Tofu-knits

Postcard from Chicago

I wanted to update the blog.

But I'm having technical difficulties.

The computer is at home. (barely used it the last few years at this conference)

Two iPad apps have failed me. The first crashes. The second one doesn't post to Typepad. I didn't realize that until after I'd bought and downloaded it.

I went to Typepad through Safari. But either they've changed their interface, or there's a stripped down composition screen that shows up on an iPad, because the usual buttons for formatting and adding links or pictures aren't there.

So think of this as a postcard: a brief note from a traveling friend, saying little but letting you know you haven't been forgotten.

Lessons from the Monastery part 1: Creativity

One of the blessings of a monastic retreat is silence.  This doesn't mean there's no sound.  There's actually a lot of sound in the Chama canyon.  But it is the sound of things being themselves.  The birds chirp, and their wings flutter as they fly.  Coyotes howl, sometimes loud enough to drown out prayers.  Cows moo.  And the rain patters on roofs and trees.  What isn't there is noise.

Along with the literal silence is mental silence.  Away from the distractions of 'outside' life, I rediscover those parts of my mind that have been busy paying attention to urgent but unimportant matters.  And that allows me to see things differently.

Lots of people who knit say they do it to satisfy their creative desires.  I always said I knit because I enjoy the process, I certainly don't have any creative leanings.  I'm not artistic.  I'm techinically proficient, probably more than most knitters.  But without guidance, I have no idea what to knit.  The times I have made something without any pattern or recipe, I found myself overwhelmed and discouraged by the decisions to be made.  (Button band first and collar crosses, or collar first and button band crosses?  Ribbed bottom and cuffs or picot hem? Sleeves bottom up or top down? Set in, raglan, drop sleeve?)  I couldn't imagine what each option would look like.  And I can't draw well enough to sketch something that would help. So I had no idea if the parts would form a pleasing whole until I finished and it was too late to change without starting over.   I concluded I was not creative.

Monastery guests are encouraged to work while they are visiting.  And that's how I found myself one sunny morning pulling weeds from a garden.  It wasn't overgrown.  They'd recently put down weed block sheeting, so it was just a few weeds that had taken root in the dirt and gravel over the plastic and they pulled out easily.

Two days later another guest and I swept the floors in the main building and wiped down the wood tables and chairs with lemon oil.

When I think of weeding and sweeping, I don't think 'creative'. Drudgery comes to mind before creativity.  But every time I walked past the garden and saw how clean it was, or saw the wood glowing in the sunlight, what I felt was 'I did that, and it's good'. 

That, I've decided, is creativity: through conscious effort, changing something to make the world more pleasing.

Now I enjoy knitting even more. I still enjoy the process, and believe it's a form of meditation.  But I have a new appreciation for the product.  Instead of stalling out on the boring or challenging parts, I push on to get to those moments of, 'I did that, and it's good'. 

The other lesson I've learned is how to finish something: Work on it until it's done.  Duh.

Since that insight, I've finished 2 pair of gloves, an EZ Tomten jacket for our office manager's new baby, and a lace scarf: all projects that had had been stalled.

 

October again

It's now October, which means I've recently returned from the Taos Wool Festival.  It was, as usual, fantastic. 

I did something this year that I've never done before.  Sunday morning, instead of running right down to the festival as soon as it opened and looking again at the same stuff I saw the previous day, I went for a hike on the  Devisadero Trail.  This was just a few miles out of town, and let me see Taos from above.

I also heard the announcer from the Wool Fest.  Sound carries a long way in the mountains.

I wasn't alone on the trail.  But my company was not other hikers.

The other thing I did that I've never done before in Taos was laundry.  No pictures, it wasn't any more interesting than laundry ever is.  Although, there was the man in the laundromat folding his wet clothes who told me he was taking them home to hang on the clothesline-his clothing had never seen the inside of a dryer.  Good for him!

I did laundry because I was headed for another week at Christ in the Desert Monastery.  Last year I spent a few days.  The peace I felt after just a few days was so great, I worked this year to get an entire week.  Sunday is different than every other day at the monastery.  And with an entire week I'd get a feel for both ordinary as well as special days.  

I also wanted a longer visit as I'll be in Chicago next year at wool festival time, and won't get to go on my retreat.

Tuesday, October 4th, is the Feast of St. Francis.  On this day, or on the Sunday closest to this day, many churches hold a blessing ceremony for our companion animals.  There was nothing planned at the monastery.  But they managed to pull together an informal blessing in the lobby of the main building.  There were 5 resident dogs present.  The monastery cats were off doing cat things.  And I added the names of my cats, Rusty and Pip Squeak to be blessed in absentia.

One of the dogs was so moved at being sprinkled that he walked up to the priest after the formal ceremony and returned the favor.

This statue of St. Francis is in the courtyard of the guesthouse.  I believe this is the one the monks say had its arms pecked off by woodpeckers.

 

The biggest difference between last year and this year was the weather.  Last year it was sunny and warm.  This year it rained.  It rained a lot.  It rained so much that by Saturday morning, I muttered out loud, 'God, please let it stop raining'. 

Within half an hour it started snowing.

It didn't snow very long, got sunny and warm, and stayed fair the rest of my visit.

The road to the monastery is a dirt road.  The Forest Service gravels and grades it regularly.  But the continuation of the road on monastery property is just dirt.  After 4 days of rain it was mud.  A guest arriving Friday evening got his car stuck, and it sat at the side of the road until Sunday afternoon.  Another person trying to leave Sunday morning before mass got stuck and had to stay until after noon when they could get the tractor out to free his car.

On leaving the monastery and turning onto the first paved road toward home, I had the same reaction as last year.  I thought there must be something wrong with my car because it was so noisy.  It took about half an hour of driving to recognize it was just the usual noise of my tires on the road.  I just hadn't heard anything that loud and mechanical in a week.  (I left Christ in the Desert almost 3 weeks ago, and have yet to turn on the radio in my car.)

I admit, the first few hours were spent stopping at various locations indulging myself with things I hadn't had for a week. I bought a big chocolate chip cookie at the general store in Abiquiu.  I stopped in Santa Fe and had a big burrito.  And that evening in Gallup I went out for ice cream.   It seemed odd to have food left on my plate after I was full, and to watch leftovers taken away to be discarded.  I was used to serving myself only what I would eat, and finishing everything I served myself. 

My time on retreat helped me to see some things in new persepctive.  And that's what I'll be posting about in the next days.

A year of many changes

The first, and probably the least consequential, is the 2 kittens I adopted almost a year ago.

 

 

We adopted them from the local Humane Society.  I had planned to adopt only 1 kitten.  But when I looked at kittens in the adoption center at PetSmart, these 2 were together in one cage.  Every time I saw them they were playing with each other or sleeping curled up together.  I didn't have the heart to split them up, so they both came home with me. (in a cardboard box!)

It was not an easy decision to adopt a cat.  Our last cat, Lunch, died in 2008 at the age of 20.  His was the first of many deaths we faced over the next 2 years.  My husband and I were both a little anxious about bringing anyone else into our lives.  The idea of becoming attached to anyone, 2 footed or 4 footed, and then losing that attachment was more than either one of us was ready for.  But I found myself missing the companionship of an animal, and Pat said he wouldn't stop me if I wanted to adopt.

They went through a few names before we settled on 'Rusty' (the darker cat with the white nose in the back of the cuddler) and 'Pip Squeak'.  If you could hear Pip try to meow, you'd understand her name.  They are energetic and affectionate, and their very presence has made our home happier.  In pictures they look like happy domestic animals.  But they channel their wilder ancestors very nicely.  Once they were neutered and had full-time pet door privileges, they decided they live outside and visit the house for food and a warm place to sleep when it's chilly.  This makes cleaning the litter box a simple task. Instead we have to clean up mouse carcasses and organs, feathers and dead birds, and half an apocylpse worth of grasshoppers. They've brought us 2 snakes, several live mice, and a steady supply of big growling beetles.  One day we found legs and a head that looked like a tarantula.

And within the last 2 months they've challenged us with a skunking, an abcess, a flea outbreak, and tapeworms.

The next change was my father's death in March.  It was not a surprise; his condition had been declining for the last few years. But as I learned when my mother died over 10 years ago, expecting it doesn't make it easier.  This took much of my time, energy, and attention this spring.  There's more to be said about our relationship.  But there's not much else I will say in a public forum. 

I'd wanted to include a picture of him here.  The only pictures I can find on my computer show him looking old and tired, not the Dad I remember.

And finally, I'm changing jobs.  When I was finishing my training, I considered doing a fellowship to pursue a sub-specialty.  Economics and exhaustion won out and I got a 'real job'.  It pays well.  However, over the years, the job seemed to take more from me than the work gave me back.  As our finances go more secure, I thought more and more about doing the subspecialty training.  So I applied, interviewed, went through one of the fellowship matches, and at 9 am local time on June 22 got the news that my life is about to change drastically.  I hope it's for the better.  I'll be moving, with the cats but without my husband, to Chicago.  We lived there 4 years while I was in residency.  But this time, I will NOT live in the suburbs and commute.

The reactions from my co-workers were in the range of 'congratulations' and 'how exciting!'  I'd like to think they're supportive.  I hope they're not just glad to be rid of me.

It's going to mean a huge decrease in pay for the year.  And the cats will have to learn to live indoors full time.  My work hours I don't know about.  Since the end of my training, new restrictions on work hours have been implemented.  I think as a physician in private practice, my schedule would violate some of the limits.

I hope to be posting more soon. I have a couple of hand-written drafts of things I realized while on retreat a few weeks ago.  One of them is that I have to be more conscious of what's going on in my life instead of just giving it the least attention needed to get from morning to night, while spending most of my mental energy wishing for things to be better.  And writing stuff down helps me to clarify what's real and what's possible.

 

 

 

This is a test

This is only a test of the remote posting function on Typepad.

But stay tuned. There's a draft posting on my computer.

Amusing blog post title

Last month I visited a monastery.

I'd wanted to visit Christ in the Desert (alert-it plays music) ever since I heard about it, and realized how close it was to Taos.  I've gone to Taos for the Wool Festival almost every year since we moved here.  What stopped me before was the caution about the road to the monastery.  It's 13 miles of steep, narrow dirt, and almost impassable in bad weather.  Last year I traded in my big sedan for a small SUV (so I can get to remote trailheads, and can carry a kayak out to the lake easily) so I decided to go for it.

I'm not sure what was drawing me there. I'm not Catholic.  I don't take communion at my church.  I'm not even sure I'd call myself Christian.  But once I got there, and got used to the pace of life, I figured it out.

Time at the monastery is marked by prayer.  The community gathers 7 times a day in church for prayers, starting at 4 in the morning and ending just before 8 in the evening.  Between prayers is time for meals, work, study, and recreation.  They are mostly silent during the day, and particularly silent between the last prayer of the day (compline) and first prayers in the morning (vigils).  Guests are not required, but are encouraged to join in worship.  And I did.

It took about a day and a half to get used to the pace, but once accustomed to it I felt a peace I hadn't realized was missing from my life.  The day is divided into periods of roughly 45 minutes to 4 hours.  And with no TV, radio, internet, phone, or nearby commercial sites, there was a limited number of activities.  My list of options included showering and dressing, taking a walk, reading or writing in my journal, knitting, spinning, or helping with the work of the monastery.  All these could be easily fit into blocks of time of 45 minutes to 4 hours.  Simple, no?  No distractions, no 'to do' list that was so long I couldn't make a dent in it, no empty hours of time that are so vast I can't figure out how to fill them and end up frittering them away.

I never felt that my religion, or lack thereof, was any issue.  No one commented except a couple of other guests I got to know, who wanted to be sure I knew I could receive a blessing even if I wasn't taking communion.  The main guesthouse was occupied that week by a group of Sufis on silent retreat.  And during work one day, while shoveling gravel onto pathways washed out by rain, the discussion came around to holy books, and that the Koran is the book with the most complete account of Mary, mother of Jesus.  And one monk mentioned his own family of Jewish refugees in South America, attending Catholic school and Catholic church services to avoid religious persecution.

And the setting, miles back in a high desert canyon, with a river running through it, invites one to slow down and appreciate its beauty.  In the morning, in church during Lauds, I had the daily pleasure of watching the canyon walls appear out of the darkness as the sun came up.  If God ever noticed I wasn't paying full attention to our praises, I hope s/he understood it was because I was so distracted by the majesty of his work.

 

 

 

I'd like to say I carried this peace of heart back home with me.  I felt it slipping away over the first week I was home, until all that was left was a memory of what I no longer felt.  So I'm trying to figure out, without much luck, what it was that made the difference. 

Move along, there's nothing interesting to see in this post.

Bloglines is shutting down, and I'm trying to move my RSS feeds over to Macintosh mail, and needed an updated blog post to see if I've got it. So I'm updating my blog.

So, this posting is just a wave to myself. You can wave back, if you want.

Front and back

I posted picture of our snow recently.   Most of that has melted, and we've gotten more to replace it.  But the melting is utterly dependent on sunshine.  Since our house faces south, we got full sun in the front yard.  But the back yard is shaded by the house.  So right now, our front yard looks like this:
The backyard, from the bedroom, looks like this:

It's a little deceptive, as most of this was shoveled off the roof.  But while the front yard clears, the back accumulates snow that just doesn't go away.

Oh, that's not our cat up there.  We don't know where it lives, but it comes into our yard almost every day.  (probably because hubby pets it and puts out food for it.)

Everything, Everywhere!

My mom was a very organized person.  She used to tell me, 'A place for everything, and everything in its place.'  It wasn't genetic, and I'm sure I was a horrible disappointment to her.  About the most precise I can be about the location of most things is 'probably in the house'.  Recently I gathered up all the needles and knitting supplies I could find, and came up with this:

Yep, there are duplicates of things in the pile.  And despite having about a zillion stitch markers, I still usually end up using loops of whatever contrasting color yarn happens to be handy when I need a stitch marker.  

I was gathering up all these so I could take everything I needed to Stitches West.  I'm treating myself.  Not only am I taking 3 1/2 days of classes and attending all the banquets, I'm staying for one of the 2-day workshops the following Monday and Tuesday.

It didn't even occur to me until today, 2 days before I leave, after all my travel reservations are made, that I'm going to be spending 6 days just a few miles from where I attended undergrad school, and I'm not allowing any time to go back and visit the campus.  Most of the faculty I would like to visit have retired by now, but it might be fun to see how much the place has changed.   

I'm also finishing things.  I've told myself I don't get to start anything new until I finish 2 other projects.  And for the most part, I've followed this rule.  But, I fudge a bit.  Socks don't count as started projects, because I need them to survive meetings.  And the hat I knitted for the neighbor who plows our street and cleared the end of our driveway during our recent blizzard didn't count because I just banged it out in a couple of days and gave it away.  (He's plowed our driveway twice since then, so I guess he likes the hat.) 

One of the interesting things about not starting things is finding that the urge to knit an item has often passed by the time I can slot it in.  And at least one thing for which I've had yarn for years, intending to knit it 'someday', has finally gotten started.  Having at least a mental checklist of things I've finished also keeps me going on one thing more than I have in the past.

Here's one recent FO:   Ticuna from Berroco.  The yarn is some 100% alpaca my MIL gave me years ago.  I'm afraid the sweater may end up a loser.  I made the smallest size, hoping to avoid droopiness from the alpaca growing.  I haven't tried it on since sewing it up, but when it was pinned together the armholes were a bit tight.  (Yes, they're the same size.  I didn't' notice I had stretched the right one out bigger than the left until I saw this picture.)  Also, the yarn is heavier than what the pattern calls for, so to make gauge I ended up with a pretty dense fabric.  It looks nice, feels lovely, but may be too small for me and too warm for just about anyone.  

I still have 10 skeins of the yarn.  And I'm thinking of making a lace sampler blanket to use it up. Someday, maybe...................

Another finished project is the kitty shadow knitting scarf from Donna Druchunas book, 'Kitty Knits'. It's huge.  It wraps around my neck twice with lots left over.  

I could have planned this one better.  It doesn't go with any of my winter clothing.  I started this while traveling a couple of years ago, got aggravated with both my travel companion and my current project at the same time, and rushed out to get something to knit RIGHT NOW!  It was fun, though, and I grin every time I get to the right angle and the cat faces pop out at me. 

While composing this, I'm noticing a theme.  I knit things for reasons that have nothing to do with what the item will be.  The alpaca vest was intended to use up some yarn.  The scarf was to have something to knit on a trip.  Then somehow I'm surprised when the finished item turns out to be something less than useful.  I know of the discussion on lists of the orientation toward the process of knitting, or the production of knitted stuff.  I fall firmly in the process camp.  And I often end up disappointed with what I've made.   Perhaps I need to learn to appreciate planning a bit more.   

Hi!

I thought this blog might be a good place to post some pictures of our recent snowfall.  I hadn't realized how long it had been since I updated it.  I also hadn't realized how little I knew about adding photo albums to my blog.  But I think I managed it.  Hope you enjoy pictures of our snow more than I enjoyed shoveling it!