paints and brushes were too hard and too expensive to truck around from place to place , so she 'd first started using local fabrics - batiks or weaves or whatever was to hand - and had moved , more or less by chance , to feathers , after coming across a market stall in paramaribo or vientiane or quito or shangri-la perhaps , that sold every colour of feather you could imagine and beyond , some concoctions so unlikely they hardly seemed to have come from an animal at all .