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December 22, 2005

Season's greetings

So its this time of the year again and for us it is a regular Christmas in tropics.. And the regular complaint is that it is very difficult to feel the Christmas spirit here, when its so sunny and hot. Luckily this time we had some of our dear friends coming over to taste some glöggi (hot mulled wine) and we even got some presents!!

We're packing up and leaving for Lombok in Indonesia tomorrow and today is my very hectic last day at work (there was a short circuit in our school, so all the electricity went off in school, this is why I have a minute to spare updating my blog while sitting in the library)

After the holiday we're moving to the staff apartments, so there's a whole new chapter of our lives ahead - packing up again, escaping noise, moving east to the suburbs just about to unfold in front of us (and you through this blog :).. Stay tuned!!

Posted by gkligyte at 10:17 AM

December 11, 2005

Tie & die

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I just realized that the happiest hours of my life these days are the 4 weekly hours spent in the printshop. Its been 3 weeks since I asked to understudy Textile Decoration subject offered to fashion design students in our school. We just finished doing tie & dye and will move to batik and silkprint soon. For 3 weeks I came to work every Friday in the morning & spent happy 4 hours playing with colours, experimenting with different ways to fold fabric, stitching, etc..

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I don't really know why it makes me so happy and why I keep thinking about it the whole week (Kaj has been getting upset with my evening "homework" sessions, because I'd stay up late and make reflections on his TV screen from the table lamp :) It must be some kind of combination of happiness brought by manual labour, sense of play and seeing unexpected results unfolding in front of you. And no pressure, nobody questioning anything, plus a completely unproductive way to spend time.. :) It somehow brought me back the memories of childhood of picking berries or doing smth equally mindless, when your imagination can travel to places and worlds you've never been before.. It is also a very social thing to do. Everyone around the table is doing things not requiring too much brain, so there's always some funny conversations going on.. A cool way to get more insight into the students' lives.. :) Plus you can watch other people's results, praise each other and learn new things.. It is just so SANE thing to do. How could i make a living out of something like that?!?

Unexpected connection - aparently tie & die is a very refined craft in Japan, called Shibori. It was nice to try some of the Japanese ways of folding the fabric, as I still think that much of my recent sanity has beeen brought about by the trip to Japan. Ever since I came back from there, I'm feeling much more curious and inspired!

The construction noise outside our windows is getting worse and worse. We tried sleeping in the small bedroom (where the windows are facing the street) this weekend, as they start making noise at 8am on Saturdays and Sundays. I had some glorious night sleep, while Kaj couldn't sleep because the room was too small and the aircon was blowing too strong and the curtains were not dark enough.. Anyway, we're moving back to the big bedroom.. And nothing we can really do about this situation - but we're moving to the TP staff apartments in January!

Posted by gkligyte at 02:42 PM | Comments (2)