What's a Girl to Do?

Shopping is a woman's prerogative. Shopping and shoes. And hats too. And these days, interestingly enough also cars, the fuel cell or electric cars, especially the new and utterly delicious Tesla Roadster.....Have I left anything out? My point, perhaps. But I can get so easily distracted nowadays.

Okay, back to shopping. In these western cities, an amazing and indubitably exhilarating ritual exists. The day after Christmas, most of the stock in stores goes on sale. The wonderous and exciting event called the Boxing Day Sale. And they are real sales, not like the ones we have in Singapore, where items usually go for 50% -75% off the retail price. A concept that warms the cockles of my value-for-money Asian heart.

Anyway, I took time off and wandered the fabric stores to hunt for fabric, beads and tassels for the new 2008 range. $800 plus later, I have the pleasure to showing off the treasures plucked from the hands of other boxing day warriors.

There's the gorgeous tassel beads in a dozen dazzling colours.

Also found some brilliantly tactile flocked fabrics. The thinner ones are gonna be great for summer scarves and the nice thick ones for the flap covers of the new bags that'll be probably starting next week.

Then there's the sturdy, earthy upholstery grade fabrics, which are destined for lumbar pillows and the inside of bags that I can't wait to make.

And of course interspersed with all the goodies are the beautifully smooth and shimmery taffetas. The mainstay of Rumah Kampung's range of scarves. In soothing blue, cool titanium and juicy black plum.

Fab as these fabrics are, I'm sure that I'll not be able to restrain myself as I see other designs in the shops throughout the year. So I guess this cannot be said to be the all encompassing variety for this enterprising year of the Earth Rat. Which is the first sign of the Chinese zodiac and is said to be an industrious bringer of prosperity, luck and new beginnings.

Face Forward

I had bought an A5 hardback journal for my craft ideas because of its plain white pages. So good for sketching and non linear (read: messy) writing. It was the right size to fit the handbag too, with the hardback protecting its pages.

But the journal was faceless, nondescript and worst of all , grey! Looking as if it should contain spreadsheets or engineering schematics instead of wild, saturated, unrelated ideas fit for gestalt.

Since journals are such personal things, they really should have something on their faces to say who they are and where they are going. Thus inspired, I'm doing a range of Face Forward Journals.

So I decided to jazz up these plain Jane journals with all manner of fabrics to fit all sorts of moods and all types of people.

Using the last bit of a ancient 70's vintage fabric given to me by my mum, I made a pretty zen tile for the cover of one.

Then there's the understated sage & gold tile for another.

And the third is one that ties shut for privacy using a fab golden brocade ribbon taken from the decorated ends of a lime green sari.

There will be more to come. As ideas never stop flowing, we'll always been needing pretty places in which to keep them safe.

Bintan Bound for Batiks

The way it seems to me, my fate will always somehow be intertwined with that of Bintan & Penyengat ( a little island village off the big island of Bintan). It's been that way for over 15 years now, and it's been good. Good and very interesting.

After all, it was in Bintan that we built the Beautiful Asmara Tropical Spas. And it was there I spent those uneasy nights during the year 2000 riots; met Frankie the poser of a biawak (monitor lizard); saw girls get possessed by spirits; had magical moonlight walks on the soft white sands of the Mayang Sari bay; dealt with dukuns (shamans); ate the BEST ever lamb chops; explored the Riaus on a wooden sailboat called Windsong; went for my first rave & caught malaria.

And it is also there that I made some very dear friends.

I'm currently working with Ibu Zainab, Ella & Chup on making Batik Prada wall-hangings & runners. After leaving Asmara, the gang in Penyengat had little to no orders from the spa and this is my way to help them with some income generation.

All the items are sold on an online shop I started which can be found at www.rumahkampung.etsy.com

Here is some of what we came up with....