A Painful encounter with health

So this last week I have been in the throes of pain. It feels so crippling. Cannot sit, cannot stand, cannot sleep comfortably, cannot bend, cannot walk. Its like a small part of my back can make life absolutely unbearable. Blood tests determined that I have vitamin B12 and D deficiency. My doctor also said be ready for x-rays, ortho visits because it could very well be something more sinister. My future work and travel plans feel so threatened right now. One whole week, I haven't touched clay and I can already feel my ideas slipping away, my chance at making my art.

But, I got a lot of time on my hands, which is a good thing. I was thinking up of challenges for the next few weeks for other clay artists. I sat and drew literally 5 minute drawings of what I can try to make. Squeezing in 5 minute stretches to strengthen my back while trying to find 15 minutes of sun for my vit D :). Reading self motivation articles and looking at ideas online.
 

With pain brought a realization that my body reacts to everything. The food we eat, the sun light we expose ourselves to, the exercises we do, the laughter we induce. My mind takes swipes at me sometimes, trying to rear ugly pictures of what I might have to give up, quickly followed by depressing thoughts, which I crawl out of, not alone, never by myself. I have found my anchors who help me rise up out of these dark thoughts. I have learnt to understand though, that I will do whatever it takes to stay happy and content, but that does not mean I don't have weaknesses or sadness. I give in to them occasionally with the hope that I will rise out of them a changed person. Only time will tell if I have grown stronger or weaker. 

P.S : Since then my back issues have reduced tremendously firstly due to my doctor's advice to bring my VIT levels up. Secondly to a year of Yoga that has not only made me stronger, more flexible but also thankful to my instructor for being a constant source of inspiration.  I want to continue yoga, when time permits. I only wish that don't become lazy again, due to this prolonged break from it. It's the year 2020 , where COVID 19 has wreaked havoc worldwide. 

<3 Rich

Leading up to Nepal

Yes my heartbeat still rises every time I think about this trip. It was my first real adventure , and you might find at times my writing a little muddled. Forgive me, its been very long since I got my thoughts in order.

Dates: 26- 30 Jan 2017 

It all began with ideas of two plans thrown at me together, Nepal or Rann of Kutchh. Now since I had already seen the Rann of Kutchh and also I couldn't manage two trips almost back to back, the choice was a no brainer. So the first question was popped around October 2016 and because I was a little unsure about it, I had to think about it. Part of it was money and the second part of it was an important life event about to occur around the same time. Most of my travel decisions have been split second ones, and somehow I have managed to see them through before I allow myself to change my mind about it. So I said yes and booked my flight the same evening and eventually got added to the group on Whatsapp. Whatsapp has been such a god sent gift in such cases and ofcourse smart phones  :).  

While researching flights, I had the flight option of the friend who invited me had given, but we were flying from different locations so obviously I had to do my own research, even if a little. All flights to Kathmandu fly via Delhi, that much was obvious from the first few searches. We had people choosing Air India, Jetairways, Royal Nepal and Indigo. People flew in from Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai and Delhi. I flew Indigo as it was the cheapest and gave me various time options to land into Delhi. I found mine at Rs 14900/- return fare. I think it helped that it was off peak season. Although as a warning be ready to spend a few hours at the airport! Was I glad I booked my flights so far apart, due to last minute airport closures and flight changes ( read delays).   

With the Air tickets booked, there were various other things to consider buying. Starting with a backback! Finally bought my proper trekking backpack from Wildcraft in one of the Christmas sales on Amazon. I encourage people, unless you find something better or cheaper in your local markets year-round, try and buy essentials from online websites during sale seasons, and believe me, they have plenty of them. After buying and selecting my bag, I also ask people to believe in pockets in a bag. Believe me when you don't have any, you keep having to remove all the things from the backpack after going on a torchlit search into a cave.

Step 3 was to buy some trekking shoes and here Decathlon came to my rescue. I went in to buy a pair of shoes and came away buying a water bottle for running, a pair of hand gloves, a future in mind look at what to buy and the pair of trekking shoes. Since this was my first time buying trekking shoes I didn't know what was the right type of shoe to buy and I called up a friend to help me out while choosing. The options include the type of shoes that are for basic trekking that involves not too much rough terrain, another that does the same with waterproofing and so on and so forth. As the shoes get more complicated they also get heavier! I tried on a pair of shoes that was 1/2 a Kg per foot. Suffice to say I couldn't move my legs at all and another first: to want to buy only 'girly' PINK shoes ( because they were lighter). After careful consideration I went for the simplest and cheapest Trekking shoes priced at the time at Rs 1399/-.  

Now onto the fourth, were clothes fit for lower temperatures. We were looking at a range from 2-10 degrees. I felt it best to layer up, like I used to do in the UK. I don't like thermals as are they are extremely itchy, but for those that can handle it.... there is nothing like thermals underneath your clothes especially in sub zero temperatures. I bought a few 3/4 sleeved t-shirts and a couple of tights. Obviously one of the main things was to stock up on Jackets and gloves and woolen socks!!! These on the whole would have been an expensive endeavour. So I did what any girl with strapped cash would do, Beg, Borrow and Steal!

Once you start packing and if you are anything like me, you will end up packing and repacking your stuff over and over again. I am not sure if I like packing or if it makes me nervous that I will for sure forget to carry my toothbrush!

<3 Rich

Belated memories!

I know this sounds extremely cliched, but I have traveled with my parents since I was a child and today its a full blown yearning almost every few weeks! It was a yearly ritual and it was possibly about the different food we got to eat but also about the sights we saw. Now my memory fails me when I try to remember the exact thing we did or place we saw, but there are some weird memories attached to almost all the trips we took. There was the one time when we went to Mount Abu and I remember that place specifically because I slept on my dad's lap in the bus enroute to Mount Abu and it got exceedingly cold as we got closer to it. Then I remember searching for food and all we got was a dingy little place at the roadside. I vividly remember as we sat amongst truck drivers and helpers and such and ate the tastiest Dal Baati with oodles of Ghee there!

Every trip of ours inculcated within us the idea of unity in diversity in India. It sounds such a text book phrase, but when you travel you learn to adapt and accept all the differences. That was the most important lesson we learnt. Since then ( my entire family - including my parents, my brother and me) we have traveled both within India and abroad. Me and my brother did it alone or with friends and my parents still travel together. We have tried our best to keep these memories intact with photographs. Earlier ones through a physical camera roll and negatives and then developing those into prints. Now we have our Point and shoot, and SLR digital cameras! I do have scanned copies of one of our older albums too from our first trip to Ooty!

This is just my way of introduction into writing about what I remember about my travel journeys thus far.

P.S: I finally bought a backpack for traveling

Richa 

Let's make some ghungroo danglers.

Making Ghungroos!

There is something I find very therapeutic about making and attaching ghungroos to a piece of jewellery. It is a very time consuming task, but it looks just oh-so-pretty once they all bunch together very nicely.You can give off a wave of satisfaction when everything is nice and ready. Personally I have sat and made about 500 ghunroos in one sitting.... for an earring, and by the end my fingers were sore but the earring glowed! Literally!

Material:

1. Ghungroo wire
2. 3mm beads
3. Round nosed pliers

Beads:
You will need some small sized beads, I recommend upto 4mm size only. Anything larger and they start making the entire piece of jewellery heavy and bulky. You can get away with it, if its a neck piece but in earrings its a make or break factor is usually weight.

Ghungroo wire:
This is small ball ended thin wire, usually made from a flexible metal like say copper.

Round Nosed Pliers:
We use this to make the loops of the finished piece even and rounded not to mention is gives a good grips when you have to make the loops.


Making Ghungroos

Take a ghungroo wire from the bunch, it has a ball end at both the ends so we need to cut it into half first and then use it as a ghungroo wire. Slide the bead into the wire so that it rests against the ball end of the wire.
Tug the open end of the wire to make sure that the ball end of the wire does not slip out of the bead. If for any reason the ball end slips out of the bead either take another bead with a smaller hole in it or add a seed bead at the ball end before you slide the actual bead in so that it acts at the end of the wire. Usually this method is used for bigger sized beads since their holes are correspondingly bigger. But remember if you use seed beads then use them in all so as to keep them looking the same, irrespective of the other bead holes.








Once the bead is in the wire use your round nosed pliers and place the ghungroos wire between the two prongs of the pliers. Press the pliers together so that the wire is caught in between and does not move. While it should essentially not move, do not put too much pressure on the wire because it might cause damage and eventually become weak and break. The wire should be placed in between the pliers closer to the bead ( as shown in the below picture), leaving a gap of 1-2mm between the pliers and the bead to allow for the first perpendicular loop to be placed.

Make a loop with the wire around ONE prong of the round nosed pliers. I use the forefinger of my left hand to hold the wire in place after this loop so that the wire does not budge and I can adjust the pressure of my hand simultaneously. I hold the pliers in my left hand and use my right to make the loops since I am right handed. It is most comfortable for me, please take your time to find what works for you.  

Once you have looped the wire around the pliers, now change direction and start moving the wire on top of the bead around the wire ( perpendicular to the loop around the pliers). So start making loops from the wire at the top of the bead , moving downwards onto the bead. Once you wrap the wire around the bead tuck the last bit of wire inwards with the back of your nail so that it does not stick out. Doing this not only gives a finished look, it also protects the wire from snagging in hair or clothes or poking into skin.

 I hope this makes your design a little more festive as I did mine!

~Sore hands
Richa

  

Making Jewellery is easy, but being a entrepreneur is not!!!!

While making jewellery itself is quite simple, one always needs to make an informed choice about it. Jewellery making stands on a three legged milk stool. I believe, and this is just my opinion , that most handmade jewellery fares low to high range based on these three main factors.

1. Innovation & Skill
2. Raw Material
3. Budget

INNOVATION

My reason for putting innovation on the top is, that creativity, artistic freedom everything stems from this one main point. If you want to try something new, you have to give it the extra push irrespective of money. One never escapes learning and what better way to understand your work than trials. You will need to be extra critical of your work, there is no two ways about that. If you want to learn and grow in designing handmade articles you must realise your own shortcomings and try to fix them. My shortfall is symmetry, how much ever I try, what people thinks look good, looks asymmetric to me and that's what I work on the most.

Important Note:
In the world of creativity, the term "inspiration" has been twisted into suiting people's needs. Ethics is too plays an important part of innovation. But if one must recreate, take the needed permissions and give credit to the original artist. Someday you might be someone's "inspiration" and get due credit as well. Do onto others what you would want done onto you. An idea is worth a lot more than it looks. I have faced ire at supposedly having "copied" someone's work (where in the idea was my own from almost a year ago which I revisited in a slightly different way). My page and I both suffered, its horrible because a public spat not only damages your image but definitely loses you clients. People take sides and it creates fodder for some others to reign on.

RAW MATERIALS

Since this forms the biggest part of your expenditure and savings, take utmost care while buying. There is nothing like buying from the source. Find a market nearest to you and buy material with money set aside from previous sales. It's an important reinvestment. Start with what you think is different , fits your budget and you can buy repeatedly if need be. Once you and your customers are comfortable with your material, start to upgrade to better material. for eg: start with buying acrylic beads  but aim to moving into glass beads and eventually semiprecious stones. The transition may be long or short, judge your own skills and customer demands and only then make a change to better material. But once at better material DONOT turn back. You can afford to keep a range from cheap to expensive only if you are a shop that caters to a variety of consumers, a handmade jewellery artist does not necessarily have that advantage.
I personally go to Mumbai, once a year and walk around the market scourging for new things and yes good quality things too. I need to start saving and putting aside money during the year to make this trip. It helps as well to meet the sellers, this helps build a rapport with them. If they know you, they are more willing to cater to your needs whenever you need help. They may even go out of their way to supply material to you.

Online sources are good for convenience ,but the draw back is that you cannot do a quality check from photos and sometimes is a risk, which you need to be ready for.
I once bought Rs 2000/- worth polymer clay online and it turned out to be bad and dry lot, since this was my very first investment it hurt a lot. I was a beginner and could not afford to have "bad" material to waste money on. I blacklisted that seller and had to buck up, refuse orders and lose money, both incoming and outgoing. Even today if my bill is over Rs1000/- from an online buyer, my heart starts pounding and reminding me of my bad experience. Now I only buy from reputed sellers even if they are a tad more expensive.

BUDGET

Once you are running a business (so to speak) money is an integral part of it. You have to assign budget for material, your time and designs and overheads like couriers or delivery, packaging, giftwrap, marketing, online selling cut, card payments or paypal commission,tools, stationary, exhibitions and sales etc. Everything today costs money, and it would do well to charge for your time accordingly as well. When you are designing for someone, it is the best practice to ask you client for their budget. It sounds rude, but you can only bear so many losses in trials. You can always go an extra little step to go beyond the expectations of your clients, and in turn gain their trust. You never know, you might end up as friends later! A new business needs time to set up, so expect slow sales in the beginning but start socialising for your business. It's marketing at grassroot level- word of mouth and needs less to no money. Once you have a footing in the market, invest in marketing , do exhibitions / pop up stalls/ promotional events.

Making some art
~Richa

P.S
I have an upcoming Jewellery making workshop in Pune, India
follow the event link below for info.

https://www.facebook.com/events/527651930754926

Simplyfying the findings- Earrings!

We have loads to do, so pull back your sleeves and let's dive into more Jewellery making theory- earrings!

Findings are basically all the little bits and bobs you need to make beads or collection of beads into Jewellery.  They can really be itty bitty to really humongous things.Findings help not only to create a piece, but at most times is essential to the over all look of the jewellery. So excluding beads you will see a lot of information, and for ease of understanding I have split them into parts, starting with earrings.

knotted headpin
Image source : google

PINS/ WIRE

Pins form the spine to any design, so it can be bent-straight, long-short.
The Pins can be thick, thin depending on the gauge (scale of measurement) of the wire used. The gauge number decreases as the thickness of the wire increases. It can be expensive or cheap, again depending on the metal used. The colour of the finish also changes according to the metal, For example: silver finish pins need not necessarily be made from silver metal, it is a silver coloured metal or are sprayed with a silver metallic finish. Usually we coordinate the colour/ finish with the rest of the design.

l-r : Eye pins, Headpins
Image source : google

1. Heads Pins: They are like the name says, they have a head at one end just like a nail, and the other end is open. The most easy to find and widely used are flat heads.However, to kick things up a notch designers also use ball shaped and or decorative heads, you can even bend wire into knots and make it into a head pin. This is one of the basic elements that one would require to invest in. They are largely used in earrings or closed end danglers. The usage may dictate what kind of Head pins you buy.

2. Eye Pins: Again as the name suggests, it has a eye like loop at one end and open at the other to help you slide beads into place. This is usually used in making links. So an Eye pin can be used to make a really long dangler earring or a necklace which is linked together!


EARRING HOOKS

While its easy enough to make the earring the simplest earring hook found is the fish hook. It can be made with winding wire adding a few beads to even customise it according to colour of the rest of the earring. It is simple question mark shaped hook. We also find other earring hooks lever back ( closed earring hook ), studs (with or without dangling components ), hoops, kidney hoops, clip-on and lastly handmade/ decorative hooks.

types of earring hooks
Image source : google/ self

EARRING NUTS/ BACKING
Studs and Open ended earring hooks are prone to falling out of the ear if not secured properly, earring nuts are used to keep them in place from behind the ear. Sometimes Earring nuts can be part of the design of the earring to make it look long with added support to the links so that it is not heavy for the ear.

Sometimes we can use some findings like Wire/ Pins in earring as well as necklaces. The world is your oyster , be creative about your findings to create new and unique things!!!

~ Learning to teach/ preach/ train
Richa

Health and Salads, learning to cook, I am!

Google is such a good source of information these days. It lets you find in an instant anything, be it how to do a certain thing or what are the contents of a certain other thing. Similarly I have found it

rewarding sometimes to search for recipes and then tweak it to make my taste buds happy. There was a time when I was hooked on to Jamie Oliver’s cooing style. I found it very raw and natural, it felt like he always went with the flow and the tastes just mingled with each other. At other times there was Nigella Lawson who was the focus of my attention especially when it came to desserts, she seemed real. Today I have been hounding Cupcake Jemma, she is spirited and has such fancy tools which I can drool over and ofcourse, my new found love for baking!  

There was a time when I had restricted my diet to only eating Salads, It was as month of pure hell for me! I had promised my father to stick to vegetarian food along with him since he had recently been detected with Diabetes, and he was asked to control his diet. My mom at the time was based out of Mumbai and I had just returned from the UK. My dad has just retired and had accompanied me back to Pune (I fear it was to not to let his young unmarried daughter to live alone! J ) In the beginning me and my dad would cook together, but I am a clumsy chef when I have to share the space with someone else, I like the kitchen all to myself. I am not below accepting help when it comes to vegetable cutting, so that became my father’s job. I was unemployed for the first few months, but when I secured employment my schedule was very tight. I had to cook before 8 am for both times of the day, as I returned home only around 8 after battling traffic and almost no energy . I found it very challenging I had never balanced a “homelife” ahead of work before, but with my Father’s diabetes, food was an important part of his schedule.

At this point Junk food was not an option, and for me there was also a sudden change from Tesco in the UK to Local “Kirana” (grocery store) and vegetable markets. Luckily my father took over those things for me, and I never had to worry except to give him a list of things we need, or to name a few vegetables. I am so lucky in the sense that my mother was a no nonsense woman in my childhood and that my grandmom was a mega awesome cook. My mother trained me to eat whatever was put on my plate (that is not to say that I did not have likes and dislikes) and it always pleasured my taste buds to no end! That has my grand mom’s cooking skills written all over it. If you ask any of my aunts, cousins on my dad’s side, everyone will agree that cooking comes to them naturally from my grandmom and her side of the family. So I proved to be her grand-daughter too. I love food, and I would like to say that I am sensitive to tastes as well. Since my stint in the UK, I pretty much eat anything happily, as long as it tastes good. On a trip to Spain, I had actually closed my eyes, run my fingers up and down the menu card and yelled stop at a point and chose my food randomly. It ended up being an octopus, extremely bland and cold. I managed to eat at-least 3/4^th of it before I exchanged it with my friend. In France we even had a thinly sliced beef with olive oil, salt and capers for garnish and it was heavenly (it was such a thin slice, not even close enough for a meal). Once for a conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, I ended up trying out local cuisine in the shape of crocodile meat, deer meat and rabbit meat! So you see, I have had my fair share of eating trials.

Chicken Pasta- Marinated the chicken
 overnight in my Lime honey dressing! 

Coming back to salads, it was little tough for me in the beginning.  I would say my sojourn with salads began in the UK itself. I love pork (bacon) and I would make crispy bacon and then pour the leftover oils on the pan into my salads and oh I was left licking my fingers by the end.  When I started work (in India), my schedule was hectic and to save on time I started to make only salads. The first few days I stuck to cucumbers and tomatoes, but they get boring really fast. After less than a week I was craving normal food again. The biggest drawback of not being in the UK was lettuce. I used to chomp on it like a cow!  Here lettuce was rare and the one we found was a little bitter too. God, how I missed being in the UK then. It wasn’t just the lettuce; there was olive oil, fresh herbs, exotic fruits that I missed! That’s when I decided to try and work out a new salad dressing palate for myself! I am firm believer of lemons in food. So I started making dressings with a lemon base. Then slowly I convinced my family that, although Olive oil was expensive it was a good addition in salads. I pretty much started experimenting with different tastes that I felt could go together. I had by this time tried lemon + garlic combination with a hint of cardamom, Lemon +rock salt +sugar (at times I replaced the sugar with honey, maple syrup or cane sugar), Lemon +pepper + ginger, honey+ mayo, lemon+ honey+ basil ( this was one of the fresh herbs very readily available in my house). Someone once said to me, while changing a recipe only change one component at a time and believe me this advice has helped me time and again. Once my dressings were chosen, I started adding dry fruits like walnuts, Pistachios, soaked almonds, raisins (which at some point I also substituted for fresh grapes cut into halves). Sometimes, when the fancy took me I added ground nuts as well. I even made salads from apples, pears and guavas. Oranges were squeezed once in a while to replace lemon juice. By now I have experimented with Pastas, Cinnamon, dried Cilantro, fresh Coriander, Parmesan cheese, Feta Cheese, sautéed Fenugreek, blanched French beans, various sprouts, Pomegranates, Chicken sausages ( for me and my dad), boiled egg in salads.       

As I am writing this, I realise there are so many more flavours still waiting to be tried! And someone said salads were boring. There is so much more it than meets the eye or reaches the taste buds.

 Foodie at heart

~Richa