Practicing beginning

I am practicing beginning...

in some way I could say I begin every day, but really, right now I feel I am ready to begin everything again.

to say something. to start fresh.

I've been moving things and cleaning out closets and sorting my receipts getting ready to file taxes... cleaning house. making a dedicated studio in my home. Assessing and reassessing everything from how many tea bags should I save to how I will proceed from here... from here...

what do you do with all the little note pads that collect at the left of the computer? Why do square letters cost more to send? How come tomatoes grow so easily in Illinois and we struggle with them here in tomato starved Arizona?

My blow dryer quit blowing hot air... and then a week later, after I bought a replacement, the hot air was back... what's up with that?

I know this is about nothing. I'm practicing. and no one reads this anyway.

hearing things

You have not seen me at this site in quite some time... in fact I thought Spiritbead had moved on ... no longer a piece of my life. I was wrong. Again.

I retired from teaching this past year. September came and I did not go back to school, to seeing 175+ children a day, to lesson plans and staff meetings. I walked away. My soul was calling me... in fact had been calling me for a long time... to head out and make a new path where there was none.

I knew I wanted to somehow reconnect with spiritual direction, with discussions that would stretch my mind, my faith. I knew I wanted to make space for meditation and journaling, for beauty and the creative life. I wanted to lift my sail and allow the winds of grace to move me. I told myself I would be willing. Willing to be happy, willing to find my joy, willing to love, willing to live without suffering, willing to walk in the light. And aside from ending a career of 25 years and beginning to see and talk about myself as an artist who knows that God is present in every portion of my life and art... I saw this whole willingness as pretty passive. Like laying down in the road waiting for the semi to roll over me. But I was wrong. Again.

A few weeks ago a woman said, we need to move actively into acceptance. Those words... actively into acceptance stuck with me. What did that mean? Active and acceptance in the same phrase? How do you do that? And I have thought about the things I've accepted (passive to me, like willingness). Accepting to me was always a re-active thing. It was my way of reacting to things I didn't particularly like. But reacting is not the same as moving actively into.

And then tonight in a class with Scott H. we were talking about love. What was love, what did Jesus mean by love? And many definitions were bantered about the room when a woman said, love is acceptance. Bingo. I finally had a match. Love is moving actively into acceptance. I felt I was finally beginning to get it.

As the conversation moved in and around the first commandment, I listened and participated, but then we moved on to Kierkegaard and Carl Jung and talked about relating to the Self and about the willingness to relate to God. Willingness. Another passive word, but one I use all the time. Willingness, a posture I am trying to assume. Tell me about willingness I said. And I talked of Moses needing to put it down, what he held in his hand, and Heni Nouwen saying we needed to unclench our hand, and about getting open... kind of like laying down in the middle of the road and letting the semi run over you. But then another woman said willing is active, too. Willing is calling something to you. Willing is about what you want.

Willing is being proactive. Accepting is being proactive. They are choices. Choices to not just lie down in the road and allow what will happen to happen. Faith is not something God just pours into an open and empty vessel... the vessel chooses too.

I was flipping channels one night this summer and hit a talk show where the guest turned out to be Tony Robbins. Robbins said if you want a different life, just choose a different life. Choose. I know it sounds too simple, but it is the first and most important step. And like most things you will probably need to choose it over and over after you have let it go because it was just too hard.

Now that I realise I am an active participant in my willingness and my accepting I am going to become way more intentional about the entire thing. I'm going to choose.

Do I have a plan? Only that I will live to the fullest.

Here is a last quote... my words;
'die and become, die and become... until you do this you are a dull guest on this planet.'

what do you think of that?

off the grid

I got a call from an old friend earlier this week. He's bought some land in St. John's, off-the-grid... down a dirt road, has to haul in water, didn't know what the Tea-Baggers were but had heard of Sarah Palin... talked like a local, not like the guy I knew years ago... shook something loose in me. Spirit of adventure?

Today I began to read Farwell, My Subaru, a book I've been told is delightful (there aren't too many of them) about a guy who bought a spread in the Mimbres River Valley in south west New Mexico. He too was off-the-grid, trying to become self-sufficient, trying to spurn fossil fuels, bananas from South America, and Walmart. So far it is a delightful read, and he, like my friend, lost his city language in favor of the local.

All this, the call, the book, the fact that I have 57 days of school left are filling me with excitement and just about as much fear. wheeeee!

3a.m.

I regularly wake up about 3-3:30 a.m. Hot Flash, I think, as I'm nearly always sweaty hot... but since school started in August, when this happens I often am completely awake, too. Hot flash, busy brain, awake like I've been injected with caffeine.

I need to retire, and some rather stressful stuff is going on at school, so this being awake thing hit this morning again.

But the good thing about being AWAKE is that I get a bunch of things done... like I sorted all the new odd-bit yarn in with my not-so-new odd bit yarn and got it all put away in neat see-through zip bags. I went through, organized and put away all my old yellowed books saved for art projects that I had pulled out a week ago... I ran across this French artsy book I'd bought in Geneve and have an idea about how I can use some of the pages. I felted two sweaters I'd gotten from Natalie (one will become Henry's Christmas stocking) and tried to felt a third, but it either is not at least 80% wool or is washable wool... my bet is on the not-wool side... and this episode reminds me that I must swatch and felt before I enter into a long and detailed felt project only to realize the yarn will not do what I need... I put a magnetic snap on a little coin purse I've made for an art show I'm participating in next weekend and fashioned a velcro closure for another. I washed dishes and one load of wash, took a shower and am now half dressed of church two hours from now. It is 7:50 a.m.

I'm not tired right now. Around 3 I will feel like crashing.

early christmas

Look. More yarn from Natalie. Lots of mohair, some really delicious black that looked hand spun with a tag on it that only said, brown sheep yarn. Mmmmm felting.
And look at this tweedy stuff. In the first batch I have some of the same, just a different color. the color is beautiful deep turquoise... purse, bag, bowl?

And (I am doing little back flips) a yarn swift... made in Sweden, not China... and it perfectly works, though the only counter I have that is thin yet sturdy enough is the one in my guest bath. Oh frabjous joy! Callooh! Callay! She chortled in her joy.

See, put the yarn on the swift, string it onto the ball winder and.....

in just minutes a perfectly wound, tangle free, ready to use ball. I call it my bliss ball : )

And then, as if the list of goodies from Natalie could not be longer, she gave me sweaters... most I will re-fashion into something else... but this one, out of the softest wool imaginable is just too vintage classic and feels totally cozy on.

Last... my model showing us her true personality....

tabs - something borrowed

In the last week or so I have seen and studied three different patterns that used tabs. Tabs, I thought... hmmm. And then I thought of this half finished shawl... I'd run out of yarn, a miscalculation, and had come to the realization that no more could be had... maybe tabs were the answer.

I'd begun the piece with a ball of variegated Paintbox and then shifted needles, gauge, stitch count into One Zero by Colinette. I'd seen something like it and was winging the entire process. All was going swimmingly until I ran out of my second ball of One Zero and could get no more. So the half finished piece sat in it's zipped bag, waiting for some light bulb to come on. And it did, in tabs and buttons.

Here is the result. You can see how the Paintbox changed colors from wine tones to shades of taupe (not my favorite shift... had I gone farther into the skein the color shifted toward green tones... maybe I could have started the tabs at what would have been the "wrong" end of the ball). I chose shell buttons because their grey/beige tones with the iridescent undertone picked up all the colors in the One Zero and yet looked good on the Paintbox. And really, isn't it pretty?

When I do my next one (and I will!) I think Ill try knitting in the other direction... maybe from mohair. Maybe a crazy stripe shrug... as I glance over my shoulder at my considerable odd'n'end knit stash I think the possibilities are nearly endless.

Wool & Elizabeth

last week my friend Natalie brought me a garbage bag sized bag of wool... she reclaimed it from her house outside of Boston... she was cleaning out getting it ready for rental. She told me she got rid of enough yarn to open a yarn shop... all the wool she set aside for me.
This isn't all of it... she says there is more, she just hasn't gotten to it yet. Plus she has a yarn swift for me!!!! am I blessed or what? I am so excited.

Some of this is what I'd call vintage yarn... lots of mohair, colors that are a bit jarring, and yet full of possibilities

I've sorted all that I've gotten so far and put it neatly and safely away. I've begun to let my mind wander and imagine what I could make. And I ask "what would Elizabeth Zimmerman do?"

And.... though I really don't know what Elizabeth would do about all these odd bits of yarn, I am learning about what she would do about a whole bunch of other things. I have ordered and gotten three Elizabeth Zimmerman books, and I think, philosophically speaking, she and I are on the same page... now I just need to get my skill level somewhere near hers...

Anyway, Elizabeth Zimmerman is my new favorite author and maybe after I've finished one or two of these books, I'll be ready to tackle all this yarn.