Warm Juju

It’s been cold for weeks. We’re through the election, the holidays and the Inaugural celebration and there is nothing to do now except get over our colds.

The temperatures here are so low that I am wearing three hats, two neck warmers and an old stand-by scarf that I made when I was 17. It’s funny for all of the zillion of things I’ve made that this scarf has stayed with me. I bought the yarn in Australia on my one and only visit there and the only time in my life I ever saw my Granddad Powell. That was 33 years ago.

A good piece of knitting is like a talisman. Energy is knit into each piece and you can feel the comfort of patient attention when you wrap something hand made around you. It protects you.

Great yarns also lend their magic. My yarns are a little like vintage wine, the wool comes from the same stock, yet each season is slightly different. After the death of Mother Trucker, I was happy that I had enough of her vintage left over to knit my grandson a sweater. Yarn of a good era, a grandmother’s love – all I needed was the right pattern.

My grandson is a growing beanstalk so I chose Trellis to sustain him as he gets up off the ground. The pattern is free and if you’re on Ravelry you can see over 600 versions of this pattern. (If you’re not yet on Ravelry and you are knitter, you’re really missing out.) I meandered through the photos to study color finally deciding on red tones, but hadn’t landed on an exact shade. So I left Ravelry and went to my dye books where Karen Kahle’s Vintage Dyes brought me to an old color, Vermont Barn Red. I loved its rich subtlety and with my son-in-law from Maine, I was happy to find a color representing his region.

So there it is. Mother Trucker and her sisters gave the wool, the color pours in from the baby’s father’s side, and I knit while wearing a scarf that brings me the protection of my own granddad. Chains of family spirit linked together in a very simple and meditative craft. Good Juju and something only love and time can purchase.

The Original Spinner

It has been a dry summer and only now have the rains returned. I am sure a happy side effect of the potent hurricanes.
To keep my horses happy as the pastures thin down, I lead them to a small field filled with rye grass, alfalfa and clover. They need time to eat and since there are five of them, I get many chances to sit still while they graze happily.

Horses love comfort and sweet moist grasses deliver much of that, but horses are also ever on the alert. While they graze they cast a wandering eye towards me or the next patch of greenery and will also lift their head suddenly to examine the cause of distant sound - tractor, a dog bark, a pheasant in the grass.

I love these moments. They are full of sweet satisfaction, rest and full attention. How often do we get there in each day? I lead my horses to eat and they lead me to a present moment.

The other day while pondering the earth’s turn and hanging out with my Palomino, I looked beneath his feet to see a wondrous sight. A black and yellow garden spider with the formal name of the Argiope aurantial. It is dramatic. These spiders are large, bright and intimidating. She was spinning away with her three claws on each foot, which help her manage her strands of silk while she spins. The zigzag is called a sabilimentum (who makes up these words!) and no one knows for sure why it’s there. Perhaps for camouflage, attracting food, or warning birds. But only spiders active in the day create them. This spider will respin the center of her web each day.

Spiders have been acknowledged throughout time and across cultures as inspiring the beginnings of spinning, weaving, knot work and other crafts. And as I sat with my horse observing the spider, I wondered about those people back in time who made an observation similar to mine and began to transform it into an artistic and practical triumph.

Spiders have been associated with the gods and goddesses as spinners and weavers of destiny, patiently connecting threads. Threads of silks, threads of an idea, threads of consciousness.

I am lucky to have my horses and my sheep connect me to these points of magic and mystery and I share this blog and this photo to weave you into this tapestry. In these times of war, a falling economy, mortgage crisis and general upheaval, it is reassuring to see an ancient creature spin an elegant world of its own design that will provide for and sustain its maker.

Meditation in Action

My blog has been quiet for some time. I apologize. It’s not that I haven’t thought of things to share, it’s mostly the paralysis of integrity – an old affliction of mine. The concepts are not as formed as I’d like, the camera’s in the other room, or I am not convinced the value of my feelings will transfer to you.

But like most challenges, these resistant voices exist only in my mind and today, they are being set aside. In fact, that has been the lesson of lambing this spring.

This year, I was on my own. I don’t mind the solitary. In fact, it’s often easier to process challenges without the demands and voices of others – especially the others that I care most about.

A key challenge to process through is fatigue. Being up at the barn every 4-6 hours for weeks at a time is tiring. As work expands and sleep times shrink, the aches and weariness crescendo into near exhaustion and bone numbing pain.

It was at this point that I found my meditative mind and where my yoga practice came to life.

Having to assist a ewe who was down (with the baby blocking her rumen) I could feel impatience looming over me. I knew I was about to spend an hour, “seeing with my hands” and making choices that would impact two lives – a mama and her newborn. There I was filling with dread, tired and stressed.

Extreme feelings eliminate the mind’s ability to measure time. A minute can feel like twenty. So I brought the clock into the barn as an unbiased judge and began the obstetrics. I will not share the anatomical details but the process was long and could have been disastrous.

Pushing and pulling life from one being to another is best done in union with the ebb and flow of all things – heart beats, breath rates, whatever . There is feedback from her body to my hands – from my hands to her baby – from her baby to my heart. This requires a calm, listening, attentive mind and cannot survive the anxiety of emotions or the intolerance of impatience. I found my balance and held it throughout the procedure and mama and baby lamb are now enjoying the sunshine and the song of the blackbirds and adding their colorful faces to this post.

The Dalai Lama tells a story about a monk, who nearly lost his compassion to the Chinese. I nearly lost my patient, thoughtful self to my fatigue and apprehension. And it would have been deadly.

It is a lesson I am still experiencing: A silly lamb who seems to have missed the DNA that informs her how to nurse took three days of patience. The arthritis in my hands that requires intervals of rest, tempts me toward a temper fit about aging. My smug disgust at myself for the fallen levels of housekeeping during these days – couldn’t Martha Stewart lamb, dye wool and get her laundry put away?

Hmm.
Birthing lambs, I reach into my own consciousness and labor to give life to a quiet mind.