les grains
It feels like Christmas around our place these days, and it's not just because the weather is cooling. Since Distaff will be in Manitoba until mid-January we're hoping to participate in a Christmas craft sale. This will mean, hopefully, an opportunity to obtain greater exposure and a wider spectrum of shoppers, and the chance to sell Christmas items including handcrafted creches (or, nativity sets; ordered today, woot!), silk scarves (stay tuned for photos of the attelier de soie), Christmas tableware, window-decorations and tree ornaments.
tree ornaments
Fanja has found most of these ingredients for the decorations that she and her children are helping to assemble. She's also done a great job of noting what the seeds are that she brings to incorporate in the pieces we create... except that she only knows the Malagasy names for them. ha. Anyone out there who can identify the trees these seeds come from? Or can translate the Malagasy names into English (or French)?
The large black seeds are vokarabu - seeds from the karabu tree.
Large grey seeds: vobatulalaka - seeds from the batulalaka tree found in the south.
Small grey seeds, vozikidy, seeds from the zikidy tree.
We've also included seeds from the raphia plant and assorted beach treasures from the east and west coast of Madagascar. I think what we've come up with is quite lovely and, shame, if it doesn't sell I guess i'll just have to use them all myself. haha.