I'm on Etsy!

This blog is a changin'. All the time. I feel like it's always on the verge; some sort of an edge. The rim of a curb. And that at any time it's going to cross over, walk into a little shop on the other side of the road, and get itself a new wardrobe.

When I started the blog, it was about the food I cooked. Then, in crept the photographs I took. The poetry I read. The furniture I filled my home with. Things I sewed. Places I travelled to.

Now, it'll have to accommodate a plan.

When I finished university, and started working in advertising, it consumed my days. And then, consumed the decade that followed. A decade of writing print campaigns and commercials. The first thrills of driving past billboards with headlines I'd written. Working till dawn on pitches. Long hours of brainstorming - which can be part of a real job. I loved what I did, most of the time. But did I see myself doing that, just that and nothing else, for the rest of my life?

Nah.

I wanted a little shop.

At some point. Maybe years later. A shop filled with beautiful things for the home. Things that I had designed, and created, and crafted copy for. It would have a homey little cafe tucked into one corner. With mismatched teacups. Woven rugs on the floor. And Nina Simone in the background. For as long as I can remember, I've wanted that shop. Even when I was in school, while most of my friends hunched around Linda Goodman's Love Signs, I would be behind a stack of old, foreign design magazines. Bought from the second-hand book shops in Golpark, in South Calcutta. I had a scrapbook filled with cut-outs of country kitchens, Tuscan tiles and patchwork cushions. Instead of Tom Cruise in Top Gun.

So. What now, you ask. Is there a shop? No, there's no shop with rugs on the floor. That's still as far-fetched as it was when I was a teenager with a crush on an Anglepoise lamp.

But, I've been making things, on the side. Pieces of art for the home. Handmade, hand-stitched. Appliquéd, inked.

It started on a whim, as most things do with me. And then, as I sat there every day, surrounded by fabrics and buttons and wallpapers and what have you, it began to gather force.

Peppercorns in my Pocket is going to be a little handmade business.

There. It's out. I'm committed. For now, it's is going to be a range of art for the home. And who knows, some day it might become a bag, a cushion cover, a throw.

There's nothing like making something by hand - touching textures, putting them together, creating something from scratch. There's a whiff of that far-fetched shop. There's also a lot of calm in this sitting and making. A lot of satisfaction when a piece is done. And in knowing that the work doesn't compromise my time with Chotto-ma. There's also a loud whoop whoop when a piece is sold. (Thanks Sarah, for buying the first!)

I am absolutely, completely loving it.

Peppercorns in my Pocket is now on Etsy. Yes, a different kind of 'shop'. But, it does have lots of mismatched teacups. If you're in Etsy, come and say 'Hi'.

Wish me luck.