PayPal SchmayPal

after a phone call, six emails and hours spent searching for documents, copying them and uploading them to PayPal i am apparently still under suspicion. even though my account page says i have complied.

perhaps they think my whirled-wandering involves training people in nefarious activities [note the bit about "politically exposed persons". i rarely expose myself, preferring to dress [as my children put it] in things that resemble small Bedouin tents and if i did expose myself, it would not be to politicians. so there.

or maybe they want blood? DNA? perhaps my grandmother's left index finger? that last one could be tricky, she was buried in 1987. and i'm not sure i want to disturb her slumbers. and my other grandmother was cremated and later sprinkled around the farm dam. maybe i could scrape up a soil sample?

clearly i was not cut out to be a shopkeeper and it is just as well this has happened now, and not when i eventually launch the promised limited edition publication as it would have made a right dog's breakfast of the distribution process. [thank you, those of you who have suggested other means of accepting payments, i am exploring possibilities]

meanwhile i'm going back to the sewing room. it's nice and quiet there.

wishing merry everything, good health, abundance and happiness to y'all....and if anyone still wants to buy anything i have made [via the interpixies, that is] FarFetch is presently your only option.

the trouble with my name

i have had trouble with my name from time to time
especially when it comes to email
which is why i changed it to appaloosa rather than using
mail AT indiaflint DOT com

because things with india in them do bounce back
and people like spotty ponies better, it seems
i suppose it could be worse.
nigeria, for example

but this morning's advice from PayPal
that they were investigating me for money-laundering
due to the sudden inflow of $ [thank you, those kind people who opted to purchase a scarf!]
took the cake

so
today i am posting the scarves for those kind and quick people who paid before they closed the gate
[though apparently i have to await an investigation before PayPal will pay me]
but any further interest will have to rest on ice

and given today's weather forecast promises 43 degrees C
...that's  109.4    on the scale of F major
ice may be a good thing.

loose ends

wandering down Adelaide's main shopping drag
i spotted an interesting window
[at Sportsgirl]
the message surprised me

back in 1981
i worked for this company
in those days
make do and mend was never in their brief
they did have some odd practices though
every Friday, staff were made to wear clothes from the shop floor
if the manager hated you [ie me]
she would dress you in the oddest combinations
the icky bit was
at the end of the day we put all the tags and kimballs back on
and hung the clothes back on the racks
without cleaning
ew.
[i never shop at Sportsgirl for that reason - and a few others]

then a little later in the afternoon i had some stuff to give away
the Cancer Council didn't want it for wigs
even those overseas spurn it
[grey hair not required on voyage]



but lots of this felted together
perhaps with some nice strong wool such as English Leicester
would make a good mat for soaking up oil spills

googlewhacked

i had a friendly missile yesterday
entirely out of the blue
someone letting me know i'd been googlewhacked
apparently a term for being the sole hit
when a two-word search is entered

my correspondent had entered the words
contentment and sesquicentenarian
in a search
and found my pages

of course my mention of the event here
will ruin the whacking
as there will now be two mentions on the 'net
anyway
here's a link to the page
and
an image from the relevant location

silly old bear

what if a silly old bear had tipped out the contents
of a dodgy looking pot in the dark one night
just before leaving the country on an overseas
wandering
and what if that silly old bear hadn't noticed
there was a bundle in amongst the leaves
having extracted quite a few bundles from the pot
already
...bundle found on compost heap some time later 

golden moment -or, it ain't necessarily so...

pocketing windfalls in the Wellington Botanic Garden last week

the firm tramping of sturdy boots alerted me to an invasion

as the tour group drew closer, i heard one of them asking

"was macht sie da?"

["what is she doing there?"]

quick as a flash and

without the glimmer of a smile

the tour leader responded

"das ist eine einheimische, sie sammelt zier blaetter"

[that is a native collecting decorative leaves]

Merci du compliment, m'sieur!

but seriously

this shows that

like a Tequila shot, the advice of tour guides can be improved with a little hit of salt.

and now to the delightful task of reading all your allotment stories

and then finding a suitable hat...

smoke and mirrors

spotted during my early morning perambulations in lovely Lier, Belgium

yes, you're seeing that correctly, those are leaf-shaped prints and here's a closer look 

lovely aren't they....but imagine the trouble involved in printing this fabric using synthetic dyes - when it could have been so much simpler [and far less poisonous] with a handful of leaves.

sigh

lightfastness and other things

it's been brought to my attention that i [apparently] have paid insufficient attention to 'lightfastness' in my book. should i perhaps have done a lightfastness test for every dye plant that passed through my hands? hmm. i'd still be working on the manuscript if that were the case

let me put this into perspective

back in 2006 at the UNESCO natural dye symposium in Hyderabad a lot of industrial dyers were getting similarly hot under the collar, demanding standardisation of dyes and colours and conformity to set guidelines. there was a lot of spirited discussion.

my favourite contribution was that of Monsieur Coulibaly [forgive me if the spelling of the name has become somewhat tarnished with distance] who stood up from his seat wearing the beautiful costume of his homeland [Mali] and in perfect Parisian French succinctly addressed the assembled gathering...

[here's my translation, a little abbreviated]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

"look about you...we are all different. our skin and hair are different colours, we wear different clothes. as we age our hair turns white, our skins wrinkle and our teeth fall out. this we cannot change, but our clothes can be dyed again" 

and this is what Eco Colour is all about. dyes and dye plants differ from one region to the next. indigo grown in India yields a different blue to indigo grown in El Salvador. eucalyptus species cultivated in the UK won't necessarily give the same colour as the same species grown in Australia.

and what works well in the water available here at Hope Springs doesn't necessarily work the same way elsewhere [for example ice-flower blues were completely eaten away overnight by chemically treated water at Paraparaumu in New Zealand] . so why fuss? some colours will be substantive, others not...when things fade, re-dye them.

one genus that does however remain true to form is my friend the eucalyptus. while the shades achieved might differ depending on the quality of the water used, the colour itself when applied to wool is pretty much bombproof. at Spinexpo in China last year one of my ecoprint scarves was cheekily [and secretly, apparently] tested for washfastness - and came up with a rating of 4.

what does this mean? i'm not exactly sure, but given 5 is the top of the scale, and 4.5 is the maximum ever achieved, a 4 for eucalyptus applied to wool without adjunct mordants is pretty good.

and when one considers the wee scrap of wool that lives wrapped around my wrist has been there since December last year and has been in oceans and under showers and out in the sun with me, i don't think it's doing too badly either... 

more climatic nonsense

Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was recently quoted as blaming the state of the River Murray and its associated lakes Alexandrina and Albert on climate change.

I'm sorry, but this is arrant nonsense...rainfall in the river catchment area hasn't varied enough to cause the present situation. The root cause of the lack of water in the Murray is GREED. Irrigators are pumping out as much as they can suck while the water is there...meaning not a lot goes downstream. Where's this water going? A lot of it is used to unnecessarily irrigate vines resulting in a glut of cleanskins selling for less than the bottle (that they are contained in) costs. Remember too, that when Australia exports wine a lot of water goes overseas. Water that the driest continent needs to keep at home.

Add to that the complete idiocy of Mike Rann's South Australian Government who happily let 12 Gigalitres of rainwater flow out to sea during a recent bout of precipitation while complaining there isn't enough water in the Murray to supply Adelaide's needs. Twice as much water as Adelaide needs falls on the city every year, but instead of catching it and storing it, the government whines about the Murray and commissions a desalination plant.