Mehendi: Celebrating Life

While I was up in Toronto visiting with my friend, Tish, she asked me if I would do some Mehendi on her the same night that Shelna was coming over to have her "bump" painted.

We picked up a few tubes of ready-made henna and I started while we waited for our other friend to arrive. I created spirally designs on her feet and legs and then later on her hands.

In the end, it turned out like I had vaguely remembered it would-- the sole of the feet and the palm of the hand hold the Mehendi best and go the darkest. The designs on Tish's legs and wrists didn't end up coming out as dark, but were still lovely.

Mehendi is a very old traditional body artform and is often used to help to celebrate special occasions in Life.

Tish has a lot to celebrate with the big changes that she's been making in her life over the last few years.

She has lost 136 lbs in the past year after undergoing a gastric bypass surgery (see her blog "Adventured in Gastric Bypass" in my links to read more about it) and had gotten her breasts reduced two weeks ago as part of the whole process. There are two more surgeries ahead for her and I hope that they are all successful and not *too* painful.

I came up to spend some time with her on the 2nd week of her recovery and to do some things together that we weren't able to do over the march break since I wasn't able to get up there as we had planned.

One of the things that we did this week was to put together a collective shop on Etsy called: "WoolTwoGo".

Etsy is a website where Artists can sell their own Creations directly to buyers. We're going to use our Shop to sell our fiber arts like Tish's baby booties, hats, sets and patterns, and I am going to sell my felted beads and jewellery there.
Here's a link to the shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5898522
(You can also see a link on the right side of my blog)

We're still in the process of listing items and I'm going to be doing a lot of that "clerical" work, but I have high hopes that Tish can raise a lot of money to go towards her surgeries with this shop and share with others her hand-knitting, a Creative process that gives her much pleasure.

I hope you'll come and check out our shop!