Korea or Bust!

Some of you may have heard me talking about going to Korea this summer. Hwa Gye Sa Temple in Seoul is offering their semi-annual retreat there for free this year! All you have to do is get there. The Zen temples in Korea do two three month long retreats every year called Kyol Che. It means something like ‘tight practice’. The rest of the time is called ‘loose practice’. This year, you can sit three days up to the whole three months for free. I’ve decided to go in July and sit for 3-4 weeks. I haven’t decided quite how long yet. I have to factor in shop coverage, how long it is going to take me to recover from jet lag and things like that.
Anyway, I’m doing a bit of a fundraiser for it, which is equivalent to a ‘rent party’. If you are interested and would like me to send you more info, please drop me an email. I’ll send you an invitation!
If not, don’t worry. This is for fun and I’m not asking anyone to this party that hasn’t specifically asked to be invited.
Meanwhile, in lieu of payment, the temple has asked people to make an offering. I have decided to offer six pairs of socks to the temple for the monks and nuns. The unfortunate part of this is that Kwan Um School monastics can only wear grey, boring, boring, grey.





Oh, well. It’s all part of the practice, I guess. Anyway, my big challenge here is to make six pairs of socks out of 10 skeins of Regia. I think I can do it and I have some extra if I have to use a bit. It means that there will be a join in almost every sock. This kind of rubs me the wrong way. I’m going to work very hard to sew the ends in so that it doesn’t make a lump. Any suggestions?


And now, I give you Wanda and the tail that just keeps getting away. Her relationship with her tail really is quite conflicted.



I love her expression of exasperation at the end!

Procrastination Nation

Is it just me or is the time change kicking anyone else's ass? I simply cannot get going in the morning. I'm up. I've been up since 5:15am. I just can't seem To. Get. Going. I watch TV, I dither around, I eat breakfast, I read email and on and on. Finally, it's 11am and I'm behind on all the stuff I should have gotten done in the morning. Have I meditated? No. Done laundry? No. Cleaned house, run errands, cleaned the fish tank? No, no and no. Pathetic. I'm considering starting to drink coffee again.

Taxes at the Accountant!

Well, it took me until after 10pm last night but they are done and outa here!
It is amazing how trying it is to run errands when it is this windy and cold. I'm not done yet either. In a few minutes, I'm off to visit a friend of mine at the Zen Center, then eat supper there and do some chantin' with the Buddhists. Literally the only thing that is getting me out of the house again is the fact that my friend's apartment has something wrong with the heating system and is, consequently, always stuck at around 85 degrees. It may be a drag getting there but once I do, I'll be warm, warm, warm!! I can't wait! I feel like such a reptile this time of year. All I want is some sunshine and warm rock.
Stay warm all and I hope all your trash barrels don't end up in the neighbors yard (or the street!). I think mine are getting ready to make a break.

Spring Fever!

I'm taking a break from the soul sucking job of tax preparation and dyeing some yarn! Tee hee! No matter how many pounds of yarn I dye, it still stays fun! There are times I dye some seriously ugly yarn (I think I may have done some of that today. You'll have to come in and decide for yourself) but even when I finish a skein and go "Oh...dear", the process is still always fun. The crazy part is that even when I think a skein is too ugly for words, someone always falls in love with it! Go figure.

Anyway, different dye days seem to have different themes. Today's theme seems to be green. I've dyed green and yellow,

green and mauve,

green and purple, and

green and, well, green.

Even though the skein on the left looks a little mud colored, in person it is GORGEOUS, all pear and grasshopper greens. I could just keep dyeing everything green but I seem to have run out of yarn. Oh, well. Another dye day shall come! (Hey, Guido, notice how I resisted the urge to say "I shall live to dye another day!" or "Today is a good day to dye!" or, oh, god, someone stop me!)

Rainy Day

This has been my day so far:



I had to go out in this for a meeting this morning and was so wet when I got back that I HAD TO CHANGE MY CLOTHES!



This is picture of my empty shop. It's probably going to stay this way because of the foul weather. This is actually okay with me because I've still got this to finish.


I just finished May! Only seven more months to go!!