Home in Bali

My front garden ends on a cliff face above a steep river ravine. If you descend the steps hewn out of the soft pumice stone cliff, you can go down to a beautiful tropical river, with waterfalls, caves and beaches. Above the river a tucked into a mossy alcove there is a small bathing temple built hundreds of years ago around a natural fresh water spring that bubbles forth from the dark volcanic rocks.

The small temple is still used every day for bathing and washing clothes by the people of the village where we live. Bathing hours are always in the morning or late afternoon. The Balinese believe the guardian of the river is at large in the middle of the day, so they never go down at that time. I like to take Lilie down in the middle of the day when it’s so quiet it’s like having our own private paradise.

Still Part of Part I....

I just LOVE this jacket, the embroidery black on black leather with a damask like black silk screened motif. It's another amazing Ernte creation.

I don't really like to do logo work in my shop. Factories with huge machines with 20 to 30 heads hammering away in great cavernous sheds are the people to see about logos. That's the work my competitors here do. Amazingly they have managed to do this come hell or high water for the last 5 years without rising their prices. (or their wages for that matter).
In the beginning I took on all comers, desperate for customers, whatever the job. Besides making very little profit with orders for logos, it was boring! I remember the day I decided to go for a different kind of client. Our shop had an order in from the electricity company. They wanted their uniforms embroidered with their new logo stating "Keeping World Standards". As usual they wanted it yesterday. We went straight to work the next day and barely had the second run through when the electricity went off!
This does happen at intervals in Indonesia; an event frequent enough that it is usually greeted with silent apathy by the locals. I called their "hot line". "Might be on at 2pm" was the offhand answer once I managed to talk to someone. Later at 5pm that day, our electricity company client swans in the door wanting his "world standards" uniform. The electricity had only just come on at 4pm, only enough time for us to make a sample for him.
"Keeping 3rd World Standards"