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to browse and drool |
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s*t*a*s*h! (blush) |
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Fine ribby alpaca/silk top-down raglan
In a beautiful blue-with-slubs 4ply. Hypnotic to knit.  Lace scarf / shawl In yarn left over from the beaded hemp top. Wavy shale pattern. Maybe this will become the shawl I promised myself this year. Sleeveless top for Toz in duck-egg blue Rowan DK Soft. Toria started it and has run out of steam. So have I. Crochet throw in sueded velour stuff Progressing slowly. Crochet is not comfortable for me.  |
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Knitty Threadbear Ozeyarn Martina for sock yarn Kangaroo House of Hemp Ford Barton Laughing Hens Hip Knits |
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I've done a shed-load of training in the last few years, some in new areas, some pretty advanced. I recommend these training establishments for outstanding integrity, professionalism and allround excellence: John F Barnes Myofascial Release Upledger Institute Craniosacral Therapy Jing Advanced Massage (I also teach with these guys) Pilates Training Solutions |
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Yes, I am knitting... The scarf/shawl in hemp is still enthralling me. Then I noticed that about 6 inches down I had made a mistake!!! In lace!!! A zig zag row of uppy eyelet increases and downy decreases was going zig zag zig zag zig zag 1/2zig zag 1/2zag zig zag zig zag zig. The stitch count is perfect and the return rows don't show up mistakes immediately - especially if you don't really look at what you are knitting at the time... I decided not to frog. Toria off to Manchester University We took Toria DD up to Manchester uni last Sunday. Her halls of residence seem fine and there are some very lovely young people living there. Manchester is Big City, aggressive all the way through. The students are told to stick together and never, ever, ever, ever go anywhere on their own after dusk, never walk home at night even in groups and to invest seriously in taxis, which are thankfully cheap. Her first week there taught her the wisdom of these admonitions as she witnessed two cars being broken into beneath her window, 2 girls had their bags / purses stolen and another was evacuated from Sainsburys with the other customers when a man wielding a machete started to threaten people. Having said that, she is having a good time, lots of fun, and is already working hard (first week!!!) and it promises to be a fantastic place to be at university. The uni itself is superb and there are art galleries, museums, libraries, excellent sports facilities and 100 culturally interesting and diverse things to do. And, of course, 100 good friends to be made. It's a little weird, our baby having flown the nest, even knowing that she will be back in the vac. However, the feeling of being on our own in the house when the boys are out is totally delicious, despite the fact that we miss her terribly. September 20th More kit and doggie pics Jacquie, human mum of Noni and her kits, has sent me some more picis. The saluki is Leone and Noni the Siamese and her kits obviously get on very well with her :) 
September 10th I've been busy with space ...clearing out the kitchen and rearranging things. I have some theories regarding clear and used space, rooted in observations I have made over the last couple or three or four and a bit decades. Space tells one masses about the people who inhabit it. Here are some things I have noticed. Firstly, there is the 'feeling' of space, when one moves into it. This ranges from current feeling to ancient, historical feeling. I perceive this as something like a vibrational field left in a building or in a particular piece of landscape from the people or animals who have inhabited it, imprinting it with their characteristics and the signature of their activities. The feeling is not necessarily kinaesthetic, but is sensed with glimpses and shivers and tingles in the ears. Secondly, the way people arrange their space day by day is interesting. I can discern significant details about my own state of being by the way I arange my own space, and by what I require from it. My children, my husband, gf, very close friends all deliberately intervene in the way they maintain their space when they want to change something in their outlook, mood, or the way their life is going. They don't necessarily do this consciously or deliberately, they just find themselves needing to clear out / tidy up / get this place look lived in / nest / dedicate a space for a new activity / 'own' their space. We tend to regard 'environment' as the least fundamental focus of our attention (this from NLP), but I disagree. I think it reflects the state of one of our deepest needs, underlying all our activity on this earth, namely our connection with the earth. It's all about grounding. I'll explain what I mean. Grounding is the activity we undertake to connect with the earth, the planet, the ground we live on, our home. There is nothing airy fairy about this. Au contraire: the most unreliable, flaky people I have known, sweet souls as they all are, are the least grounded. They live in their heads rather in reality, they run after fantasies, but don't pursue their dreams, they talk pie in the sky, but have no vision. They bewilder others and they don't know themselves. When we are grounded, we can devlop and nurture both roots and wings (what is parenting about - right?) and we can know ourselves. Being grounded is what people sometimes refer to as being 'centred', having a point of stability and connection with this rock, on which our physical lives are played out, and around which we can build visions that will manifest in reality. The better I know my points of reference on this earth, the further I can fly with my dreams and visions, the more I can accomplish which is truly transformational for myself and those I touch. Back to space. Our choice of immediate environment has a lot to do with our groundedness. If we are grounded, we are in touch with the space we live in, we have a sense of what works for us and what doesn't, and we are drawn to places which have pleasing vibrational energy - and have been sites where people or animals have connected with the earth before us. Some people’s homes are like that, whether they are new or old, in an ‘upmarket’ area or on a council estate. The people there know themselves and connect with each other and the ground they live on. Some spiritual sites are like that too, sometimes also sites of ancient woodland, sometimes churches or other sites of worship. But have you ever been to someone's house, someone who could have chosen to live just about anywhere, and wonder why on earth they lived there? I recently spent some time in a house in quite a pretty place but with lines of enormous electricity pylons marching past within a few hundred yards. The house itself was quite large, but totally lacking in character. Totally. It seemed at first as if it could be quite nice, but there was nothing there. It was 'vacant'. The site was vacant. It was as if it was made of plastic, artificial space; even wandering out into the garden it was difficult to connect with the earth there. I don’t know whether that had anything to do with the pylons or whether they were just coincidental. Then, there are the strangest places, maybe little shops or offices in otherwise ugly areas, crowded or run-down, which teem with energy and life. And the people who live and work there have vision and buzz, character and love for others, for their work, are usually passionate about something, from the inside out. And one wonders why these places are attractive, even if they smell. I maintain it is because the character and passion of the people (ingredient number one) has melded with the ground and the walls and the landscape they inhabit (ingredient number two) and the two energies have mixed to become an unstoppable force. Now to my point - yes, I do have one! I think there have to be both ingredients present and active for a people's (or just one person's) passion to develop and for vision to manifest. Being in a sacred place does nothing if I don't know who I am, at least to some extent, at the core of my being. I could do nothing with the place's energy, except hope for a miracle (which is not a bad place for starting to know myself). And knowing myself is impossible without being grounded. Grounding is the activity which connects us with the energy of a landscape, a dwelling, a place of work, and activates it in our lives. At the same time grounding makes me aware of my own energy, my core, my beingness. I connect with the earth and the earth's purpose, and maybe with the purpose of all those who have gone before me in that place. There is nothing better. Some people ground naturally. My DH, being a landscape artist, is unconsciously (usually) totally grounded, in touch with the landscape he is resting on, by virtue of the fact that he focuses on it, sensing the energy, reflecting it in oils and watercolours. I had some 'odd' experiences when I was much younger, where I was naturally grounded, then later on I had to deconstruct what had happened to teach myself how to 'do' it again, after various life passages had squeezed the natural inclination, or 'homing instinct' out of me. Back to the kitchen. Our house dates from about 1430, an old Hall House. Our kitchen was the centre, the beams were those the lord and lady of the manor rested against when dining. The moment we first stepped inside this house, we sensed it was a centre for generation upon generation of families and communities, their politics, wars and skirmishes, victories, defeats, prayer, scraping a living and feasting, wealth and famine, and above all, total dependency on the land, the ground. I can feel it now, as I type. The land is the leveller. She sees through centuries and millenia, sees cycles of life and death, always pulsating with the rhythm of nature and of life. The sense of this is very strong here. There has hardly been a person who has visited us over the last twenty years, who has not remarked in some way on what a lovely 'place' it is - and they are sensing the energy of the land and the ground. This was the reason we fell in love with the house. The story of how we managed to buy it is long and convoluted and full of synchronicities (the house was snapped up immediately, the first day it went on the market, the day we viewed it along with 14 other possible buyers, by someone else in possession of a bridging loan, but the vendor's horse managed to bite their surveyor and the mortgage inspector declared the house was 'unfit for mortgage purposes because the doors aren't square and the floors aren't even', and the vendor liked us, so it came back to us just as we managed to sell both our properties against all expectations). We feel extremely privileged to live here and to be part of and take from and contribute to the energies already present. Er, the kitchen. Well, what happened was that the energy in our kitchen was getting a little 'bunged up', what with five adults living here and each one passionately active in their own chosen field, and what with such a strong energy field from the house and the land itself, and us all being thoroughly tuned in to these kind of things, I decided to clear out. So I rearranged cupboards and work tops, threw out a few items we no longer use, and generally arranged it so that the combined energy flows of people and site are harmonizing well. A grounding exercise One of my favourites: imagine a point a couple of inches below your navel, from which you have beams of energy shining out. Any colour, any consistency, visible, invisible, does not matter. Imagine some of these rays reaching down into the earth, far, far into the earth, straight down, towards the very centre. On they go, further and further. soon they approach the centre of the earth, which is very hot, but the rays don't mind, because they are energy, too. The rays now come to the very epicentre of the earth, and finding the hottest spot in the centre, they wrap themselves around this spot. Several times. Now try pulling a little on the rays, to tighten the wrap. Wrap a bit more, and pull a little. When the rays coming from the point two inches below your navel and reaching all the way to the middle of the earth are wrapped securely around the very centre of the earth, begin to become aware of your breathing. Breathing in, breathing out. As you breathe out, imagine drawing up energy from the very centre of the earth, up through the lines of energy connecting the centre with the point two inches below your navel, as if they were conduits for earth energy. As the energy comes into your body, as it will, it can stay there, if you need it, or like the idea, or it can flow through your body and out again, through the pores, out as you next breathe out (drawing in and breathing out at the same time). Voilà. Sometimes I just place a bare foot or two on the floor, breathe in light, energy, whatever you want to call it, through the top of my head (there's a chakra up there, somewhere, but let's not get too technical), and when I breathe out, draw in earth energy up through my feet into my body. If the light energy comes down far enough and the earth energy comes up far enough, somewhere in the middle, those two energies meet and mingle. September 4th Peace and Goodwool! This wonderful greeting from Jess at Scarf-o-matic - and a sweet little button - badge. thank you Jess! What is Katrina revealing? We are looking on in amazement. Sheer amazement. Katrina has blown away the carpet to reveal everything that's ever been swept under it: poverty, violence, administration priorities. Even hardened brit correspondents are baffled by the ease in which these cans of worms have been breached. Blessings to those who are suffering. Could this mark the beginning of a turn-around for, er, "civilisation"? Back at work And it's brilliant! I love this stuff, and two or three weeks' break has done me no end of good. I've finished the newsletter and the leaflets, and they are about to wing their way to their various destinations. Knitting news The hemp scarf advances!  I'm off to the Ali Pali on October 15th for the Knitting and Stitching Show, and hope to find House of Hemp there again for some more purchases. Although it has no elasticity at all, their hemp remains a texturally incredibly appealing yarn to be running through your fingers. And the colours are so yummy! Strange behaviour From time to time, I, like many others, exhibit strange behaviour. In my case it reveals itself in small fits of domesticity, just for the joy of it. This is not an image I have cultivated, latter being because over the years I got thoroughly hacked off with society still encouraging women to take on the humanoid breeder/ feeder / cleaner role in life. I admit, we live in a very small village, whose inhabitants' horizons are limited. Those who were particularly irritating in this respect - 'pillars of the community' - don't patronize me any more; they are far too involved with tut-tutting about my daring to leave the homestead for - gasp! - sometimes several days at a time! "How will your husband cope?" (He's an adult) "Does he mind you going away like that?" (I've never asked him). Here's the evidence of my latest foray into strange behaviour. Nectarine crumble pie. Yum. 
Kitten picis Phoebe and Cleo sunning themselves again. Phoebe was just about to leap at the cord handle dangling from the digicamera... 
Cleo and Phoebe have five more half-siblings Mum - Nony - has had another litter. This time they were as scheduled, from a beautiful caramel oriental. Two dark brown, one caramel and two very light, like mum. 
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