Ramadan crafts and Ramadan knowledge

The text across the top of this blog says what it is all about.  I keep this blog free of sound offs and heavy stuff and put them on The Network.  I prefer The Trad Pad to be a place of sweetness, light and beautiful things.  However, we are living in a world/a nation which is increasingly multi-cultural, multi-faith, and interfaith.  And this is the month of Ramadan.  Across the world, Ramadan is huge as Christmas across the world is huge.  So I am seeking to explore with Trad Padders what Ramadan is all about.  With these thoughts in mind, I explored what might be in keeping with this place.  And so it is that I present you, dear Trad Padders, with Karima's Crafts.

In turn, the banner above led me to this site : The Wonderful Art Garden for Muslim Sisters

Karima's site has a Ramadan section.

Many of the crafts in this section can be adapted

for other reasons and seasons.

For a more precise knowledge of what Ramadan means in the Muslim faith, 

please explore the document embedded below.

To market, to market, and to market at beautiful Buninyong

To-day I went to the Buninyong Markets.  Buninyong is a charming Victorian country village and now an outer suburb of Ballarat.  Once a month, on the third Saturday, it becomes Market Central.  THE market, so to speak, is organised by Rotary and you can find details here.

To my visitor's eye, I saw the market as a whole comprised of three sections.  Inside the Town Hall, seemed to be the Makers' Market: food, soaps, crafts, and so on.  Outside, the service lane coming parking area was taken over by things that grow.  This, to me, was the Farmers' Market.  This two/thirds was part of the Rotary bailiwick.

Next door at the Buninyong Uniting Church there was the third section: a Car Boot Sale.  I think some of the stuff there would not have fitted anywhere near a car boot.  There were crowds of stalls on the extensive front lawns of the church.  All manner of materials and things and books and things. Up next to the church itself is the church hall from where Uniting Church women served tea and biscuits alongside a table selling various goods and the whole in the midst of boxes and boxes of all manner of books.

I think it is a marvellous undertaking that Buninyong has embarked upon.  It brings people, goods and money to the village in a rather joyous jumble to make a marvellous whole.

To take a peek at the experience of going to market in Buninyong,

please go here.

This week I was in Turner and Lane and discovered an idea that was new - at least to me.  It was one of those "why didn't I think of that" moments.  The idea was in T&L's children's room but the idea, IMHO, could be adapted in other ways.  A "My Kitchen" version could be natty and cute.

These boards come in two sizes.  These are the large size and there is a smaller one.  The "boards" are painters' ready stretched canvases.  They could be painted over in a range of pastel colours to suit and still be as sweet.  Across the top are narrow gros-grain ribbons and some light two-ply string to which is attached those little clothes pegs usually used for hanging cards.

The bottom left has little nic-nax like covered buttons glued on.  Clearly, the choice is the decorator's.  Bottom right has the names.  Now, my only query is how does one cut out fabric letters sharp and neat?  Will someone please tell me how?  Because I think if I am to replicate these cute items, this is the one place where my efforts would fall down.

...and are the tables set for Tea?

A week ago I was thinking of the morrow, Saturday 28 June 2008. Can you please mark the date? Major achievements must be recorded with the time (the invitation said to be there at 1.30pm) at the Zetland Hall in Kyneton. Three of us were taking the trip to Kyneton: Gina of Patra's Other Place, Helen of Helen's Haven and Miss Eagle. Our blogging friend, Leeanne of Pear tree cottage! was organising a Ladies Afternoon High Tea to raise money for the Starlight Children's Foundation.

Here are the tables all set up waiting for the guests.

But I think we should begin at the beginning - or working from the bottom up.

Leeanne has long been a collector but in the year leading up to the High Tea she excelled herself at collecting. Above is detail of some of the cloths that graced the tables of the Zetland Hall.

And then there were the trios - cups, saucers, plates

Bone china galore!

Some were retro, some were vintage, and some were ancient treasures.

Beside each setting were exquisite napkins. Detail above.

Placemarkers!

And then there was the food - and the teapots

And then there were the people.
Leeanne's mother - she of the 250 scones - top left and bottom right.

Leanne, the wonder woman, second from top left and bottom left.

Miss Eagle is on left second row from bottom;

Gina is in the middle in a pink top; and next to her in elegant black is Helen.


The men of the Zetland Lodge waited on us and modelled the auction items.

And Master of Ceremonies and Auctioneer was Rob, Leeanne's Dearly Beloved.

It was a magnificent afternoon. Such an achievement! The Mount Everest of feminine hospitality. For most of us if we had organised an event in such detail for six of our friends we would have considered it well done. Leeanne did this for 104 women. Can you imagine - the trios, the cloths, the napkins, the tea and coffee pots, the cake stands! And each place had a novelty and a gift and a place marker. And then there was the wit and whimsy! Gina is a great collector of embroidery - and a great favourite is the crinoline lady. We were seated at a table with the most exquisite crinoline lady cloth. I noticed the beautiful plate on which our scones were placed. But as we ate our way through the scones, a crinoline lady appeared. Matching cloth and plate!

Thank you Leeanne - and to Rob and the men of Zetland Lodge - for an absolutely amazing afternoon. Extraordinary! It will live long in the memory. Blessings and bliss!

Controversial crafts and feminist foibles

Miss Eagle has the glisten of a tear or two on her cheek. You see, I have just been reading Jane Brocket's latest post over at yarnstorm.

If there was only one blog I was allowed to read out of the whole blogosphere, it would be yarnstorm. Apologies to friends and fellow bloggers but that is how it is. I admire Jane's layout, her beautiful photographs, her interests, and her writing. Over the last twelve months, Jane's readers have lived with her the writing of her first book, The Gentle Art of Domesticity. The book has only recently been released and Jane has had to embark on the usual media round to talk about herself and the book. You can listen to Jane being interviewed on October 9, 2007, on BBC4 here.

Jane's post, linked above, brings a tear because there has been so much comment that has been questionable and invasive to the extent that Jane has had to go beyond her usual privacy boundaries to clarify a few things. For those of us who admire Jane, this was wonderful to enhance and round out our view of her. But those of us who admire Jane have also felt her pain - and we think why the h#ll should she feel compelled to do this if she does not want to.

Clearly, fulfilling one's creative instincts by knitting, quilting and making rock buns is controversial stuff.

• It clearly is not enough to have come from limited financial circumstances and earned a first class education by using one's intellectual capacity to win scholarships and grants.
• It is clearly not enough to have become a Master of Wine.
• It is not enough to be able to capably review both wine and fine English lit.
• It is not enough to have the tenacity to have won through difficult personal circumstances to build a secure and enjoyable family life - and to use your income to invest in the materials of your creativity.
• It is not enough to have one of the most popular blogs of its genre on the net and to have spun it into a published book.

Miss Eagle has earned long ago her stripes as a feminist but some of the thought processes of those who claim feminist instincts and leanings is stunning.

Some of us remember when girls were advised not to learn to type in high school. The 'wisdom' was that if you could type you would only ever be treated as a secretary and never make your way to management.

Well, didn't they get that wrong.

We now have droves of women in their middle years who wish they had first rate keyboard skills for the computer age - like being able to touch type.

Fortunately, Miss E's mother, Phyll, who spent years in the workforce as a secretary believed that office skills are something a woman could always fall back on - so not only can Miss E touch type at pretty phenomenal speeds she can also do Pitman's Shorthand at such a level that she can do verbatim minutes of meetings. Miss Eagle left school at 15 with these skills. Later came the degree. Later came management experience.

These days I see women like Jane and Di over at Clementine's Shoes and Suse over at Pea Soup - who are professional and academically qualified women - taking the traditional domestic crafts to new and imaginative levels. They combine careeers and professional demands with family life and personal creativity.

Duh! What is wrong with that! What sort of female oppression is that!

None of these women are forcing others into their mold - but plenty of women are queuing up to join in their conversation!

And isn't that what we feminists are about first and foremost - choice: choice in our personal lives, choice in our working lives, choice in our family lives; choice in the public sphere, choice in the private sphere.

Hands on - thread and fabric

The pictures below show some of the beautiful work on display at the Open Day last Saturday of the Embroiderers' Guild.

(Click on image for a larger picture)

Crafted busy-ness

Hel-l-o-o! Yo-o-h-o-o! Yes, that's me waving at you. It seems like I have been gone for yonks but I notice that I have squeaked in one post this end-of-winter August. But life has been rather busy. I have been caught up with finishing the UFO above. Back in 1992, my mother died. Left behind was an afghan rug, unfinished, which she had been working of for a Family Member. The Director, mother of the FM, could not complete it so I said I would. Occasionally, it would come out and a few more rows would be added. Since I left work, I have put in a bit more effort going around and around until it seemed reasonable to stop and add a few more inches with tassels. Then it was done. And, coincidence, The Director was coming to overnight post-conference in Melbourne.

So, I decided to do something a little extra. I'm not very crafty but I have noticed that some craft bloggers in the USA are altered paper bags. So here is my version:

This afghan had a lot of sentimental attachment so I included an old photograph of the FM's grandparents. I wanted the bag itself, if the FM agreed, to become a keepsake so I put my mothers name on it as starting it, myself as completing it, and the FM's mother as carrying it from Melbourne to Brisbane.

One of my favourite pieces of literature is the piece from Ecclesiasticus, Let Us Now Praise Famouse Men. So, changing men to women, I wrote this on the front and back of the bag. And, as you can see dear Reader, there is much decoration on the front and back of the bag.
The, as The Director's birthday is later this month, I did an altered paper bag for her birthday present. At each corner, are cardboard hearts in a William Morris design sitting on two fabric rose petals laid together to form a heart. Birthday wishes are written around the inside of the rich ribbon and the name is there in print cut-outs. The back takes the shape of a paned window.

Both Val and Gina have posted about attending the Craft Fair held here in Melbourne recently. So I thought I would mention that I attended on the Friday - and, in spite of being highly organised, forgot my camera. I was there just after 8am waiting for the doors to open at 9am and left with head spinning about 1.30pm. In an organised fashion, I had mapped out before leaving home the workshops which I planned to attend. But by the time I had done three workshops, perused every stand, and was stunned by the museum quality quilts, I decided to throw in the towel and go home.

The three workshops I did were:

1. Working beads into your knitting
2. Printing on Fabric
3. Floral Fantasy

I was well satisfied with my choices. The workshops were informative and related to my interests so I think that is why my head was spinning and I felt sufficiently satisfied to go home earlier than I had planned.

The one I enjoyed the most was Floral Fantasy led by Gabrielle of Miss Rose and Sister Violet. I have seen Miss Rose and Sister Violet many times at Gift Fair. Gabrielle's specialties are flowers and beads and all things floral and vintage. The workshop discussed how to use the flowers and beads and the whole thing was interspersed with Gabrielle's philosophy of life: everything has to be beautiful, places like Ikea are ugly and they are invading our homes, behind every nasty man is a woman who lets him get away with it! I'm waiting for the book, I can tell you.

Anyway, here at The Trad Pad we need no encouragement to scatter flowers around hither and yon but, after half an hour with Gabrielle, I have to tell you, dear Reader, I am going OTT (over the top!). So, for Miss Eagle, it is a flower strewn path into the future as far as the eye can see.

The dining room has been the first place to feel the impact. It was already on its way but there has been a huge influx.

One of the inspirations from the Floral Fantasy workshop was to take my basket collection to another level. Miss Eagle does not find cane. It finds her. To date I have painted them pretty and lined them to make them even pretty. Now they will be going floral as well. But I practised first. This basket had remained unpainted and has being doing duty in the kitchen as a vegetable basket. I had these sprays (plastic) of olives and olive leaves. So I cut them up and started applying them to the basket. Simple - but oh the difference!

And finally I resurrected this item. An old piece of EPNS that I had painted ages ago but had never been presented in the best light. Now here it is!

The Glitter Fairy casts her spell.

Herself has gone all a-glitter. She has fallen under the spell of the Glitter Fairy. Miss Eagle may have to watch out - if she stands still for too long it will be a spot of glue and a sprinkle of glitter!

Herself had previously painted the A, B, and C this lovely warm pink. The paint had been on a special at the paint shop.

I had picked up some sprinkly glitter at the last visit to the craft shop.

So, this afternoon was glue and glitter time.

Here they are. All done and all a-glitter.

And then they made their way into the styling of this corner!

Are you a New Victorian? And a crafty one at that..?

http://www.victorianamagazine.com/

One of the most enjoyable things in my life are the yummy mummy crafty blogs. Quite a few can be found on my sidebar and I have even more in my FeedDemon. These women amaze me. They have husbands and kids to care for. Give or take maternity leave, they have some form of participation in the paid economy. They blog. And they cook and craft. How do they do it? Whether the yummy mummy is a working from home architect or a creative spirit building up work and a portfolio of design, they are admirable.

Now dear yummy mummies, draw close.
Miss Eagle has a question for you.
Are you a New Victorian?

The Gen-X style, the Sex and the City style, seem - according to Lizzy Rattner - to be going by the board. They are old hat. Still seems, though, that the idea is "to have it all" but it is well planned. And this quote Miss E found interesting:

From the time they were tykes, New Victorians have been bred to ace exams, master extracurricular activities, land a coveted spot at a prestigious college, and then go forth into the world, ready to achieve. “This generation has been more strategically educated than any other generation,” said Mike Sciola, the Director of the Career Resource Center at Wesleyan University.

Mmm......perhaps this is what we are seeing in Australia as parents across the socio-economic scale flock to private schools if they can rustle up the readies?

This phenomenon is pretty amazing to Miss E too. While she could be said to be privately educated - just the local convent school full of working-class Irish Catholic kids - and while she might frequently plead gender discrimination in education and opportunity, the fact is neither boys nor girls in Miss E's neighbourhoods were strategically educated. In fact, in Miss E's home town one did not have all twelve years of education available. In the whole of North Queensland there was not one university. One technical high school in Townsville. Trade apprentices had to go away in blocks of study periods. No government seemed to think of investing huge amounts of money in the education of North Queensland kids in Miss E's generation.

Anyway, enough of the 'plaints. Times have changed for most - if not all - of us. But some things remain and there are marvellous clusters of women keeping the feminine traditions of home and hearth on the boil. But what gets me is the craft.

Once upon a time, craft and associated skills were part of the domestic skills necessary to feed and clothe one's family and to stretch the domestic budget further. In a time when after-marriage female participation rates in the paid economy were low and there was no television and life had a slower pace, women filled their hours with all manner of craft.

One would have thought that women's craft would have diminished with increased prosperity and the availability of mass-produced goods. One would have thought that increased participation of women of all ages in the paid workforce would have meant virtually no time for craft. But this has not happened.

While there is still an air of thriftiness in what is going on in lots of crafts, other traditional crafts have assumed the status of art forms and may require quite an investment in skills and materials. Simply amazing! And most encouraging to Miss E's simple female heart.

Bewitched in the bleak midwinter at the winter solstice

Yesterday, was a trip ten minutes up the wind-y windy road to Sassafras and the beautiful blue Dandenongs to some lovely jollities. Well, the beautiful blue Dandenongs were not blue. It was the bleak midwinter Dandenongs, the coldest place in Melbourne, at the time of the winter solstice. At the bottom of the hill, Upper Gully was overcast and cloudy but clear. Sassafras was in a shroud of thick pea soup fog. With village shops and Miss Marple's presence in the main street, it could have provided the atmosphere for an Agatha Christie novel.

However, back to the jollities. Miss Eagle was there to meet Brownie of Bwca Dysthymia - who has been sojourning for a few weeks at Kalorama - and that well known amateur thinker, JahTeh of CopperWitch at The House of Coffee who had visited from the Inner East to survey the mountain tops. The conversation was wide ranging, the laughs were plentiful and the getting to know two fellow bloggers a warm and joyful experience. Luvved ya, gals!

And the clever CopperWitch had brought a gift of her own making. This delightful work of art, embroidered in the teeniest, tinyiest stitches mounted on velvet. Note the mounted deep blue gemstones on either side. And all mounted on a beautiful, beribboned cushion.

What a delight!

And, next door to the House of Coffee, at Antiques at Sassafras, Miss Eagle made a purchase. You will recall, dear Reader, Miss E's recent visit to Sassafras. She remarked - and photographed - at the time on the Paris rubber stamps. She resolved on this visit to bring them home with her if they were still available. They were there. Now they are here at the Trad Pad. Herself thinks they are wonderful. Gift wrapping and carding will have a Parisian flavour for quite a while, methinks.