbone roof of the last house lends a real touch to the depiction.

The three houses in the top row are largely a mixture of chain stitch and buttonhole stitch used in tandem.

The Top Row

While I truly hope I have tried my best to preserve the beauty and color scheme of Lis Paludan's work,the unavailability of certain colors' threads and my own lack of discipline coupled with the fact that the project was completed in over six months in different cities with different states of mind, meant a melange of ideas on the fabric. The left panel is my work and the right is the original depiction as given in her book. I really hope my sister M loved her long promised gift when she saw this!

The Tapestry of Dreams-I

The onset of this year also marked the beginning of our lifelong journey as parents. No joy in the world could compare with the joy of holding one's baby in one's arms for the first time. Every parent in the world aspires to give the very best to his kid, often more than what he/she got as a child. Its a pure joy to watch her grow before our own eyes and perhaps even before we would realize, she will grow wings and will be ready and set to embark on a journey of her own. Much as we would always strive to provide her everything we can and perhaps even more, right from the day her angelic smile illuminated our lives, I wished we could give her something to remind her of how much more her parents love her with each passing day and what an absolute delight she has been to us. While it is our duty as a parent to bring her up in the best manner possible, something I strongly wish she comes to possess is the power of imagination and the perseverance to translate her dreams into reality.

After much thought, bickering and planning, we zeroed in on a grand hand-embroidered tapestry project and decided to label it as 'The Tapestry of Dreams'. For days on end, me and hubby kept sketching and visualizing objects to incorporate into our tapestry and scanned every source of inspiration (books, internet, signboards  etc) for hours on end. In a random Ikea catalog, I saw an interesting doodled fabric and hours of image search led me to Tidny by the amazingly gifted designer duo of Sissi Edholm and Lisa Ullenius. I have incorporated several of their doodles into the tapestry and hope to embroider it as beautifully as we can.After hours of deliberation (and endless baby related jobs), we started upon our project bit by bit. The progress has been slower than we expected but, without hubby's contribution it could have very well been a zilch!

In this first post in a series on 'The Tapestry of Dreams', I restrict myself to the top most panel which depicts the sky/space/ weather and elements there of.The coexistence of sun, moon and stars, as also the aeroplane and the UFO speaks of our attempt to combine the real and the imaginary. Isn't that what dreams are made of? Am also linking it up with Artistic Inspirations challenge. 

Our collective fascination for the colours of the rainbow is manifest in the double chain stitched rainbow rising over the horizon and an aeroplane flying across the sky leaving contrails. Reminds me of my recent flight when I witnessed the same while landing in Lucknow.

While they say, every cloud has a silver lining, nobody must have seen the same but ours definitely has one to boast of. Needless to mention, this silver lining proved to be the most difficult one to accomplish! The clouds outline has been done in running stitch with rain in single chain stitch. The filling of the cloud has been done in multi-colored button holes.

As is often the case in my life too, while it pours in Lucknow, Delhi boasts of a sun in its full summer splendor! Our vibrant sun however,shines beautifully over the city in our tapestry and is nothing like the scorching sun of Delhi one grew up under. The sun rays have been done in superficial herring-bone stitch and the disc has been done in button hole stitch.

The thunder of Lucknow lightning strikes can be seen in the purple blazes in the left corner but need not be feared in the presence of a benevolent planet and twinkling stars.

Lastly, the UFO in the right hand corner does not drop unfriendly aliens but stands for everything mysterious that our current level of scientific progress can not explain. Like its eager antennae extending outwards, for the rest of our lives, we too will be eager and anxious to receive any form of communication from the Small One. 

Hopefully when she will look at it sometimes in a ponderous mood, she will remember and understand a lot of things said and unsaid. As they say, 

 "It is the unspoken ethic of all magicians to not reveal the secrets." (David Copperfield ) 

Of friendship and a dear friend..

As a student in JNU, our economics class and our hostel community were more like an open family and I thought one could nurture close association with a number of people. Partially true, but in prime in particular and in life in general, one's vision is often myopic and one fails to appreciate how time takes it toll on us. Today life has taken the members of the same 'open family' to all parts of the world and at times one even realizes our paths may perhaps never cross again. It does not feel good to know that because the warmth we shared still remains, but one suddenly realizes how much was left unsaid and how much more there still is to be shared. Yet the pulls and pressures of our professional and personal lives often leave us with little time and energy to reach out for people beyond our immediate milieu and its only sometimes one decides to go an extra mile to see someone we knew all along. Even if that genuine warmth and affection remains, the possibility remains that we could have drifted so far apart in temporal and spatial terms that it might be difficult to relate to each other's lives.

This sad realization did dawn on me but only much later when a 24x7 job, marriage, home (read household) and now a five month old keep my hands more than full. Much as I would have loved to live in the old times forever, its always been a task for me to explain myself endlessly and with the kind of uncertainty one lives with in our profession, much of our social interactions could be left to luck and chance. If there's somebody whom we still warm up to, could speak uninhibited to and we know will always be there, I think that special somebody has indeed passed the litmus test of friendship and more importantly time!

Am dedicating this post to such friends A N for being two of the most wonderful people I have ever met. Its surprising how some people we never knew for the better part of our lives come to win our trust so much that at times one instinctively reaches out for them even before one's own siblings. And with this kind of faith, the intervening time, distance and circumstances cease to matter. In other words,  that there could be a thousand miles separating us or that we grew up in two entirely different social milieu has never  been of any significance. One doesn't always necessarily need words to communicate and silence is not met with innumerable questions either. Can not thank them often and enough for making us feel welcome and comfortable into their lives and for being part of one's 'charmed circle' of people who make life truly meaningful.

I wish and pray that life offers you the very best of everything there could be, forever and always. Much as I wish I could give you all that you aspire for, could not think of giving you anything better than the 'Tree of Life' itself. Hope life will treat you gently in its course and we will build many more memories and dreams together. But most importantly, just as I was about to commit the folly of saying we-stay-the-same-forever, I would rather say, life has given us a wonderful opportunity of knowing each other and even if times are hard for us and hope is even more scant, all that matters today and always will, is that we will try to appreciate each other's circumstances, will not be hasty in our judgement and remember each other in our thoughts and prayers. May the Force be with you, Always!!!

Bundelkhand Summers, Endless Sun. Etsy Inspiration and Embroidery Fun!!

While the title of my post has pretty much conveyed everything I have to say, summers in Bundelkhand meant a season of indoor confinement (That is when you don't have work to attend and official visits). I joined in Banda in July 2011. By that time the first monsoon showers had already provided the much needed respite from heat in this arid country and everything seemed fresh and verdant. The confluence of River Ken and River Yamuna at Chilla was a sight to behold and the rivers were brimming to the top. It was a new place for me. For the first time, I was living at such a distance from Delhi. The event calenders, both official and social, were abuzz with activity and there was little time to do anything else.

Sunset as seen from the drive way

However, come March 2012 and the first signs of summers were beginning to tell. Tired and exhausted from the elections in the state, one had little energy and appetite to explore places for the sake of it and meet people endlessly. The change of guard in Lucknow seemed change was inevitable for us too and one lived by counting days and watching the golden sun set over the horizon each day. The saving grace of the day would only be the birds which came to roost in the lawns every evening (hope to do a post on them soon!) and the magical star-lit nights which made you forget the oppressive heat and endless paperwork each day brought.

The fact that the much awaited 'change' came only in August is enough to convey the good deal of time one had in hand after work and being the self proclaimed 'crafts addict' that I am, I turned to Etsy for inspiration. However, it is also imperative to clarify at this point that being a good 150-200 kms away from any city of repute meant that the choice of crafts was severely restricted to materials which could be easily procured from the local market but would also yield good results and above all immense satisfaction. Add to this equation, my constant desire to make something however small for my home and one has no choice but to do something of the table/bed linen or wall art variety.  

Add to that also the fact that in a place like Banda, there are little avenues for getting a good frame done. Bearing all these considerations in mind, I did a Google search on wall art-watercolors,photography,collages,embroidery,tapestry and pretty much everything that could be hung on a nail.The most wonderful find turned out to be small embroidered diskettes which could fit any occasion and any need. More intensive Etsy search revealed to me the wonderful world of 'HOOP ART' with its endless possibilities and bewitching colors.

Somehow all the people I have known all my life and all that I had read and heard about till the 'Eureka moment', nobody and nothing ever carried any mention of the word 'hoop art'. And once the discovery had been made, it was contagious (at least in the family!)Thus began my adventures as a hoop ARTIST (I can proudly call myself that!) and my first and rather simple hoop. 

The flowers are done in simple stitch with french bullion knots at the end and stem stitch for the stalks. I must also give the credit to my mother-in-law (Mamma) for all her encouragement and more importantly for her EASY EMBROIDERY book (which turned out to be a repository of beginner level stitches) which dates back to her post wedding Nigeria days. It was only much later, thanks to uninterrupted broadband connectivity, that I discovered endless tutorials on internet for various kinds of stitches

The first hoop was widely appreciated. Combined with a whole lot of encouragement, it was all I could ask for and a huge stimulus for the bigger and more colorful hoop that followed. It was again inspired by something similar I saw on Etsy and is done completely in double stranded chain stitch.

Needless to mention,  in Mamma's words, she could not take her eyes off the hoop and it adorns a huge column in her drawing room wall singularly. My love for concentric circles introduced me to the magical realm of 'WHIMSICAL ART' and am eagerly waiting for an opportunity to try my hand at the same. As for now, am linking this post to Artistic Inspiration for their Challenge 56.

The fact that am writing this post in the July of 2013 speaks volumes about my cherished and well preserved memories  of embroidery as a pursuit. My love for embroidery though dates back to my Agra days. There was something in the air in the city of Taj!! Will hopefully capture a pic or two of my first real embroidery when I visit my parents and would also request my lovely erstwhile neighbor and lifelong dear friend,P, to share her interpretation of the same work too!!

Till then, Happy Embroidery! And yes, in the words of  Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River)

"A hobby is a defiance of the contemporary. It is an assertion of those permanent values which the momentary eddies of social evolution have contravened or overlooked. If this is true, then we may also say that every hobbyist is inherently a radical, and that his tribe is inherently a minority."