Same But Different

We're here!  We're here!

Another ferry crossing (my 28th, but who's counting?).  Another drive through Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine, a sliver of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and, at last, New York.  A quick dash into our house (rented until mid-September) and away again.

The children are with their dad, enjoying togetherness.  I am at the Temple in Brooklyn, then upstate to Zen Mountain Monastery for two weeks enjoying a different kind of togetherness.  Diving into practice, being back with my sangha, soaking up what it has to offer after months away.

I won't be posting until after my return, but please stay tuned!  The fall, winter, and dare I say it, spring, are loaded with projects and activities and ideas.  A rich season is ahead of us, so it is extra wonderful to take this moment to sit in stillness, and deliberately set an intention, then act on it.  Really, that's never a bad idea.

Enjoy the end of summer and coming of fall!  This one will never come again.

Because These Bags Ain't Packing Themselves

We didn't pack or clean or do anything towards our leaving in just a little less than 48 hours.  Instead, we drove out to central Newfoundland to try to find a beach that had been recommended to us as a beach combing delight.  Top secret location!  Except for the new signage helpfully posted by the local municipality!

Grammie pushed the rock climbing envelope, once again proving that 86 yo does not have to be sedentary.

Lucy and her friend managed to get as far away from us as possible without completely disappearing, once again proving that 14 yo's do not like to listen to the conversation of their elders for longer than 2 hours without making an escape.

The place is called Glassy Beach.  I wonder why?

Can there be anything more romantic than ceramic shards worn down by surf and tide?  I suspect not.  Each one makes me want to cry - so beautiful, so melancholy.

Late August

We had the first frost warning last night so that can mean only one thing - time to pack up and return to the Big, Bad City.  Between cleaning, packing, getting the house ready to stand empty for the winter and teaching my last yoga classes, naturally I have been diligently ignoring all that and working on my shawl project.

I can't put it down!  The simpleminded glee that results from the colour changes in the yarn are enough to keep me knitting and knitting.  The pattern has been total fun-ness, the yarn, a never-ending delight, and now...

Is there anything that can make one feel more like a freaking genius than knitting a very clever lace edging?

To be sure it is a bittersweet thing, this saying good-bye to the place (and people) (and cats) that we love so much.  It is good to have a little something to soften the blow.

- - - - - - - - - - -

In case you are not a regular reader of Lucy's blog, may I direct you there now?  No one can pen a haiku about kale the way she can.

Drum Carder Madness!

Yarn.  I like yarn.  It's pretty.

This one started out as Yuck for me but, with each passing day, it is becoming Yum.

This is the yarn from the batts that Lucy Workers Unite! Love carded.  Too bad I couldn't exploit her just a little bit more.  She has good taste for a member of the proletariat.

I think I have made this skein of yarn about six times before and, each time, sold it in my etsy shop.  This time, however, I am keeping it for myself.  Land and sea as made manifest in wool.

This one is like a cantaloupe, only, you know, less damp.

Here is my gorgeous Portuguese Merino, balled into a cake and the beginnings of a scarf with just enough lace (don't worry - it's coming) to make it a challenge but not so much to make it intimidating.  I am already in love.

Goose Arm

As part of my run-in with the M-words, I did an inspection of my fleece stash in the basement.  It appears (fingers crossed) to be untouched by any wool-eating insects.  During that inspection, however, I also was able to determine that I have a sh*tload of fleece.  

Something needs to be done!

My solution has been to card up as much of it as I can.  The majority of it is yet undyed so I pulled out all the dyed fleece and set to work.  Then, when I tired of carding, I offered to pay Lucy to card.  She did three batts, got paid, and immediately claimed that she had been exploited.  Guess that means I can't count on her assistance in the future.

Today, as I prepared for another day at the drum carder, a friend called.  Would I be interested in taking a boat tour to Goose Arm?  Um..?  Yes!

In the eleven years that I have been here, I have never once been out on boat on Middle Arm (our bay is one of three: Humber Arm.  Middle Arm is, well, in the middle and North Arm is the furthest north). Middle Arm breaks off into two other Arms:  Goose Arm and Penguin Arm.  We saw them both today!

We left from Cox's Cove, down by the fish plant.  Wasn't much happening there today because there is supposed to be a big storm tomorrow and, apparently, the fish know this and get prepared in some way that makes catching them impossible.

But catching them the old fashioned way, with rods and jigs, was still ok.  Although truth be told, no one really caught much.  I think this had to do with the fact that we saw an amazing school of porpoise in front of us - including one that did a full-body leap out of the water.  It was brilliant and stunning and made one feel happy to alive in a world where such things also lived.  But I suspect those brilliant animals chased all the fish away.  Just as well (perhaps).

The place is magical no matter what.

We even saw two bald eagles (that's one above there, captured as best I could with my phone camera) with their chicks.  And by "chicks", I mean six weeks old eagles that already have about a five-foot wing span.

Yes, magical.

 The drum carder will still work tomorrow....

The M-Words

The first M-word?  Merino!  Here it is, my wonderful Portuguese Merino, which feels more like BFL for those who care about those sorts of things.  Personally, I found it more fun to spin than other Merino and I love the feel of it now as a...shall we say....fingering weight two-ply yarn.  

The colour!  The colour!  Just shy of 600 yds, but beautiful, every inch of it.  I may have to gird my loins (so to speak) and actually knit some lace myself with this one.  The time has come!

As for the other M-word?  I am sad? horrified? disgusted? to admit that it is the most dreaded of all M-words...moths.  We got 'em.  Truth be told, Lucy sent me a text when I was almost home from Saskatoon telling me that she saw moths in one of my knitting baskets.  What?  Don't you have more than one?  Anyway, I did a search of it and didn't find much evidence so I did a rather cursory freeze/thaw routine of its contents and assumed all was well.  I made this assumption even as I was seeing little, fluttery creatures shimmering around the house each evening.  

Oh, they could be anything!  

Why in the world was I being so casual about the possibility of wool moths in a house filled with wool?  Even I can't answer that.  I finally realized that I needed to take serious action - NOW - after I actually saw the moths leaving a small pile of handspun.   As I tossed the contents of all my knitting baskets into plastic bags headed for the freezer, I was shouting, "I have probably a thousand dollars worth of wool in this house!"  Lucy was just laughing - who in their right mind has a thousand dollars worth of wool in their house?  

Your own mother, my dear.  Now, help me pack this stuff up!

I am fairly certain that the infestation (how it pains me to write that) is limited to my yarn baskets and does not include my fleece stash in the basement.  Ever the optimist!

Yes But, What About Yoga?

On Monday evening, we had our last yoga class at Full Tilt.  It was a very small class - only two people (thanks Shannon and Cheryl!) - but in some ways that was perfect.  Shannon has been coming since I began teaching and is very dedicated.  Cheryl is a new student (to me), joining the class only this summer. 

Not yoga-related, but it is pretty.

Colette gave me my first break as a yoga teacher, before I even had any teacher training at all.  Fueled only by a desire to share the love, I made up sequences based on classes I remembered and videos I watched.  Amazingly, no one was injured.   That experience inspired me to actually get some training and the rest, as they say, is history.

Until that history reaches an end.  Full Tilt, Colette's farm and artist residence centre (and yoga studio), is for sale, and while it is in the care of the estate's executor, no one is allowed on the property (save those who are visiting it with the intention to buy).  When I look back over the years that I taught there, I think what strikes me most is that yoga really happened, almost while we weren't looking.

The classes were never huge.  I think eight to ten were as many as ever came at one time - mostly it was around four or five people.   Yet, there was a sense of a community.  For the students who showed up for class each week, I think it all added it up to something transformational in ways that were both subtle and gross.

In yoga, there is the idea of samskara-s, which translates loosely to mean habits.  We create samskara-s every time we take an action and the more we do one thing, the bigger, deeper our samskara becomes.  So, our negative samskara-s could be seen like ruts in the road.  The more we take that road, the deeper the rut, the harder it is to get out of it.  According to Mr. Desikachar, in yoga we are working to replace our negative samskara-s with positive samskara-s.  I feel like I have witnessed this in myself and my students, at least a little bit.

Sometimes I wonder why yoga has this power, especially the asana.  I mean, anyone can do a bit of stretching and a bit of gymnastics and walk away feeling a little more limber, perhaps, but not changed in some more profound way.  Yet, even if all you do is asana, yoga does change people in profound ways.  Very, very slowly, but it does.

I also think about how it is possible to misuse yoga so that our negative samskara-s get ever deeper and reinforced.  One needs a teacher to point this out, I think.  In the beginning, we are drawn to whatever style usually because it reinforces certain qualities that do not need reinforcing.  It is possible, with the guidance of a good teacher, to use that very thing to actually help us break through the negative and make it a positive.

Shall I make an example of myself?

Here is what I mean.  Ashtanga has a reputation for attracting Type A, overly-ambitious, competitive people who obsess about mastering asana, have lots of preconceived ideas about advancing through the series as quickly as possible, and who enjoy the physical punishment of doing such a rigorous practice six days/week.  Sounds like a fun crowd, no?

I won't say that I don't fall into some of those categories.  And I won't say that I didn't spend the first several years of doing my practice caught up in all those things.  In fact, I will say that I was exactly like that.  I thought I was aiming towards one thing but the practice had other plans.  When I had visions of myself mastering the primary series and quickly moving into second series, my teachers put me back to half-primary.  I have written here about this before, but to quickly recap - they put me back there for a good long while.  So long that I finally had to get over myself and begin to (hold on to your hats) enjoy the practice of practice.  When I began to think that one could easily be very happy doing the half-primary for a lifetime, my teachers gave me more postures and I was soon doing the full series.

I have witnessed myself go in and out of that cycle over and over: I get ambitions about where I "should" be and then work through that to a place of comfort with where I am.  I remember having quite a set back when I inadvertently overheard someone telling one of my teachers that I had a "beautiful practice".  That messed me up for a good while!  If and when I do have a beautiful practice, I would say that it is a very humble practice, first and foremost.  If you didn't see humility among the list of qualities that I first mentioned, then you will see what I mean about how yoga can take what is exactly your particular poison and turn it into medicine.

(This is where it gets incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't practice ashtanga...sorry!)

This summer, as I have been practicing on my own, I had set up some loose goals (I mean, I am still a Type A - haven't cured that yet).  Among them were to finally be able to come back up from bhuja pindasana on a regular basis, to really get bakasana into the vinyasa's where it is supposed to be, and (insert dramatic music here) to get to where I can come back up from my drop-backs.  So, what has really happened?  I had a little break through with both bhuja pindasana and bakasana, again, almost when I wasn't looking.  A subtle shift and suddenly they are not so impossible.  I would say it had more to do with awareness than strength.  As for my drop backs (and coming back up)?  They have not advanced very far.  Instead what has greatly improved are my jump-throughs and my sirasana.  So, go figure.

(Ok, back to normal talk.)

So, is the yoga found in the newly improved sirasana (headstand) or is it in the fact that I stopped putting a lot of judgement and narrative around my ability to do sirasana?  That answer is fairly obvious.

And, with that, I need to actually go do my practice and then prep for teaching at a new space in Corner Brook.

Nothing stands still...

A Getaway From The Getaway

We find ourselves on the east coast of the island.  A friend was looking for companionship on a drive across the island, and one airbnb search later, Lucy, her friend, Hannah, and I were barreling down the Trans-Canada, sipping our coffee from the Deer Lake Tim Hortons.

As someone who drove nearly across the continent and back alone, I was patiently generous with my friend's need to have someone else along.  You might even call it a bit patronizing...until we actually had a flat tire and were standing on the side of the two lane highway with 18-wheelers charging past us.  Thank goodness that never happened on my trip!  And extra thank goodness for the kindness and genuine generousity of one man who stopped his 18-wheeler and put the spare tire on for us, then directed us to a place where we could get the tire more permanently repaired.  Buddy did it all with good cheer and incredible efficiency then hopped back in his truck and was gone.  We were so grateful!  Somehow his skill and attitude made what could have been very stressful and disastrous into a 20 minute minor diversion.  Thank you, kind sir!

And then, we were here.

Our friend is in St. John's but I am not so interested in St. John's.  We are a little more than an hour south of St. John's in a town called Kingman's Cove.  It makes Gillams seem like a bustling metropolis. But that is exactly what I wanted.

It is possible to be here and not hear any cars in the distance.  None!  Not even a little.  It's a beautiful place.  We have one more day and then back to our wild life and that Bay of Islands bump and grind.  

The Daemon Unleashed

The Tour de Fleece may be over but it has unleashed a daemon....

I can't stop spinning!  

Every morning, I think, "no, I won't get involved with that today, I have so many other things to do."  And then I think, "well, how can it hurt if I just do a little while the kettle boils?"  And then it is 12:30 p.m. and I am still in my pajamas and Lucy is wandering around looking for food like some wild-eyed street urchin in Naples circa 1946.

But look....

This is Merino.  And look at those colours!  This isn't some wussy, cloying Merino.  This is Portuguese Merino.  This is Merino that isn't afraid to stand up for itself.  This Merino isn't all "woo-woo, look how soft I am!  Only don't expect to see any stitch definition and, by the way, I will pill up after just one wearing..."  No, no.  This Merino is all, "step aside, there is an adult present" (use your best James Earl Jones voice when you read that).  

Or, you know, these are the thoughts that run through my head as I am spinning in my pajamas in the early afternoon.  Apparently the descent from hard working artist into full-fledged fibre-y debauchery is swift.

But I didn't show you this!  Look!  It's a wee Turkish spindle, suitable for use on long flights or bus journeys or any other time when you are in a tight, cramped space but absolutely must spin some fleece.  It happens all the time!

I first spied this little cutie when I went to the wonderful Golden Willow in Regina, SK, for the Knitting Sprawl project.  Deborah had one (among her many spindles) and I was captivated.  I mean, who wouldn't be?  She let me play with it a bit and gave me a quick tutorial about turkish spindles, and then we left.  

For four years, I have thought about that spindle but I have never seen one like it again.  Fast forward to July 4, 2013.  I find myself, somewhat unexpectedly, in Regina, SK, again.  I do what any quick thinking person would do - I head straight for the Golden Willow and I buy one of those spindles.  No, it was not cheap but it was a little birthday present to myself.  You see, I spent my birthday on the road, by myself.  It was all perfectly fine and I felt not a twinge of unhappiness about it...but when faced with the price of the spindle vs. its size, I did think certain thoughts that attempted to justify the purchase: cost + birthday x aloneness = buy the tiny spindle!

Plus, it can do this:

Yes, let's see that again:

becomes:

This isn't about rational thought...this is addiction.  Sheesh.

Nature...Or, Run For Your Life

Now that the project for Saskatoon is behind me, and the next big one isn't until next spring, I am spending the rest of our time here enjoying what it has to offer - a whole lotta natural beauty.  The Type A in me also wants to list all the other things I will be doing but - deep breath - I am just going to let that go.  If you wish to believe that I will be lounging around under a tree, reading a book for the next five weeks, so be it.  And frankly, that doesn't sound like the worst fate.

Lucy and I took a hike up behind our house yesterday evening.  There is a trail that goes all the way up to Gros Morne, if you have the shoe leather and the stamina for it.  But we just go to the community pasture to check out the goats and sheep (there weren't any this year - wonder why?) and to this always-strange abandoned racetrack and ball field.  It lived up to is strangeness last night by being host to a cow and a bull grazing, unencumbered by any fencing.  As much as we were intrigued, we kept our distance...that bull was mighty big and had some horns that looked like serious business.  They barely glanced our way so we were probably being overly cautious, but hey - we're city slickers.

We walked home via the highway.  There is a point where the road is cut from such a steep slope down to the bay that the tree tops of the hill beneath are just above road level.  This is where some osprey have their nests.  Last night, two of them started making a lot of noise and circling around us as we walked by.  These osprey fish in the bay right at our beach and we have seen them dive bomb the fish often.  As one of them put its wings into dive bomb position, both Lucy and I started running and shouting, "we come in peace!" and maybe "help!"  I was waiting to feel the claws ripping my scalp off....

...but it turned out that the osprey's ire was directed at some crows that were hanging around.  Lucy and I had a good laugh at our cowardly behavior.  I think the message of that hike was: nature is scary.  Or maybe:  we have to get out more.

This is remaining Shetland that I chain plied.  It actually didn't come out so well...and I am wondering if Shetland is just not a good candidate for chain plying.  Does anyone have any opinions?  I would gladly fess up to simply doing a poor job of it but I also chain plied some merino I had sitting around on some bobbins and that came out beautifully.  So..was it me or the sheep?  What do you think?

Greater Than the Sum of Two Parts

One skein = one cat's body length

Technically (I don't know what you mean by technically, Bob), I have met my Tour de Fleece goal.  I spun two sets of singles of this gorgeous overdyed Shetland and plied them, all on my spindle.

It resulted in about 132 yds of the most Shetland-y Shetland I have ever seen.  Can't you just smell the peat burning from here?

I do feel like my spindling skills improved and I learned that a girl's best friend in a traffic jam is her spindle.  But I am rather embarrassed to admit that I made a ridiculous mistake.  For some unfathomable reason, I did not divide the fleece evenly when I split it in half.  Yes, that's right...I managed to botch up the simple act of dividing it in half.  I will use as my excuse that I had probably driven for 10+ hours so everything was a bit fuzzy, if you know what I mean.  Oh no, now that I reflect a moment, I remember when I divided the fleece...ahem...mistakes were made, as Ronald Reagan once said.  Enough about that.

The results of my inability to divide one into two evenly was that I have a good ounce of fibre (maybe more - sheesh!) left over.  After studying my spindle spun yarn closely and considering the amount of time and effort that went into those 132 yds, I did what any sensible person would do...I brought out my wheel.  I am spinning the rest as a thin single and will chain-ply it into a lovely little skein...on my wheel.

I like my spindle.  I enjoy spindling.  I appreciate its transportability and its connection to pre-history.   But darlings,  I looooove my wheel.  You may have read one or two love letters to it here (cough, cough).  Does this make me a lesser spinner?  Am I less pure for putting my wheel over my spindle?  Why am I even asking myself these questions in the 21st Century?

The answer is: why don't you just be quiet and spin, for heaven's sake?

And, I think, that is just what I will do.  Cheers!

A Bucket of Capelin

On our first visit to the west coast of Newfoundland in 2001, we went to a place on White Bay called Sop's Arm.  We were trying to get to a ferry to Harbour Deep - a town that was only accessible by boat, which intrigued us greatly.  Or maybe we were checking out a high school that was for sale as part of my big dream of making a museum about culture and tourism.  In any event, we missed the ferry and we just wandered around Jackson's Arm and Sop's Arm, two small communities on the bay.

In Sop's Arm, we met a young boy who was very friendly and who spoke to us at length about the "two buckets of capelin" he had caught the day before.  He had a heavy Newfoundland accent to the point of almost being unintelligible to us and there was just something otherworldly about him.  The whole experience seemed more like something out of a Flannery O'Connor story than anything else.  "Two buckets of capelin" said in a strong accent became a catch phrase for us - something we said in response to just about anything.  

"Whatcha doing?" 

"oh, I don't know...but I have two buckets of capelin.."

Yesterday, a friend delivered a little less than a bucket of capelin...

They are sweet little things, aren't they?

Later, we went to a birthday bonfire for our friend Katherine Knight.  She is the person who made the film about Colette, Pretend Not to See Me.  She is making a film now about the new hotel on Fogo Island.  She is a wonderful filmmaker and really, really good at asking questions.

See?

This is for all my New York friends....yes, we needed our winter hats on the beach last night.  T'was a wee bit chilly.

That's Where You'll Find Me

The evening we left Newfoundland for Saskatoon on June 27th, it was about 8C/45F and damp.  It felt like summer would never arrive.  Of course, on the mainland, summer was in full bloom so I experienced some heat on the prairies.  When I got back to the ferry in Cape Breton (NS), it was still very damp (some might call it "rain") but we had at least hit 20C/70F.  And it has been pretty glorious ever since.  

Possibly not so surprisingly, I came home and promptly got sick.  Something had to give!  So I have spent these past two glorious days mostly asleep or sitting around on the couch.  It has its charms to be sure but I very aware of how fleeting these days are - one can not take warmth and sunshine for granted.

One thing that I have been doing somewhat steadily since the big road trip began is spinning 4 oz. of overdyed grey Shetland (dyed by Widdershins of course!) as part of participating in the Tour de Fleece.  My goal - a modest one to be sure - was to spin and ply the whole 4 oz using only my wonderful Kundert spindle.  For one, a spindle is very portable so it made sense since I was on the road for most of the TdF.  Also, as someone who purports to teach people to spin on spindles, well, my skills could be stronger.  

I discovered that it is possible to drive and spin, if you count sitting in a traffic jam as driving.  I actually got a fair bit done in the two tie-ups I experienced on the trip.

Remarkably, this is the first, full 2 oz. on the spindle.  It doesn't look like much but it is spun quite fine (excluding that end bit there).  I will begin the second 2 oz. but I have a feeling that the TdF is ending rather sooner than I might like it to (just checked - it ends on Sunday).  

Then again, it is a perfect activity for people with head colds.