begin with Yes

Frankly friends, I don't know where the special effects for this photo came from.  It's a mystery. Yes, it's the view from my kitchen window, but the falling snow? Wow. Magic? At the same time that this appeared, the photos I was downloading disappeared. So. What does this all mean? It's been a difficult year and it is drawing to a close in many ways subtle and not so. I've learned that meditation helps, saying yes and breathing helps, knitting helps. In the midst of an anxious week I came upon a skein of cashmere yarn that I'd purchased a year ago and forgotten about.

It's from Lobster Pot Yarns and the name alone is compelling. Dyed in lobster pots, dried in the wind of east coast beaches. Lovely! So I began to knit a Colonnade triangle/lace scarf and more magic happened. The soft luxury of this Mongolian cashmere and the color called Shoreline Heather (lighter than the photo) seemed to bring an inexplicable inner peace. I'm loving it, appreciating it and very very grateful for the animals that give us their wool. To all the sheep, goats, alpacas, and silkworms, thank you! Thank you to the trees that produce apples in Christmas colors, too!

I'm writing a lot these days, filling notebooks, mostly with junk. Sometimes I have the greatest urge to consign them to flames, but haven't done so thus far. What I do know is that I'm not writing very often on this blog because too many other things are clamoring for attention. Therefore, I am going to take some time off. As Terry Tempest Williams said recently on her facebook page, I am going to take three months off from most social media and do what the bears do. They hibernate from now until the Spring Equinox. Tonight I meet with a group of women who will be celebrating the return of the light on this Winter Solstice night and then it's a 21st century version of hibernation. I'll be back in the spring. I hope you will meet me here then. For now, I'm poised and ready. See you when the robins are twittering and the meadowlarks are calling from fenceposts again

Life is a Hallelujah
Hallelujah when we're born
Hallelujah when we die
And Halleluljah when we rise each morning
           T. T. W.