Practice is Perfect

Last night, I started a new yoga series, which will run twice a week for two months, with Sun, owner of Mountain House Yoga in Downieville. This is a beautiful, old ranch, perched on a hillside above the North Yuba, that was the Costa Ranch in earlier days, and more recently, owned by a dear friend and writer, Cynthia Forbes. Last year, Sun and her husband bought the property and now live there part-time.

Sun led us through a magical and very peaceful series of Vinyasa flow-style postures, and her practice is grounded spiritually in the Ashtanga teachings of Sri Pattabhi Jois, a teacher I greatly admire, now 90 years old and still running his famous school in Mysore, India.

There is so much to learn in yoga that every step is positive. However, our practice with the movements flowing, the dynamic instruction pouring from Sun, and the background white noise of the river flowing gave me the height of summer connection to earth and soul.

I could come away still aware of the aging taking place in my body, and the certain places that are not in harmony (and I am committed to seeing one of my two chiropracters for more advice about this), and still feeling the perfect peace that we so often seek to attain in practice, but equally often do not achieve. I am enormously humbled and grateful.

I spent a shift today at the crafts coop, where I was able to finish a special order for my jeweler friend, Leslie, a black scarf for her daughter (who I sure hope doesn't read my blog!). It is a simple garter stitch, but the texture and uniqueness come from one strand of charcoal alpaca boucle, and one strand of Trendsetter Little Flowers. I also worked on the second special-order felted bag for Mary, this one in cranberry wool, getting the sturdy, thick I-cord handles completed. I find it ironic that the gain I am getting from being a co-op member up to this point is the time set aside to knit up these special orders; I have yet to sell my items at the shop.

Leslie is using our trade as an opportunity to expand her work into some metallurgy. She is going to make me a heart-shaped pin from hammered copper, with a glass bead on the stick that holds the closure.

There are two distinct styles of shawl pins floating around out there. One style is what I think of as a kilt pin, since I actually happen to have a kilt pin to hold my family tartan kilt together (McLeod of Lewis, for those who were wondering). Although that would work, and allows some very nice glass or semi-precious stone bead arrangements, I was leaning more towards what Leslie has dubbed the "hairstick" style of shawl pin. These are a shape, circular, oval, or my request of heart-shaped, that is open in the middle, and held together with a stick that resembles a hairstick. They are usually much more expensive than the beaded ones, and often only found in sterling, which is out of my price range. I am excited that she has risen to the challenge, and determined to encourage her to explore making more shawl pins to reach out to us knitters.