Monsoon time

Building
Raining
Building
Raining
a bit of both- good news about the rain is everything is green and it does settle the dust to some extent.
Managing to keep going in all the chaos in a sort of, kind of.... hopefully type of way.
Boys are slowly getting our mound of saris ironed, not even a third of the way yet but a little dent happening,
Training new women on machines is progressing- Ms S is right onto it, good quality just needs to improve speed but she is already on the first rung of 'kariger' or tailor and we can see we will be able to advance her wages in the next few months as she equals production of some of our men.
Yeh, what an incentive to the others as well.
My new blockprint young man, is coming along fine- threw him a curve ball yesterday keeping the checks straight for our loose dress, not as easy as you might thing.... concentrate horizontal and vertical wants to drift off to the side, concentrate vertical and horizontal wants to wander. Need to keep your mind on it and keep those fine adjustments happening. He was a little frustrated there for a while, there is no easy fix, just observation and fine corrections. By the evening I think it was settling with him and the work he printed looks fine. Poor boy- this is all during humid weather so you are always double checking humidity is not going to make colour run, a problem that does not happen most of the year. So he is getting full training and is going to be an excellent printer.

Still trying to get orders out of the production room and squeeze in little bits and pieces for smaller clients

AND 

do new samples and a small run of each to see it works and give us something to load on Amazon.

All is sort of crazy.

I have been writing up a note to go on our wholesale page. We use khadi and natural or traditional dyes and blockprint- why ? because we are masochists I think some days, there are so many variables involved and the possibility for faults, they take a lot of work, can lead to a lot of frustration .... and then you come around to the why?

WHY?

because they carry the imprint,

the soul perhaps of the hand that made them

they have a connection to real live people

they are special because that vibe goes with them, I think [and yes some days I think I am nuts and masochistic!]

I have always wanted to make everything myself, just like my dear Nana C taught me and this is carrying on in that same vein.

connection

Tours are ticking along, Bengal is all organized, I do have a few more spaces feel welcome to join us.

Morocco is filling up as well, but we can still take a few more 

Rajasthan and Gujarat for next year late 2018! are getting more and more names on the list....I need to start and firm up dates so people can dream and more importantly plan so it comes about :)

and already I have a whole batch of people lined up to join us in Vietnam in 2019!! yippee

 I know we already have a keen list waiting for January 2019 to go to Ghana

Boy, I was hot and a little bothered as I mentioned tours, the humidity of monsoon really gets to me, but once I started that list I realized how exciting it is with all these great trips to look forward to. It motivates me to push on with the workshop- our training and new system making is starting to pay off, it needs more tweaks but we are chasing it.

and it will take such a big weight off my shoulders. I can already feel it when I send Ms M or Ms L off to follow up on things i would once have had to do myself.

A little bit of yippee!! too humid for silly dances but you get the vibe :)