Holiday Sketchbook

I recently went on an interesting trip with a friend Rita, my sister Sonia and my brother Julian.   We flew to Singapore and then sailed on a cruise ship across to Phuket in Thailand, on to Colombo, Sri Lanka and then up the side of India visiting Goa, Kochin and Mumbai.  we then crossed the Arabian Gulf to visit Muskat, in Oman and Dubai and Abu Dhabi where we stayed for two nights before flying home.

What a journey visiting 6 countries and boy it was hot!  I challenged the girls to keeping a simple journal with photos, ephemera, notes and anything else we fancied. We found it very hard keeping up as when we were not touring, we were either tired or busy on the ship.

When I had a moment I tried to do some simple drawings with pen and watercolour. These pages  were of the costumes of the beautiful dancers who greeted the ship in Colombo.

We decorated the pages to add interest and record the colours of the  region. This was a photo of a statue in a church in Kochin India.

A sketch of the jungle at the Spice farm which we visited in Goa.  MMMM  Was it here that I picked up the bug which gave me the runs for 8 days!!!

It was a brilliant day though.

There was not much time for stitch but I tried to recreate a ceiling design from a temple in Columbo.

I love the crinkle page edges.

This project took some time but made us look and observe more.  We now have a brilliant record of our trip, as I wrote up on some of the pages what we did and where we went.  There is enough material here for countless future projects and of course reliving our amazing jouney.

Despite the few health issues we had!!!

Cook Books and Cooking

When I named this blog I felt that I had to include some foody bits as the subject is never far from my thoughts and when I am involved in any textile endevors there is usually some sort of cake calling to me.

I do have a weakness for cakes and pour over my many cookery books, though tend to cook straightforward recipes most of the time.  All of my books have little slips of paper sticking out with all the recipes I am going to make someday, and I love to experiment. I tend to cook with lots of herbs and spices and love a good curry, especially when my sister Sonia cooks her South African lamb one. (Hint hint!). 

When I am feeling in the need of comfort, its to my cake books I go, and one of my favourites is "The Clandestine Cake Club"  by Lynn Hill.  The photographs are wonderful and so are all of the cakes I have made from this book.  The Clandestine Cake club are groups of people all over the country who make cakes to taste and share but don't know where they are going to meet until the last minute.  This club sounds like my idea of heaven, but my hips and thighs could not take the strain unfortunately!

I made the Cardamon, Rose and Rhubarb cake recently and will share the recipe in the next blog.

  As you can see I have quite a few cookery books. I am afraid this is not the lot as I have a few more dotted round the house as well, just in case I need sudden  inspiration.  It is easy to forget good recipes and  finding one again in a book is like hidden treasure. I nearly always write in my books, so I know when I liked something, or what went wrong.

Hand Made Books

One of the items which I designed last year and hope to make more of in the future is decorated notebooks or journals.  The covers are made with fabrics, paper and other materials such as lace, with added embroidery.  The pages are made of different types and weights of paper some of which have stamps, paint and other various marks on them. The papers have torn edges giving the books a shabby chic look.

There is a light theme for each book which could be taken as just decoration or used as a starting point and added to.

Even when using the same theme, each book is totally unique as I use what ever I have to hand and often what I have been working on.  The allium book used as an example is for sale in my Folksy shop and results from a body of work on that theme.  There are more Allium pieces to see in the gallery section, on my website at www. mariannemohandes.com.

Whimsical Little Knits

My shawl came from this little knitting book which I bought at The Knitting and Stitching Show in London.   There is website on the back, www.ysolda.com  for anyone who is interested.  As I only had one ball of wool I only did three rows of pattern on the edge.