Pillow menu

Yesterday was even crazier than most days here, and ended with us flying to Jaipur late at night, missing dinner, and laden with about 40kg extra luggage: just-dyed linen.

The hotel was truly terrible. (I'm writing this from our new hotel, which is a thousand times better. And what you have to understand is the weirdness that is Indian hotels. We are staying in 3- and 4-star hotels, not the backpackers' lodges you must be envisioning by my descriptions. Indian hotels often look incredibly impressive on the outside, but on the inside, nothing really works right.)

The floors and walls were mildewy and squishy, everything was musty-smelling, some brilliant designer had put walls of painted wood in the shower, the halls were as dimly lit as a stage set for a vampire movie, the a/c didn't work, the ventilation fan didn't work, there was no hot water at the sink... We changed rooms three times before giving up and just staying in one of them. The best adjective I can think of is lugubrious. Closest noun might be mausoleum.

...Made more bizarre by the pounding music blasting from the discotheque, ubiquitous and indescribably annoying, in Indian hotels.

...And this was all after standing around in the lobby for half an hour after midnight while six or seven different desk clerks tried to tell us our reservations didn't exist, and after waiting eons for our luggage to be transferred upstairs (when you ask for a service, the response is usually [say with Indian accent]: "Yes, sir, I am just sending my colleague now," i.e., I don't feel like doing it, so I'll go see who I can pass the buck on to.

So it was around one a.m. when we finally grumpily spread out all the still-damp cloth haphazardly around the room.

The only good part about the hotel was the Pillow Menu.

Five different pillow choices!...

I read off the selections to The Husband, and he decided he must try several of them, but especially this one:

I ordered them, and they arrived about 20 minutes later.

(Above: The Husband checks out the Chamber Pillow. He was to declare it worthy only of a torture chamber.)

It didn't even occur to us until later how weird all that draped cloth must have looked to the employee who came to deliver the pillows. Perhaps he thought we were preparing for some sort of denim orgy.

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Who misses her animolecules?

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

At the dyers' center

Here are some random photos from the Weavers' and Dyers' Center, where we are spending most of our time while in Hyderabad.

The photo below is of real indigo on linen, dyed via millenia-old fermentation method.

High school students sometimes come to this government-run center for vocational courses. That's Sunita hard at work on a sort of batik. She's an adorable girl, the boldest amongst her fellow students (the first--and only--one to work up the courage to talk to me, the foreigner). I thought she was about eleven years old and she's actually seventeen.

Above: this is natural flax (linen) hand-woven for us, and on which we are experimenting with natural dyes for SLOWCOLOR, our burgeoning business. (Not to worry, I won't plug the biz too often here.) The fabric in the photo is dripping wet, having just come out of its myrobalan (plant mordant) bath.

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Only another week or so until I can see my fuzzbuckets again...

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

At the dyers' center...and Rumi hunts gnats

At the dyers' center in Hyderabad, India.

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Friend Jonathan came by today...and posed his paws next to Jazz's.

Found Lynx hiding in the shower for some reason yesterday:

Where's Rumi? Sometimes he'll sit like a little statue across the room and just stare at me.

There's cat grass planted in that pot. There are a lot of little gnats that seem to live in or around the dirt. Rumi is the Great White Gnat Hunter.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Officially introducing the new biz

I have been very busy lately (less time to paint...yeah, yeah, excuses) starting up a new business (much busy-ness) with The Husband (pictured above). He is in India right now doing preliminary studies, making contacts, fundraising, working with artisans...

Our new business is DESIGNatural, and simultaneously we are initiating and promoting the "Slow Color movement." We will be offering products (clothing "for real people with real bodies" to begin with; later home textiles as well) made from all-natural fibers, and dyed with all-natural plant-based dyes...reviving "dying" dyeing traditions around the world.

These will not be "hippie clothes" but rather premium products, beautifully and professionally made. It will be a sustainable business in every sense--for people and for the planet. We will be providing livelihoods with fair living wages and working conditions, and our practices will be exemplary...well, you can read about it via the links if you're interested in knowing more.

We are still in the very early stages and it's quite insane and overwhelming.

In the photo, The Husband is showing some samples of linen that have been naturally-dyed at the Weavers' Center in Hyderabad, India, this week, working with local experts. I too have interest and expertise in natural dyeing.

And I promise I will get back to painting (whenever I have time!) now that I've plugged our new business. Oh, and showing you more of that crazy white kitty, of course.

Cheers.