Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

May 21, 2013 –ANCHORAGE, Alaska – One of Alaska’s most active volcanoes, which has been belching ash and spewing lava since last week, has forced regional flight cancellations and dusted some nearby communities with ash, scientists and local officials said on Monday. Pavlof Volcano has sent up ash as high as 22,000 feet, with the cloud blowing eastward and the eruption showing no signs of abating, according to the federal-state Alaska Volcano Observatory. The lava from its 8,261-foot (2,518-metre) peak has also created huge steam clouds on meeting the mountain’s snow. While the ash plume was still too low on Monday to affect commercial airliners flying at least 30,000 feet above sea level between Asia and North America, it was scrambling schedules for regional carriers serving rural fishing towns and native villages that lack outside road access. PenAir, an Anchorage-based Alaska company specializing in travel in southwestern Alaska, briefly…

Sujuni, is a traditional craft of Bihar. It is made by women and depicts the animal, bird and day to day activities of village life. It is technically done by straight running stitch embroidery on layered cotton.Women quilt together old sari and other pieces of cloth with tiny running stitches,and embroider these beautifully. The product is a quilt-cum-bedspread,sometimes stuffed with tattered cloth to give it added thickness. Sujuni is labour intensive-the number of stitches per square inch varies from 105-210. A fine running stitch all over the sheet in the same colour as the base cloth creates the background upon which motifs are outlined in chain stitch. The design is then filled in with tiny rumming stitches in coloured thread. An age-old practice among women in almost all parts of the country, what makes sujuni remarkable is the unique narrative elements in its embroidery. Women stitch their experience, their…