Books and lights
Light reading of the Nights
Pointe shoes and ice creams
Oast houses and ad dreams
Axolotls and animals, the Conference of the Birds
Giraffes, a Cyberdog and, although not preferred,
Interest goes down but up goes the rent
That's summer in England and London and Kent...
...The famous envelope flap of an Islamic binding, painting on book cover in progress...
...Kaboom! Shell gold on red might be my favourite combination. A Simurgh/phoenix and a wooing dragon and a crane that just doesn't care...
…maybe it saw the light. We saw Anthony McCalls' solid lights at Tate Modern and Kashi 'swam' in them. Go with kids or borrow some for this one, it's the best way to experience it...
...they just know instinctively how to interact with these slow burning arcs of light...
...at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum I pointed out a map of the Silk Roads to both our children. They are named after places here: one is the Caspian Sea and the other is the city of Kashi - ancient Varanasi, or indeed Kashgar...
...before the Silk Road, though, for me there were floating islands. This is my earliest obsession because I believed I lived on one. I found an old Yakult advert I kept. Does anyone remember drinking lots of Yakult as a kid? You can still buy it in supermarkets today. Yakult is like Actimel: good bacteria. I think I'm part-Yakult, part-Parmesan...
Book classes
Join 1001 Nights Reading Group
...How do you cram more images into a book? Paint everywhere, including on its sides. Paint on its fore-edge, disappearing or otherwise. (Please note, to take this class you will need a book block, which you can either make or buy ready-made.) In recent Chinese and Japanese books I've seen, they still print on the fore-edge of the book and use it as a sort of indexing (I think), either with characters or images. You can also paint in the margins (you'll also need to prepare your own paper, ideally with an avocado pink stain). All here: https://www.vaishaliprazmariteaching.com/book-online
Speaking of pink, look for the Pink Camel to find the 1001 Arabian Nights reading group! I just want to remind everyone that you can join in whenever and dip in whenever, no need to ‘catch up’; it’s that kind of story where you can just immediately dive right into it and go with the flow. I recommend reading the Prologue and 1st night but apart from that, you can just start wherever since they are short stories! You DO NOT have to have read all the previous nights, you can just join in whenever. I've run a few of these sessions and we've realised that due to the 'short story' nature of the Nights being caught up in a longer 'novel', you really can just join whenever. So please feel free to come along whenever!
There will also be those of you that want to catch up and read along religiously (I would, but I am not everyone). We are up to Night 70 but again - no pressure though as it's a lot to catch up - good news though since the Nights are getting shorter as we go along! They are really long at the beginning. I want there to be less pressure for people to read all the Nights and they can just dip in and dip out wherever we are at, since the flow of the Nights is like that. As if it is one long train ride and you hop on at whichever station takes your fancy, on whichever night, and are able to follow along from that point on without needing to read all the previous nights and just jump straight in. (Or maybe only read a few previous nights, but not all of them, since they are different stories as well.) As long as you've read the Prologue and the 1st Night then you can join in at any time, as some of us will have definitely read all the nights, others fewer, and others more or less... doesn't matter, that seems to be the nature of it, and it's all ok! You can join in actively, or just sit back and listen, all is fine, I'd just rather you enjoy this deeply important set of tales, as influential on Western culture as the Bible (yes, honestly).
In a jump to a completely random and ordinary other matter that is very characteristic of the Nights, anyone want to buy an axolotl? That's the message in the following ad. I'm not sure if it's still available now (maybe they're popular!) but it was a suitably Nights-ish thought, that you could be walking the streets of northwest London going about your day and if you also wanted, you could be the new proud owner of one of the most unusual alien-like amphibians on the planet, and where would that story take you...
More brushes and beautiful tools here
...Amphibians don't make good brushes. You need hair and feathers for that. All my brushes here: https://www.theperfectbrush.co.uk/shop
and here's the link to my Make a Carpet Page e-course. Once downloaded it's yours to keep forever: https://vaishaliprazmaricarpetpage.thinkific.com/courses/make-a-carpet-page or purchase some easy-watching, relaxing painting films.
You can get your own ALADDIN toy theatre here: https://www.theperfectbrush.co.uk/product-page/aladdin-paper-toy-theatre...
Book classes
...more good ads I saw include this turf laptop. Argos is still going, Ryman's is still going and even WH Smith is still going (but Woolworth's is not). Cyberdog in Camden is also still going! I remember going there as a teenager. Then I took my child there and noticed they even have children's clothes, for... baby raves?! T-shirts that have LCD screens that display scrolling messages seems like the 90s but also the future...
...The future is now. The monthly meeting link is also over at the Forum, which now is a real hub of information and you just need to scroll around or use the Search tool to find information. It's sorted into broad categories too.
...The future I dreamed of in the past also included diversity in ballet shoes, since my childhood options were pink or black, and later I discovered that white was actually quite lovely (I love wearing white as a colour). Now you can get all kinds of tan, olive, brown, coffee... all kinds of chocolate and wood colours. Brilliant!...
...A mad Alice in Wonderland summer included familiar food made strange and lots of animals. That was a proud little caveboy Kashi holding not one but two sausages on the same stick that his father carefully made for him. Sausages are not for me but dancing round a fire is. We also had cloud ice cream - ice cream in a cone with candy floss wrapped around it. But then when we went outside it was so humid that all the candyfloss shrank. I didn't know it could change state so rapidly. That is the actual Jabberwocky tree at Oxford University too. And a giraffe, which up close is more giant than you think, and a cassowary bird that could kill you, and a baby screamer bird. They're cute when they're young ...
Paint some birds
...and there will be a reprise of my Conference of the Birds class at the School of Traditional Arts. This time we'll paint more birds. Include cassowaries ('the most dangerous bird in the world') and screamers if you like! Below, can you guess where this unusual architecture is from? Ok fine, they are oast houses from Kent (because if you didn't know, you are unlikely to just guess it!) Speaking of unusual - did you know there are still places in the UK where you can buy things for 1p? That's right - for a single penny you can get an incense stick! In the past you could get... a black and white toy theatre! And for 2p, the coloured version (my coloured Aladdin is coming...) ...
Get your ALADDIN toy theatre here
...The kids and I came up with what I think is a brilliant learning project: make your own board game! You can adapt this for very young ages. It teaches: design and making of course, and turn-taking, as well as...sequencing, maths, times tables (if you're lucky - we're not there yet), colouring in, storyline, arc, plot and goal, concept design, character design, cutting and sticking, fine motor control, manners and since ours was loosely based on Snakes and Ladders - one of the world's oldest games with religious and mystical roots - the fact that life is full of ups and downs, you win some, you lose some. You can vary it by adding challenges, like seeing if you can throw rings onto a toilet roll like quoits, or tricks like balancing on one leg with your eyes closed for 10 seconds. And it's just fun to make up your own game. Try it and let me know! I'll be dwelling on this idea for a while with the kids I hope.
This summer we've had good and bad weather. I managed to go for a lovely walk with my sister in the grounds of a house from 1793, gate-crashed a wedding and had (prebooked!) afternoon tea. And what a beautiful lotus in the fountain.
Kentishly yours,
Vaishali Prazmari
P.S. The boy with 1000 faces is in a giant ballet shoe... cheesy one second, gormless the next. Taken within split seconds of each other. He changes almost as fast as candyfloss shrinks in humidity and is just as sweet!
