still here...

I had no idea that it was so long ago that I last blogged. I mean I knew it was a while, but 5 months. that is shocking.

So what have I been up to in that time? Hopefully you will believe that I have been busy, there has to be something to show for all this time, right?

KTAA has monopolised a large chunk of my time. As president, I am involved in quite a bit of PR type work for the group, helping to put the name out there. I also have the day to day type admin of the group to coordinate,but I have a wonderful committee who work very hard so that I can have a great organisation to do the PR for.

We have continued to hold our monthly meetings. December was all about Feed sack quilts. One of our members, C, has a collection of these little beauties, and put together a talk about them. Sadly she ended up travelling, so I had to present it for her. It is a fascinating story, and so good that America woke up to the importance of these items in their quilting history. One of the best aspects of this was to discover that C has not only been collecting the sacks, but is making quilts with them. she doesn't believe in just building up a stash and doing nothing with them. brilliant.

January's meeting was a talk about African Textiles from John Gillow. We flew him out from the UK, complete with a large supply of samples, and he talked us on a guided tour of Africa for a couple of hours. He was also able to meet Sheika Altaf at Sadu House again. he visited Kuwait a few years ago and assisted with a book and the permanent display at Sadu House.
February saw us holding a Kuwait themed evening. In this month the Kuwaitis celebrate both their National Day and Liberation Day, so we thought it appropriate to invite Ali Al Sulaiman, one of only 2 remaining traditional bisht makers in Kuwait to come to talk to us about his work. We were lucky also to secure the services of Dr Ali Al Najadah to act as translator and to help fill in any gaps for us. A bisht is a long garment worn by men over their dishdashas for prestige and on special occasions. If you have ever seen a picture of the Emir of Kuwait in the papers or on TV, he always wears a bisht, usually black with gold embroider around the neck. They can range from the lightest open weave to heavier warmer weaves, and are therefore able to be worn all year. The gold embroidery (zari) is worked to order by a team of male embroiderers. When finished, the embroidery is pounded with a heavy metal rod over a padded base to flatten the threads and to burnish them.
March gave us the opportunity to hear about the career of Dr Keireine Canavan, Programme Director at Cardiff School of Art and Design at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff. We are lucky that in this instance we didn't have to fly her over as her family are here anyway and she was visiting them.
And then this month, last night actually, we arranged a private viewing for the KTAA of an exhibition of Costumes from the Arab world. this exhibition was organised by the Tareq Rajab museum in Kuwait. All the costumes, about 100, came from the Rajab's private collection, which holds about 5,000 items, and is the largest private collection of Arab costume in the world. The most difficult part of organising the exhibition was choosing what to display. The real treat of the evening was that for us, they removed the barrier, gave us white gloves and we were allowed to handle the clothing. We had a brilliant evening, being able to handle the dresses and see the embroidery up close has added a huge amount to our knowledge, and we are aware of just how huge and amazing a privilege this was.

So that is a brief up to now for the KTAA. Next up is our end of year exhibition, followed swiftly by our agm and final meeting of the year. this one I can really relax on, as it will be show and tell from the group of our ladies who recently visited South Africa. KTAA organises overseas textile based trips every year, and this time they travelled around the Drakensburg mountains and Johannesburg. I am green with envy as I was unable to go with them and they all had a brilliant time. so I am busy with organising the exhibition and the agm and finishing up work to enter for the exhibition.

I spent yesterday with Zain, a telecommunications company in the middle east. they were celebrating Earth day, and held a photo competition and asked KTAA to hold a mini exhibition of re-usable carrier bags. The organiser had visited UK last summer just when Anya Hindmarsh was launching the 'I'm not a plastic bag' campaign, and decided it was something to bring to Kuwait. I challenged members to make re-usable bags out of recycled materials. We had some great entries. To my surprise, I was invited to help cut the ribbon to open the photo exhibition - now that's a first!

Aside from that, my C&G tutor, Sian, is possibly relieved that I have breathed new life into my coursework efforts. this is largely down to a fellow student who lives in Australia. We have decided to try and give each other an electronic kick up the backside, and help each other work through the assignments. I think we can do it, but just at the moment, I am a little busy with finishing work off - see above.

Kuwait has been lovely for the past few weeks in amongst the dust storms. Not too warm, not too humid. flowers all in bloom. We did have a fairly dramatic storm a week or so ago. At first it seemed like a standard dust storm, but then it intensified, and was followed in by hail and mini tornadoes. Apparantly most unusual, but I've seen one photo of hail stones 9 inches deep around a car. Kuwait doesn't do hail. some of our friends were unfortunately out in the desert when the storm hit. they had a couple of car windows broken, and the back and one side of the car taken down to bare metal. not good.

As and when I get photos in for all of this I will add them, and will try to do better at posting more regularly, yes I will!!!

pictures at last of my holiday in Damascus

On our first day in Damascus, we staggered off to the souk and the grand Mosque to find a guide for the duration. Walking through the souk was wonderful - busy, with real people going about their everyday shopping, not just tourists like us. This window was on the first floor, and as soon as they saw me take a photo, they sent a runner to take us through some dingy doorway you would never have found on your own, and up the stairs to the shop, which was tiny and absolutely packed with textiles - clothing and hangings and cloths and runners, and jewellery and knick knacks. it was lovely, but very expensive, apparently the fault of the Italians who have a habit of paying what they ask instead of haggling. No offence intended, just reporting it.

At the end of the main drag through the souk - there are lots of side streets so you could wander round in there for weeks! - you go through this archway into a square. The arch is Roman, and part of the original temple. As you can see, there is very much a waste not want not feeling here, one perfectly good arch, why knock it down?!!



These next four pictures are inside the courtyard of the grand mosque, showing some of the roman mosaics, and the little kiosks. I say little, but you can tell by the people the scale of the place is not on the little side of things!

2nd KTAA meeting

We had a truly wonderful evening on October 23rd. The theme was an invitation to an Indian wedding, and we had a traditional dancer, music, food,stunning costumes, jewellery and shoes, incense, henna painting, bangle making, shawls and the most brilliant mandap, which is the support and canopy which they perform the wedding ceremony under, and over 130 people came along to join in the fun - some dressed in Indian costume. I have been waiting to see if I can get hold of some pictures, as I was so busy I did not have time to take any myself, but so far none have come through, so I will post this and then add pictures when I get some.

I don't know about most of you, but India in general, and Indian weddings in particular, is something I actually know very little about. I mean, I know where it is, but know very little about the geography of the country, where all these regions that we hear about are in relation to each other and on the map. So I found this a real eye opener on a lot of levels. The rituals vary from region to region, caste to caste, religion to religion. There are the beautiful saris that we all know, and the shalwar kameez, and then there is the ghagra choli and ghagra lehenga sharara, another whole range of tops and skirts with veils or shawls, heavily embroidered and beaded which is the direction the wedding outfits are taking. We pulled a lady from the audience and showed everyone how to put a sari on properly. I had several Indian ladies in the audience from different regions, so they were put on the spot and asked to fill in details which I had not been able to find.
They have pre wedding ceremonies, wedding ceremonies - incidentally it is becoming more common to have the party first and then the actual binding ceremony, and also post wedding ceremonies.
A store here called the Indian Heritage Centre provided everything for for the evening for us, except the dancer (who is 14 years old, has been learning the dances for 8 years, and has been taught at the Nritta Dhyana school of Indian Classical dance here in kuwait.) They did a cracking job, and have won another tranche of customers from the KTAA. They even provided raffle prizes and, in something of a coup, discount cards for all KTAA members. All in all, a truly wonderful evening.

In which 3 go on holiday - at last

Phew, what a month this has been! every day life here in kuwait is affected hugely by Ramadan, when Muslims fast during the hours of daylight. It is held in the 9th month of their calendar, which is lunar based and therefore the date changes every year, and lasts for the duration of a lunar cycle. The observation of the fasting is one of the 5 pillars of Islam, and taken very seriously. All restaurants and cafes are closed, and eating and drinking in public for non muslims is also strictly forbidden. The offices and shops also operate on different hours, and schools and offices start later. This means that le tout Kuwait is trying to get somewhere at the same time in the morning, rather than spread over 3 or so hours. It is a nightmare. a 15 minute journey took me 2 and 1/2 hours the other day.
However, there are a few good things. The aforementioned late start means getting up an hour later - bliss - I am NOT good at 6am! In the afternoon, every one goes home to pray, take a siesta, and to conserve energy and get ready for dusk when they can break their fast. The afternoons and until dusk is like driving in a ghost town, wonderfully empty roads, but definitely spooky. also dangerous, because the few drivers there are tend to ignore traffic lights....
The breaking of the fast at dusk traditionally involves eating 2 or 3 dates - for sugar presumably and drinking a yoghurt type drink called laban - it's a bit like activia. Then prayers and then they head out for Iftar - literally the breakfast meal, as in break fast. And it is a feast. And from then on the streets are gridlocked, as everyone, but everyone is going to visit family and friends to celebrate. All night. Some don't make it to bed before going to work the next morning.
The end of Ramadan is marked by an Eid (pronounced eed), a holiday lasting 3 days officially, and for some much longer.The first call to prayers on the morning of the start of Eid goes on for about 30 minutes - usually they last less than a minute. In kuwait most people go away for the Eid, and for several weeks before hand will have been discussing where they are planning to go. There are a limited number of flights out of the country on any one day, so they get booked up to popular destinations very quickly. In order to get to somewhere nice, you have to put up with the airport first. a tall order, but you just keep thinking of the destination.
We, dh, daughter and me, went to Damascus for the Eid. We had originally planned to go in March, but because my dh is in the military, our visas did not come through in time for us to go then. They are valid for 3 months, so when they came through in april, it took a quick visit in uniform to convince them to let them remain valid til Eid.
The airport was every bit as crowded and evil as predicted, but we got into a line and waited, and then when we got to the counter, they did not have our reservation. Dh had to go and buy 3 more tickets to get to Damascus - thank goodness they had some, and then try to get return ones, which they had no more of for the date we wanted, so we had to have an extra day. Shame I hear you cry! Whilst booking those, they found our return details on a totally spurious date two days before we were leaving kuwait - amazing!
We did get on the plane, but it got held up with a technical problem for half an hour. We were unofficially entertained by a poor stewardess having to maintain good manners and customer relations with a passenger who was being an absolute pain in the ****.
I don't know about Syria being one of the 'axis of evil' countries, and I'm not about to enter into political debate about it, but the Syrians are some of the friendliest people I have ever met. Damascus is the oldest city in constant inhabitation in the world. It has some of the most beautiful old buildings, a real mix of eras including Roman ruins incorporated into them. There is a tradition of painted wooden ceilings from late 17th century for a couple of hundred years, and of course some fabulous textiles.
We stayed at the Sheraton, which was...the Sheraton, but a good base. We spent the first day exploring, and went to the souk and the Grand Mosque. Originally Roman and a christian church, the Muslims simply annexed it, removed the altar, and it became a mosque. This is apparently a very commonplace occurrence throughout this region.
I am trying to post some photos but my computer is running on another agenda!

KTAA first meeting

We finally got the 2007/08 season underway with our first meeting on Tuesday night. It was held at Sadu House, and we had about 50-60 people turn up, plus another 45 or so from another group who were meeting on the same night and came along to see what we were all about. Once I had stopped feeling ill with worry, I really enjoyed myself.

We had plenty of time first for people to look around Sadu house, and for some it was their first visit, and to renew their membership, and then I had to do my bit and welcome everyone. I don't think I managed to insult anyone - haven't been told of any complete cock ups anyway, so fingers crossed I got away with it! Sheika Altaf then did a small talk about how she came to be involved with the start of the KTAA in 1994, when just 6 people got together because they were interested in weaving..... something about little acorns springs to mind here. Once we had got all that out of the way, we got onto the interesting stuff and had a show and tell. I started the ball rolling by showing the little beaded doll brooches I'd got at the quilt festival in Birmingham made by the South African children whose parent(s) had died from Aids. We had jackets from south China, a throw from Peru, a hand embroidered table cloth, a mirror cover from Uzbekistan, a drape to cover bed linen also from Uzbekistan, both very old pieces, a rug from Morocco, a couple of quilts, and a painted wall hanging from India. I'm sure there were more, but my mind has gone blank - I don't think there were any cuddly toys or microwaves! And crawling all over the place, were the ubiquitous press photographers that come to all manner of events in kuwait. every time I looked up there was another telephoto lense up my left nostril! So no surprises for guessing that a couple of days later we were in the paper. And again today. Hey ho, no peace for the wicked!!
Just in case Sian is reading this, I have been slowly progressing with some course work, doing some weaving samples, and rubbings from them, and about to start playing with colour studies. that should get me off the hook for a couple of minutes anyway! I actually spent this afternoon making a couple of pieces of quilting. Our quilt group here has gone back to basics as we have a lot of new members, and we have been given a Kaleidoscope pattern to make up.

I also had a go at the disappearing nine patch as demonstrated by Helen on her blog a couple of months ago.
It is so much fun to do, and looks far more complicated than it is, which is always good value.

tomorrow is our Monday equivalent, so back to work, and for me that is a trip to the fabric souk with some new members tomorrow morning, and then out to the British Business Forum introduction to Kuwait evening at the Hilton resort. should be fun.

summer holidays part two....

So having taken on the floods, the traffic and the emergency services, got to my friends wedding, and out again, I collected my daughter, and battled my way out to Birmingham airport, from where we flew to Scotland to join my dh and stepson. We had a fantastic week on the west coast, not far from Tarbert. Glorious sunshine, lots of playing about in the water, barbecues and chilling with friends. It is a beautiful place to visit.
My thoughts and prayers though remain with the thousands of people who were affected by the floods, not only in this area, but in the north west as well. their lives have been devastated, and it will be many months before they experience something like normality again.
From Scotland, we flew to spain, and spent 2 more fantatic weeks relaxing in the sunshine, and playing in the pool. We visited the aquarium at Valencia one day, and drove miles around some pretty precarious hilly tracks (roads is too dignified) on another, seeing some fantastic scenery on the way, ate some great tapas, drank lots of tinto verrano, (my spanish drink) and read the entire library of books in the villa. 6 if you're interested.
When we came back from Spain, we dropped my daughter back with her father, my stepson back with his mother, and then dh and I departed next day for Budapest. This city comes highly recommended. easy to get around, with buses, trams, metro and trolleybuses. plenty to see and do, some great restaurants, and shamefully, they speak pretty immaculate english. to be fair though, Hungarian is one of the most impenetrable languages in the world. We had 4 wonderful days there, filled with wonderful things to do, including the ethnography museum filled with beautiful folk costumes from the different regions and classes of the country from 100 years ago. sorry, no photos, my camera battery died. Dh then returned to Kuwait, and I headed to Birmingham for the last 2 days of IFQ at the NEC.

What a treat the IFQ was. I know that many of you visited for at least one day, and like me were absolutely blown away by it all. I caught up with Maggie Grey on the WOW stand, and with Angie Hughes of Ledbury Art Place, and met Ruth Isset at long last. I was there with the Faces of Arabia stand from Kuwait. You will have seen some of the quilts previously on this blog, but this one was new. and he would have pretty much stopped you in your tracks as you walked past our stand.
He is by Jenny Bowker, Australian quilter, and the lady who came to judge our show in May. We invited her to submit a quilt to show with ours at Birmingham.


However, the star of the show as far as we were concerned was our own Paramjeet Bawa. she took up quilting 5 years ago, and was persuaded to enter one of her quilts, called 'Duststorm', into the pictorial competition. She was placed second, won the amateur award, the best use of colour award, and the judges award. We later found out that she had also won the viewers choice award. the quilt then went to Houston, and today, Paramjeet has found out that it received an honourable mention there. Are we proud bunnies or what?!!! For those of you who didn't make it to the show, or didn't see it, here it is:

















There followed a week of visiting friends, travelling the length and breadth of the country, before returning to Ledbury, and a 21/2 day workshop with Angie Hughes. Now that is the way to finish a holiday, well nearly. there were 4 of us, in the heat of a proper summers weekend playing, sorry, working with mixed media, and having so much fun. I will add photos to this when I get my work back from the art teacher I have lent it to. The Ledbury Art place offers all sorts of wonderful workshops throughout the year, but this was the first time I have been able to fit one in.

My last textile trip of the holidays was to the Forge Mill Needle museum in Redditch to see the finalists in the Charles Henry Foyle Trust competition. The winner Karin Millson, lives in the Middle East, and has just finished a C&G level 3 Diploma in design and stitched textiles with Sian Martin and Distant Stitch. (the same course I am on). The pieces was a hanging, and was a very clear winner. Congratulations to Karin.

So anyway, that is why I have been out of contact for so long, promise not to let it be so long til the next post. Now I am concentrating on the first meeting of the KTAA, but more of that next post.

so how did you spend your summer....?

I flew into Heathrow on Friday July 19th. Nothing personal to anyone for whom its a special day, but for me, just another ordinary day. Not so. My plane was held circling over Chatham docks for an hour, in the thunderstorms - nice! NOT. And then, once we landed, there was so much rain on the ground that they could neither pull planes back nor dock newly landed ones, so we sat in said plane for 2 long hours waiting. Eventually docked and allowed off, it then took another hour for our luggage to get to us. by this time, I was beginning to lose my sense of perspective.... but the day wasn't finished with me yet. oh no! I picked up my hire car from a very friendly girl at Avis, who asked where I was travelling to and when I said Gloucestershire, warned me the M4 was a bit busy.
Are you with me yet? have you connected the date with anything? No? read on. It took me 3 hours to get to Chievley (?) services, and then another 6 to get as far as Cheltenham. I started picking up traffic news of torrential rain and flooding in the gloucestershire/worcestershire area, but hey, I've lived in the area for years, it always floods there, what was the problem this time? By the time I reached Cheltenham I finally decided that I had had enough. It was 2:30am, I had had nothing to eat or drink since the lunch on the plane, and I was tired. Looking around I found I was inching past a Catholic church, and decided I would take protection from any source available. I pulled in and managed 2-3 hours sleep in the car, (note to fellow car hirers, Renault Clios, while excellent cars in many ways, are not comfortable for sleeping in) before resuming my journey (ha).
After inching along for another few miles, I found a garage which had stayed open all night to look after stranded motorists - mega kudos - the poor chap was worried he would be sacked for not doing his paperwork. the fact that he had taken a months worth of money in one night should have been something in his favour, I hope so anyway. Back on the road again, it took another 3 hours to get onto the motorway which was pretty empty of moving vehicles, but the hard shoulder was chock full of abandoned ones, and I mean abandoned. cars at every angle you can imagine. It looked like one of those armageddon type movies.
reached Tewkesbury, nearly my destination, pulled off the motorway, drove about a mile down the road and stopped. A man was moving slowly from car to car, and when he got to me, told me I couldn't get through that way as there was 5 feet of water on the main street. OK. even I know my limitations, and walking, or driving on water is not my strong suit. He asked me where I was going, and when I told him Twynning, he replied "Not a cat in hell's chance". I had just been travelling for 30 hours at this stage, through what could be called an unpleasant experience, and I was not about to be beaten by a little water. but I was tired. so I rested my head on my steering wheel for a second. At which, this darling man turned into a modern day Sir Galahad, told me to park on the verge and come and let his wife make me a nice cup of tea. So I did, and she did, and their daughter made me some toast, and thus fortified, I headed back to the motorway and down to the M50 junction.
Why, I hear you ask, was I trying to get to Twynning? My dear friend Su was getting married at midday there, that's why. She even phoned the local radio station asking if anyone had a 4 wheel drive, or a tractor, or a boat to help get her from Worcester to Twynning. I spent a slightly damp but otherwise surprisingly pleasant couple of hours hanging around at the entrance to the M50, chatting to the slowly increasing number of people wanting to get to Twynning. At about 10:30am, we were all discussing amongst ourselves why we wanted to get there, and when I said for my friends wedding, one of the emergency guys butted in and asked if that was the one on the radio. When I said yes, he got straight on the phone, and while it might be totally unconnected, we were taken down to the junction for Twynning in convoy within the half hour. So I got there. As for the bride, no one answered her SOS, so she drove her and her mum herself. they did fine until they got stopped in a line of traffic in one of the villages on the way. they had 7inches of water on the road, not dangerous like some places, but the police were restricting the traffic to one car at a time in alternate directions. Su's mum got out of the car, walked down to the police man and explained that her daughter was getting married in half an hour and it could take them that long to get through. the police man said what the one on the radio, and then, it was like one of those feel good movies, the police man called to his mate at the other end of the flood and told him to stop all vehicles from his end, as there was a special one coming through from this end, Su got waved on, everyone was singing here comes the bride and tooting horns, and she got to the wedding on time. Hooray! And this is the happy bride, groom and family.