Traveling Alone

I believe everyone should travel alone at least once in their life time.  As long as they don't look just through their eyes, but admire and see from their inquisitive minds and listen to their hearts.  You'll be pleasantly surprised of all the things you will find outside and inside.

I am looking out of my hotel window this morning, at Roses, Spain.  It's a town that lies around the sea and goes up to the surrounding hills.  It's very beautiful and serene here.  The walkway by the Mediterranean sea is laid with palm trees and the boats are docked nearby.  Then what just seemed to catch my eye - was life going normally - which I see everyday but never took a moment to watch it.  I saw a man was jogging; then came a woman walking with her child; a family of four strolling by the sea with the girl skipping in the front; an old couple walking; I saw 3 teenager boys walking with one bike talking to each other; a guy on a bike passed by; and then came 3 old men (2 with caps).  It was as if I was the "still" time observing the passing life :). It brought an 'ahaa' moment for me :) A moment of peace. 

Another thing that traveling alone does is - you tend to hear and talk to your thoughts.  You tend to feel everything around you.  One should take this time to look within.  Ah! A perfect time to quote Carl Gustav Jung:  “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”  So the more you awake, the more you live and understand the depth of all.  

Well, if I've inspired you to go out and travel - drop me a line :) ! I'll be happy to hear from you. 

The transformation

The tree has many forms and my journey to capture the movements might just keep continuing because I can't get enough of it. It's sort of crazy but I think I'm obsessed with Trees. :) 

This marks the second birth of the tree block. I'm so proud of the block carver who carved this for me, and I'm sorry that I made it so complicated for him. Hopefully he doesn't hate me too much. 

The Block Print journey

We've come a long way from day 1 of learning to carve the block, the tree as the muse, to the transformation of the tree to a garden. That sound like gibberish I know, but I just wanted to share the  journey of our wooden blocks. I started with a simple silhouette of a tree that stuck out to me in London while I was wandering the cold streets. And when I say wandering, I definitely wandered. I could walk the streets of London in my sleep if I had to. Anyways, this isn't about my amazing navigational skills, this is about the Tree. The beginning.

The colors laid out in natural colors from our environment - there's madder, turmeric, logwood, iron sulfate, and many more. I can't describe the moment of glory when our first imprint emerged from the dye bath. True peace.

Myanmar

Land of a gazillion temples. :) I exaggerate but there are a lot of bhudhist temples and budha statues. Each small city we visited had it's own charm and it's distinctive landscape as you can see from the pictures below. The pictures represent the peace we were able to take away with us, as well as the green tea! 

Inspirations

I'd like to share all the crazy patterns and colors we came across during our trip, not only in India but Myanmar as well. I'll upload more tomorrow! Enjoy!

Saturday Morning

India is great for still retaining the hand dyers, the printers, and the tailors. And working on Ichcha has brought into light how many things we can do for ourselves utilizing these great tools.  Like for example, most of the clothing for the wedding was designed by us and we were the ones running around getting things dyed. Multiple trips were taking to the hand dyer shop in the middle of chaos until we got the correct shade. The dress for the Haldi ceremony was printed at our Block printing community, making it it even more special. We chose the blocks and the placement of each mark. Here are a few pics I'd like to share of our dyeing extravaganza.

A new year

To being the new year, I'd like to recap our latest craft trip merged with a a big fat Indian wedding celebration. The wedding brought on with it, new clothes, family reunions, and loads of awesome new family members.

The trip started with our craze filled trip to old and new block printing facilities. Our trips never get old, something new always keeps us entertained. See for yourself!