i-love-handcrafts.com - creative meandering !

 Copyright I.Lisk 2015                                                        On the 26th May 2015, I took the first steps of a journey to the cultural melting pot which is Mindelo, Sao Vicente. Cape Verdeans are rightly very proud of their musical and arts & crafts heritage; and on that first visit I came across, serendipitously one might say, the beginnings of a revival or restoration of the status of arts and crafts, taking place on the island. The CNAD - Centro Nacional de Artesano e Design was at the forefront, and I was fortunate and privileged to meet with the then newly appointed Director and visionary Irlando Jorge Delgao Ferreira, and the Head of the Arts and Crafts school Joao Fortes, himself an artist and weaver among many other skills. As you might suspect, multi-disciplines is something common to most creat...

My favorite bloom,  2017 I love roses, my friends know this and must have hear d my story before, but I write it now for posterity. When I first moved into my home in late 1990s the garden had a path running down the middle, and a grass patch on one side and a mound of earth with a tired old rose bush in the middle of the other side. It was winter, so the branches were bare...but come summer it bloomed with a set of old-fashioned beautiful pale pink roses. The following summer brought the builders who were helping to upgrade the house and redesign the garden. We decided on a  new layout, and moving the rose bush. The message relayed must hav e gotten lost in translation, as one day on returning from work I found a lovely newly laid path running through where the rose bush used to stand, and no rose bush anywhere in the garden. I eventually found the mutilated pieces in the rubble skip, where the builders had tossed them after hacking it dow...