☁ Hey you..get on my cloud ☁

Hello.
Strangers.

It has been a whole year since I posted. 
Unbelievable.

Friends kept asking what happened to my blog, I felt guilty as though I was neglecting something vital...of course, you all know the feeling.
I got so busy with work and making a new life that it just slipped off like a loose knot and I didn't even notice it had gone. When I was blogging and sharing I felt such a part of a community and I miss that. I still read all of your blogs, on long journeys, jet lagged whilst trying to sleep in strange beds and during snatched lunch breaks. If I could, I would still be showing and sharing and maybe soon I will. There are lots of interesting things all simmering and bubbling under the surface ready to break through into reality. Exciting.
Life is full.
This year we had my Meg's wedding. A shimmering memory of pastels, watercolours, vintage and lace. I was so determined to really be present that I didn't take one single photograph. There wasn't time. It was like putting on a show. Once. No time to think or linger. Meg and I had been sourcing, foraging, crafting and creating for so long and I documented most of that and now it is all done I ought to show you. The wedding was like a Pinterest explosion. Absolutely charming and I cried ALL the way through the ceremony. Then I became a grandmother and I am completely in love with a baby boy. I'll come back and fill you in on 2012. It was the best year ever in my whole life. Suddenly everything tilted into bliss and peace.
For now, I would like to wish all of you a very happy holiday season. 
Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice...
we made it through another year. 

Here is my grandson.... Aubrey Joseph. A cherubicchristmasangelboy.
I am as proud and happy as a kite on a cloudless breezy day.

Happy New Year to you all.

＊⁂⁂⁑⁑ let it snow ⁑⁑⁂⁂＊

I'm wishing all of my friends a warm fuzzy love filled festive season.

May all of your wishes come true.

Thanks for all your concern and well wishes. I am fine.

Went to China, had a rotten time, couldn't face blogging

All of this will pass.

Back soon.

XXX

笇 Noodles and mountains here I come 笇

If you could be bothered to decipher the above diatribe you wouldn't gain much from it anyway. I have a huge pile of lists of things to do and the more I tick the more I add.

I can't even tell you about my work at the moment as it involves 75 amazing six year olds and I can't post photos or details of it just yet. Maybe when the project goes public. All I can say is it has been BRILLIANT and the kids were gorgeous. I learned so much and ALL their names and feel quite sad to wave them all off to the juniors. We did an incredible design project and I feel I can pull a proud face.

Then another flurry of secret squirrel activity involving illustration, books and publishing which I also can't divulge on the bloggo. Not until it gets to print. I've a million ideas under wraps....I just have to be quite discreet until things start to bear fruit. Hence my complete lack of information. I'm sure you understand. 

So, I have got nothing to show and nothing to tell but just thought I would fly in before I fly out again next week on my mission to China. I'm sure I'll have some show and tell then. 

My suitcase has hardly cooled down this year and I may as well have left it packed.

Quite excited but apparently unfazed. Bored of sitting at airports and God Bless the iPad. For without it I would be a lonely traveller. Next blog post might invoke noodles, mountains and humidity and from my freezing feet here in summery/wintery July that sounds like a plan.

❨❨ esprit de l' escalier ❩❩

Summer is racing through...I know I won't catch up with it now. Long days of snoozing and reading were de rigueur in India and now I am working hard and planning for my impending trip to China. I think it's going to be rainy season when I am there.

I really have no idea what to expect. 

I think I may love it. 

But first I am submerged in a great project in a wonderful school, spending my days with gorgeous bright sparky kids. Double gated securely in the middle of an Essex estate. I am having the time of my life. This is real. Real life. Real lives. Children with no precociousness and grubby shirts. I only see smiles and love, all day long. Kids and teachers. I could skip around the playground. And probably will at the end of term. I feel like the Pied Piper some days with straggles of little jumping Jacks and Jills following me to our studio.

I had such a strange moment this weekend, I came face to face with someone I really admire and completely lost all my speech faculties and felt such an idiot on reflection. The person in question was Jamie Oliver, a famous UK chef who has done so much work to change the way we eat here and made some very admirable efforts towards social change too. I got introduced to him at Feastival which was a great little festival set up by JO, lots of food and music on Clapham Common on a sunny day. If it is on next year, then please go if you are in the UK. Highly recommended. Friendly and interesting and 100% of the profits go to charity. I was there as a guest and very nice it was too. 

As the evening came to an end I found myself being introduced to J.O himself and having swigged a couple of cocktails I had been swaggering and bragging about what I would say to him if I got to meet him. 

After an introduction I warmly shook his hand and said Jamie, I'd like to thank you for three things, Red Thai Curry with Jasmine Rice in the 30 Minute Cookbook, School Dinners and your Ultimate Christmas Gravy. I also told him about the amazing project I am working on in schools and how I loved the School Dinners campaign and how it joins up to similar practises I share with my own students. Oh we had a proper tete a tete. 

In My Dreams.

REWIND<<

After being introduced I stood there racking my brains as to how to start a convo without sounding like an idiot, a simpering old woman or a crazy fan. My mouth opened and closed and Jamie, the gentleman that he is, smiled encouragingly and dear reader. I failed. So, on he moved without a backwards glance at what could have been the beginning of a lifelong collaboration in improving the lives of children and my culinary skills.

Can you hear that thwacking sound? That's me, kicking myself. 

Jamie, I came across as an idiot with a grin. I am sorry. Can we try again?

⧻ a letter from now ⧻

➛ open studios ➛

The day of the Royal wedding dawned and we forgot! Well, we had no tv, not much internet and the Kathmandu Post didn't have much to say about it. I'm guessing it was different for you whether you were Stateside or Blighty Bound. We were completely oblivious to that dress or that kiss or the ridiculousness of those hats; my girls in the studio have no idea who William and Kate are. They still don't. 

We'd planned a little open studio day. The girls picked flowers on their way through to work...a small mountain posy for our table. We had been making new stuff for weeks and wanted to show it off...the jewellery workshop next door was doing the same. I was nearing the end of my two month voluntary placement and it seemed like a good time to have a show. A kind of semi colon to my time here.

Here's how our studio looked and a sneak peek at some new products that will be making their way across the seas to be sold via an ethical fair trade company in the UK. 

We had piles of albums and notebooks that have all been handmade by the girls, all of the paper and materials are locally sourced in Kathmandu (not an easy feat at all) and I think they did a grand job and I felt like a proud mama. Sometimes, it's really hard to not dive in and say I'll do that when I see struggling fingers and hesitant hands but I resisted the urge as they'll have to continue producing this stuff without me watching over them. I'll just let the images do the work in this post. I am quite happy not to blather on for once.

I'll let you know in due course where the products can be bought to support the charity...

இ postcard from Nepal (rainy afternoon) இ

ᗗ saying a prayer for them ᗗ

Who am I to ask for prayers to be answered, for wishes to be granted?

I just add myself to a line of devotees and hope that some of their Godliness will stick. Their goodliness might brush shoulders with my sadness and form an apex of wishes granted?

Visiting Bouddhanath, site of many a pilgrim's dusty hopes and wishes, 

I joined the peace on a sunny,wide bluesky day. Tangled in an alleyway of seller's tatters I felt the calm, the sanctuary of my surroundings immediately.

What a beautiful place to spend an afternoon. 


With the eyes of higher beings on you the whole time.

Be Good, Be Good, Be God.

Walking around and around the giant stupa and ringing spinning bells in full fat sunshine, metal warmed by wishes and worn by wringing hands...


what goes around comes around


what comes around goes around


I go around again and watch the birds looping the loop and the whole circle,
the whole circus that this circle is, soothes me and I smile 
and it is returned again and again.

Everything moves here, flickers, dances, jumps, the flags leap and roll in the breeze, people circumnavigate, dust rolls from the  stupa, the eyes of an ever watchful God are fixed. I roll around and say out loud my prayers, are they like birthday wishes? They might have to be kept secret. 

I'm not tired of bunting, flags, blue skies or beautiful places yet. 

This place is a confirmation of joy.

And this one is for you, my lovely friends who inspire me, send me words of encouragement and  wonderful messages of hope and love, I thank you, I thank you and I am keeping the prayer flags flying. And I am keeping going and I am trying to live up to what you think I might be. I think I saw the eyes wink. 

⊙ The day they let me loose in a paper factory ⊙

Picture this? I'm being driven through Kathmandu in a taxi, seats furnished with bathroom mats and a very sweet, earnest driver, we swerve around school buses with drivers glassy eyed and leaning into mobile phones.
School girls with long once white woollen tights scatter across city highways, over shawled and over wrinkled old ladies wander through heavy traffic. 
Vehicles suddenly go into reverse and one way means actually any way you like?

everyone shrugs and moves over

this would enrage the British, the rules; what about the rules?

A surplus of sadness pills in my stomach, that life can be so fragile, that this is it...here we are, all leaning like dominoes on each others ability to think clearly, to move in turn, to skim over imminent disaster like rice rolling in an oiled pan 
no mans land:
no rules land

Oil and water, I dream of them, I'm inhaling dust here,

this airless, dirtbowl of a city,

my feet are cracking open and I have callouses on my toe pads

I'm becoming old before I'm ready

the dust settling into my lines and widening the cracks,

the thinning and drying of skin and surface whilst everything still boils and rages underneath

I am still a volcano

I reach up and out and in

over and over

feet grinding into ground that could tilt into an emergency

I'm holding on to the sides of my yoga mat in a rush of electrical storm

in a gale of thunder cracks and dry lightening

evening storms canter around the valley like dice in a cup

drying up

rolling up
spitting me out at dawn

wide awake, I recognise a cuckoo's song;

it's Springtime in Kathmandu

I'm here, I'm here

I dream of an oasis, a sea, a pool? a wetness that isn't here

I'm landlocked

I never felt so far from the quench

We survive the journey to the paper factory on a bus racing 
car chasing, 
motorbike ricocheting 
piece of road, 
"the factory highway "

Lots of industry gathered in one place, 
past the Rose Garden Restaurant and the lone petrol pump.. 

I enter through the grey gates held open by a small walk on character part Nepali

verging on the role of oriental doorkeeper of some exotic brothel, a twinkle in his toes

a query in his eyes? He should be in the movies...He is in mine.

And I'm in the paper factory, a huge hanger of a building

Wide open at each end and tables in the murky dark with workers all masked

breathing in paper dust all day. 

I'm glad to see a kitchen, lunch being prepared for workers, this isn't a sweat shop

this is a good business here.

A sign proclaims they do not employ children.


The production manager is a sweetheart, he indulges my over excitement and lets me roam the factory sighing and distracting his workers. I am spoiled, suffocated by choice, overwhelmed by colour combos and size and weight and colour.

I'm here to buy paper for book covers, these are the sewn book blocks that I have taught the girls to make. And below is the first stack that I dare to rifle through. It's too much, even for me who likes nothing more than fanning through reams of print and colour.

It's everywhere, piled high, a laundry of assorted flora.

Giant carnations of pink chrysanthemum, I am high on giant dry flowers.

The garden is the dyeing department, a dip into green then a spreading and a sunbathe.

The paper die cutting department, located in a leaning shed...a huge press and these paper dies looking like architectural room plans. I'm in love with their lines, their ability to cut precise sharp creases. The kiss of paper, the hiss of press.

And ladies applying dots of colour to boxes, labouring under a rare sunbeam that spotlights spots in the dreary dark.

These last sheets are some of my buying decisions. 

They are already attached to books...drying now in the quiet studio.

Here I am
Coating myself in ointments and creams
exporting paper reams and dreams of the sea.

Δ I'm always "square pegs in round holes" Δ

It's been a long time since I've been home. I keep wondering what it will feel like to walk on through into my space, the neglected air of the unlived in life. The unbreathed in or out of rooms. I think of my children, my bed, that dog, a fire in a stove and a garden happening without my daily examination of it. Does it even exist if I'm not there to prod it? 

And I mentioned the other day about 'going back' and someone very rightly pointed out that it's not Going Back at all. It will still be going forward. None of us are ever going back. So, a little home nausea creeps in but it's there to remind me that somewhere there, is a place where the wind will whistle out of my aching bones. 

I will find the dreamed about hum of silence.

Kathmandu is noisy. India is deafening. Asia is chaotic. 

My home page home surrounded with its thick traffic noise absorbing hedge is almost unearthly quiet. The noisiest thing is the dawn chorus which used to wake me up dawnly and dutifully as the birds sang the day into life. Here in Nepal there is the usual competition between dogs, the boys school next door, which sees the arrival of pupils around 6 am whereupon they beat the rhythm of a football against a half built, half concrete, half bamboo scaffold. Like a steady shot of stutter, the bouncing ball rolls through to my subconscious and lets me know it's time. 

Time to get up, sit, meditate, find a small corner to unroll a skimpy little yoga mat and do the one thing that makes everywhere feel like home. Reaching up and out and in. Coming home every morning. Going Back? Never.

The other constant colour in my life is the print studio. A solemn concentrated walk away. I have to be fully aware and intent on traffic, potholes, dead things and the strangely ugly but endearing, one eared half dead dog that almost wishes me a Good Morning as we meet each other's eyes. He sits and he sits. Blinking into the dust, the exhaust, the weary brick lined streets.

I scoot across the crossroads where the road has been dug up more times than I can remember and I've only been here a month. No health and safety, no signs, no cordons. Just a hole. 

In the middle of the road. 

Big enough to swallow a motor bike and several passengers.

If you fall in it, it's your fault. 

It's refreshingly non nanny state but there must be a happy medium.

This isn't it.

I turn left at this marigold and enter the art centre where we have a print and binding studio. I have started to try to make it a more inspiring place. Fill it with spring leaps of colour. The joy is already in here. Bouncing from the walls like the eternal football. It just needs a touch of illustrating.

The deaf young people I work with are bubbling over with enthusiasm and sweetness. We greet with a traditional Namaste, hands in prayer and then they rush me for a hug and I love them then for their simple faith in me and that we're going to have a great day together. Cutting, sewing, measuring, glueing. Smiling, signing, even singing, one girl sings a tuneless song under her breath, it is the soundtrack in here. It's comforting. Like Nepali tea made from milk bought in a plastic bag.

The girls travel for an hour to get to the print studio, they live out of town, in rural places and they trickle in to work by microbus. A jam packed bench seated small truck. They pick small plants on their way to the bus stop through the rural landscape and bring them to the studio and we print them. They were using dark indigos and clarets but I'm trying to encourage a bit of experimenting with colour and thanks to a very generous and kind offer of some new ink from Chocolate Girl we got a delivery from FedEx of some white stay open ink. This will hopefully open out our palette into a new spectrum and we can't wait to get mixing and cooking up a feast of colour. Thanks to the generosity of previous sponsors, we have a small table top etching press which we use to make these monoprints of plants...And I, in turn, have been turning them into rubber stamps to ease up the process.

The studio is a bit basic and thanks to the Power Problems we have here i.e intermittent supply = no water. If there is no power, then there is no water as it needs a pump to operate. The only water supply is in the loos anyway so we installed our own sink and water supply. I think this might be considered luxurious around these parts. It is poor. It is basic but we make a do. 
I don't think I could ever moan about my cramped, packed to the rafters workspace ever again. This is my challenge here. It's hard running a print studio with very basic supplies and even if we could afford them, the specialist items aren't available here in Kathmandu. 

So far, I've become a teacher of bookbinding, a guide for printmaking, a creative force, a reader of faces and body language and I'm learning Nepalese sign language. I think I can say for the first time I am spinning on newly oiled and slick machinery. 
But I have to say that out loud to believe it. 
And no-one to hear me but me.

During the last four weeks, we've moved to a new studio and I've been painting out a wall full of dark uninspiring emo graffiti with the aid of a table and a bamboo ladder. I've taught two new book structures, had days of printing sessions and lots of quality control. I've also got a desk full of hand-carved (by me) printing blocks to make this year's Christmas card. I've designed a new catalogue and am in the midst of the charity newsletter. Not much time to bruise and ponder. Just as I thought. A more thoughtful me is emerging. Not necessarily kinder but lazier to leap. But towards these hesitant hands, eager eyes and half closed sea shells of ears I feel an ocean of kindness, a rush of tenderness for difficult lives and fuzzy round the edges futures.