Opening the door to Mrs. Mitra Moinzadeh’s art room is like opening the door to a secret garden. As Faly Golshan (her daughter-in-law) explains, Mrs. Moinzadeh collects artistry done pieces of Pateh.
It takes several stages to complete a pateh. First one of the ladies has to make the fabric. After that someone has to make a pattern or design – like a parrot or canary. Thirdly, the whole pattern is outlined. During the next step, simple embroidery is used to create flowers, blossoms and decorative leaves. Lastly comes the 3D embroidery. It’s a long and arduous process which give pateh its special quality.
In the past pateh was done all in red, and the women said it was red because of their blood (from too many needle pricks). If you visit Kerman, you’ll notice that it lies on the edge of a vast desert. Hardly anything grows here – and certainly no flowers. Pateh was a way that women could add color and life to the inside of their homes, bringing the Persian gardens inside the home – so to say.
One of the most beautiful things in life, which 99.9% of the Western world fails to appreciate each day is a warm shower. After 3 or 4 days of cycling and wild camping, my own nose was threatening to cut itself off from my own body if I didn’t take executive measures to eliminate the stinky smells wafting upwards. Checking into that hotel and enjoying white, clean sheets… ahhh.
The Great Copper Mountain in Falun is quite an amazing site, and in the 17th century, it produced a large majority of all the copper used in Europe in those days. The cash which came in to the royal treasury also funded many of Sweden’s wars. The site has been smartly turned into a museum and you can walk some of the old mine shafts. I was most touched by one of the buildings on the surface where the raw rocks came up to be sorted. There, for hundreds of years, very young kids – mostly boys – would sit and work picking raw valuable rocks from those of lesser value out of a cold watery sludge. Totally. Brainless. Work. A picture of kids from the year 1918 made me feel so lucky to have been born (or reincarnated) in the time and place I was.
My life – seeking answers while cycling to the Nordkapp – was a one big luxury.
Here are a few entries from my “Gratitude Journal”, which I had started a few months earlier:
-Grateful to be invited for 2nd job interview. So many options!
-Grateful for the rain and a good day riding.
-Grateful for the nice email from Joachim.
OXLAEY