Winter’s almost over

It’s chilly, and snow lingers on the ground. But winter’s almost over.

From a TV show I haven’t watched, a line from an early episode became a meme on social media: WINTER IS COMING. And of course, it’s true: winter IS coming. Even as the current winter fades, we can be sure that another will come around before we know it.

I get the message: brace yourselves, stock up on necessities, times will be hard.

But this is hardly news. Haven’t we always known this? Hasn’t the human race always known this?

What people really need is a message of hope: winter’s almost over. The winds are less bitter, the nighttime temperatures less frigid. There’s no longer a need to wrap myself in wool right up to my cheekbones (and almost down to them too) before daring the outdoors.

It’s not quite spring, exactly. Nothing much is sprouting, and the only birds in the trees are the ones that stayed with us the whole season. But old snow has melted, and green peeps through. Sunbeams stand up straighter.

There is good news. Winter is almost over.

As in nature, so in the spirit. In the depths of humanity’s winter, good news was proclaimed: this present evil age is almost over.

The changes started small. Hearts of stone were melted. A few, then a few thousand… then these people spread the good news all over the known world.

Many hearts are still cold to this day. But imperceptibly, a warmth spreads, like roots underground.

"The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come." (Mark 4:26-29, ESV)

There is still much darkness and coldness. But when this winter is over, there will never be another.

Bullet Journal quick guide

A quick update--Kim at Tiny Ray of Sunshine has created a one-page Bullet Journal reference guide. I've just printed it out for my own reference.

Also, someone has translated it into German for her. Other languages are in the works, and she said she will update her post to add them as they come along.

[image from Tiny Ray of Sunshine blog]

A tiny link roundup

I've been noticing so many interesting things lately. Here are a few that I want to share.

I've taken up bullet journaling. I first heard about it from Emily P. Freeman, but naturally my tipping point didn't come until after I purchased a preprinted 2016 planner... but when Target put Moleskine dot-gridded journals on clearance, I made the jump. The best article about bullet journaling, in my opinion, is the one from the Lazy Genius Collective called How to Bullet Journal: The Absolute Ultimate Guide. It really is.

Speaking of Emily P. Freeman, the other day she published a blog post called A Prayer for a Hopeful Vision. The very first line grabbed me by the throat: "We’ve developed a bad habit of praying for clarity." You can read the rest for yourself, if you so choose, but I think she's onto something. And it seems to be out there in the zeitgeist, too. For all I know, Emily may be reading The Dusty Ones: Why Wandering Deepens Your Faith by A.J. Swoboda, but I just ran across a review of it today. And here's a second review. Looks interesting. I've added it to the "Book Recommendations" page in my bullet journal.

Finally, Ann Voskamp shared this video on her blog, A Holy Experience. It's impactful.

Home alone

It's Friday morning. I took the day off work because I planned to go to a knitting retreat in a town 2 hours' drive away, a little 2-day gathering to knit and eat and chat and attend a couple informal workshops.

Instead I'm writing this blog post. I took the day off anyway, but I'm not going anywhere. My husband broke his wrist a week ago and it's in a cast from the elbow down.

Now I'm sure a healthy person could manage by themselves for 30 hours with one arm in a cast--even the dominant arm. But my husband is chronically ill. Adding another health crisis has him reeling. He needs help opening his medication bottles... he needs help covering himself up in the bed, sometimes.

So this is the life of the spouse of someone who's chronically ill. Holding plans lightly in case you have to cancel them at the last minute. Working around his needs.

I'm disappointed, of course. I thought about going to work, for about three seconds... but I already asked for the vacation day, and getting a day off is somewhat of a consolation. OK, I'll admit it: going to work instead of going to the knitting retreat would be rubbing salt in the wound.

Two months ago, I was asked to consider going on a six-day mission trip to teach knitting. My church has been partnering with a church in the Dominican Republic, and started a sewing ministry a year or so ago to teach poor women a marketable skill. These women now want to learn to crochet and knit as well.

My first instinct was to say, "I can't leave my husband alone for that long." And they laughed, thinking I was making a helpless hubby joke. Turns out my husband's health status isn't common knowledge at my church. But even after being informed, they were saying, "Have faith! What if someone brought him meals?" Meals are the least of my worries with him--he doesn't even eat some days. And there's always Domino's.

I started a flurry of Facebook messages with two friends at church who DO know the situation, and also have experience with chronic illness. One, who also has a chronically ill husband, said, "People just don't get it."

Our final conclusion? It's one thing to have faith, and it's another to fling yourself (or someone else) off the pinnacle of the temple and expect the angels to catch you.

My primary ministry in this season of my life is to take care of my husband to the extent he needs it. Any other ministry opportunities have to fit in around that, and also can only take up so much of my energy. I turned down another ministry opportunity more recently, even though it would have been right here in town and maybe only once a week, because I felt I didn't have the energy. I prayed about it, and did not get any sense the Lord wanted me to do it.

The Lord knew my husband was going to break his wrist slipping on the last ice of the season.

This weekend I'm going to go sit on the couch at my local yarn store for an hour or three, and knit and chat with whoever else is there. It's not the same. But it's as close as I can come right now.

I know not how

Once I had my own plan for my life....

Ruth Simons of gracelaced.com wrote in a recent blog post:

We tend to strive and maneuver ourselves to gain the life we think we want, but I dare say, the Lord is merciful to cause the most wondrous blessings to occur apart from fine-tuned plans and well-rehearsed strategies. That's how he gets the glory and we get to be his children. He delights in using those who think they've been forgotten, whose giftings aren't fully realized, whose daily decision to be faithful right where they are trumps being fabulous elsewhere. (emphasis original)

I so relate to this. I strove and maneuvered through my 30's for my own ambitions, only to crash and burn. Now I sit feeling forgotten and like I've failed in realizing my giftings.

I'm focusing on the wrong part of her sentence.

Ruth Simons is writing from the other side of this experience, the blessing side, and it gives me hope. Hope that the place where I'm at could lead to God using my talents for His glory. That He would delight in that?

I don't know what that might look like. One "daily decision to be faithful right where I am" means working full time at an office. I used to dream of writing full time while my husband supported me (until I made the big time anyway), but that's a dream I've given up on. His disability check all goes for his medical care, the part that my company-sponsored insurance plan doesn't cover.

I do have an unexpected blessing in my job--I'm now writing for a living. It's technical writing, documentation for the software my employer produces. I'm thankful to the Lord that He maneuvered me into a corporate writing job. It certainly wasn't by my maneuvering!

I still feel drawn to writing that's a little more creative, and I still feel the Lord wants me to blog. I decided I should write one blog post a month for the first half of 2016 and re-evaluate mid-year. So here I am on January 30th banging out a post that will go out today or tomorrow, ready or not.

If the Lord's plan for my writing involves more than software documentation, it'll happen on the Saturday mornings and the occasional other little chinks of time between work and laundry and dog-walking. And the following scripture indicates to me that I don't have to know how it's going to happen.

And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”--Mark 4:26-29 (ESV)

The maker movement is simply rediscovery

I was listening to the Woolful podcast recently and the interviewee said something that really got me thinking.

We used to make, to mend, because it was a necessity to life, Now, I'm seeing more and more, people are making to mend their bodies and their minds. It's a therapy....

-Tif Fussel

I re-started crocheting and knitting in 2008, when my husband was in the hospital for six weeks following surgery. I learned to knit and crochet in childhood, but hadn't touched it in years. However, I was starting to go a bit stir-crazy sitting by his hospital bed, and I suddenly thought, "I could be crocheting!" I made time to pick up a pattern book with instructions to refresh my memory, and some yarn, and it's been a constant ever since.

I think it's historically been common for women to work on their handwork when sitting at the bedside of a sick person. Of course, historically, women always had sewing, mending, etc. needing done; I've seen an old photograph taken somewhere in Scandinavia showing young women knitting as they walked across the fields. Because it's not that long ago that if anyone were going to have warm socks or sweaters in the winter, someone had to knit them. If you were going to have clothes, someone had to sew them by hand. You had to take every opportunity to work on clothing items, when you weren't churning butter or washing your pots & pans & dishes by hand.

Most of us wouldn't want to go back to the days when all but the very wealthy HAD to be makers to survive. We like that our knitting, crocheting, spinning, etc. is a leisure activity. But more than that, like Tif Fussel I'm hearing many makers say that it's benefiting them in certain ways.

Evidence is growing that needle arts are good for the brain. It may even delay the onset of dementia. Simple knitting can serve to help you pay attention in meetings and such---see Cognitive Anchoring by Heather Ordover. There's even a book called Crochet Saved My Life. People are crediting handcrafts with emotional healing.

And yet, I doubt the old hand-knitters of the Yorkshire Dales considered knitting therapeutic. They churned out socks, gloves, and fisherman's sweaters day and night for pennies per item to supplement their meager incomes (until the industrial revolution put them out of business) .

So how did knitting go from drudgery to the magic cure-all?

I think the transformation of western economies to where so many of us are knowledge workers of one stripe or another, where all of our work is done with a keyboard and a mouse, is no more good for us than any kind of excess. Staring at a screen all day starves a fundamental aspect of how we were created. 

We were created to do and make things with our hands. Our brains as well as our bodies were wired for it. So when you've been neglecting this aspect of your inborn nature and then you start using it---it just feels good!

There's something about doing things with our hands that keeps us in tune. And we still need to think as well. We don't need to chuck everything else and just knit all day... what we need is balance. 

Some people do have a calling to knit a lot, to design knitwear, and so forth. And those people should also spend some time doing other things that aren't knitting. Like baking, balancing their budgets, bicycling. You can get a repetitive stress injury from knitting as surely as from keyboarding. Those Yorkshire knitters could have used a break from knitting; alas, they were in survival mode.

We modern denizens of Ravelry, and other makers, occupy a unique position in the history of humanity. Yes, we have to specialize to earn a living--but we don't usually have to work day and night at that specialty. We can earn enough in 40 hours a week to give our leisure time over to something that exercises other capacities. It is actually possible for us to have some balance.

So actually, becoming a maker isn't some kind of salvation. It's just a way to wake up a part of your brain that might have been atrophying. Be grateful for it, sure. But don't elevate it overmuch.

What not to tell people not to say

I started to write one of those "what not to say" blog posts. 

Of course there are scads of those on every sensitive topic imaginable. There were scads of them on MY topic. I Googled the phrase "what not to say" and got over two BILLION results. Some are tongue in cheek, but far more are serious and earnest.

Now, let's be clear: these kind of articles and posts aren't aimed at people who deliberately say mean, unkind, cutting or abusive things. Those people wouldn't read a "what not to say" article anyway. "What not to say" articles are mostly aimed at the well-meaning but clueless.

It seems there's no shortage of people who have gotten bent out of shape over what someone's said to them. Including me, yes.

One of the items I had intended to list was a single sentence spoken kindly, but in ignorance, which led to me sobbing right through a whole song at church. Was that sentence intended to make me cry? Of course not. It was intended to make me feel better. Not their fault it backfired.

Implicit in the whole concept of a "what not to say" article is the idea that I have some kind of right to expect everyone else in the universe to never say anything that makes me feel bad in any way--even accidentally. Is that even possible? It's a bit embarrassing to realize I got caught up in that kind of thinking 

Also implicit is the notion is that if we all just get educated enough, we could all say just the right thing to everyone in whatever trial they may be going through. This is the hope of those who read such articles, those who desire to never wound anyone with their words. An admirable hope, but again, I think it's too much to ask. How can one person ever know all of it? Two billion articles....

Here's the thing. It's inevitable that now and then someone will pop off and say something that just doesn't work. Maybe a stupid platitude; maybe an ill-timed and ill-considered joke. I'm not saying we shouldn't even try to say the right things at the right times. But we all fail. We're none of us perfect.

"And I will show you a still more excellent way.... Love is patient and kind.... It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.... Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." 1 Corinthians 12:31b, 13:4, 5, 7 (ESV)

Hm. Nothing in that chapter that even implies that love never says the wrong thing. In fact, it looks like it's on ME to stop expecting that no one will ever say the wrong thing to me. To give some grace. To be patient, to bear it, to endure. To cut the other person some slack, especially when I can tell they were just trying to be helpful.

"So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them..." (Matthew 7:12, ESV)

If I want other people to take what I say in the spirit in which I intended it, then maybe I should do the same for them.

Photos in this post are free stock photos courtesy of Pexels.com

What I learned in July

1. The X-Files is coming back! (albeit temporarily)
     (too bad I don't have cable anymore)

2. I learned the other spinning technique.
     There's worsted spinning, then there's woolen spinning. This isn't a spinning blog, so I won't go into detail. Suffice it to say I started with worsted-style (as everyone does), but this month I taught myself woolen-style. I won't say I've mastered it, but I'm getting pretty comfortable with it.

3. I realized I kinda wanna dress boho.
     This is a big change for someone whose high school uniform was jeans and T-shirts. And much of the wardrobe I've amassed over the last {cough, cough} years has been more tailored than anything, because business casual. But now I work at a tech company that's far more casual; the programmers/developers routinely wear knee-length shorts and flip-flops. And I'm not in a client-facing position, so I could revert to t-shirts and jeans--and actually that's what I'm wearing a couple days a week, not least because they've shoveled several employee t-shirts at me since I started last December. Still, I'm resisting the latest t-shirt design, even though the company is subsidizing it. Before I started this job I'd been saying for years, "The last thing in the universe I need is another t-shirt."
     However. I don't have the kind of clothing budget that would allow me to revamp my whole wardrobe overnight (or even in a year). So we'll see.

4. I have a disturbing streak of greed, or entitlement, or something.
     In July I participated in "Tour de Fleece," which is about spinning during the Tour de France. I was in several online groups sharing pictures of our progress. Some of them had prize drawings for those who shared their progress... most waiting until the end, but one or two had weekly drawings.
     I got a tiny bit angry when I didn't win.
     This disturbs me. It wasn't supposed to be about winning things--it was supposed to be about focusing on spinning for three weeks and improving. (See #2 above.) And cheering one another on. But I wasn't really cheering anyone on. Apparently I just wanted prizes.
     I realized this during the Tour. As the month-end drawings approached, I told myself to forget about the prizes, let them go. I wasn't 100% successful, but I guess it was progress...
     And then yesterday I won the BEST prize of all that I had tried for. Possibly the best prize in the whole shebang. A spindle and a matching pen made from rare wood, so rare that the woodworker only made one other spindle out of it, for his own private collection.
     Ironic? Humbling? OK, woohoo!! But still.

Multipotentialite—are you one?

This is a sequel to my previous post. Emilie Wapnick, who coined the word "multipotentialite," has given a TEDx talk. I'd like to share the video with you.

Spun to spinning

I have a new obsession: hand spinning.

No, not with a spinning wheel. With drop spindles. 

I'm spinning 15 minutes a day, because people say that's the way to learn--frequent sessions to build muscle memory, but short so as not to overtax yourself.

Yes, it seems a bit crazy--even to me. I have a full-time job and a disabled husband; I don't even have time to knit everything I want to knit, now I want to make the yarn myself?

There are other words besides "crazy" for people like me. Scanner; multipotentialite; etc. These words describe someone who has many interests and often has talent in many of these interests.

I've always been that way. I always wanted to DO everything that interested me, not just admire those who were doing it. I've often wondered what librarians would think if they analyzed the topics I check out books on.

There are advantages and disadvantages to being a multipotentialite (the term I prefer). I think it keeps my mind lively and active and always learning. On the other hand, there's the occasional flurry of spending on materials for yet another hobby, and then having to store them. Sometimes the new interest wanes, and those materials become clutter--like my little cache of art supplies for Zentangles. I also clutter up my schedule and have to weed out activities.

This is why my blog doesn't have a focus, by the way. How could I possibly write about ONLY ONE THING?

I do see some common threads (pun intended) in my interests that do stick. They're often creative, and they have to do with my curiosity about how things work and are made and what's behind the scenes. (Behind the scenes! maybe that's why my favorite musical adventure was playing in a pit orchestra for musicals!)

I have a strong leaning toward what's most natural, traditional, or ancient, but I'm also interested in science and technology. (Proof: I have a drop spindle created on a 3D printer. Two extreme ends of the geek spectrum embodied in a single object.)

The Lord made me this way. The trick I'm still working on is how to harness it rather than letting it drag me around.

Scotland the Brave

My husband found a YouTube video of "Scotland the Brave"* with lyrics.

Now he's obsessed.


This is a very, er, hawkish song.

*If you aren't familiar with that title, you must not be into bagpipe music. But I'll bet you've heard the tune.

The spiritual side of decluttering

This post will be more about questions than answers. Thinking "out loud"... maybe starting a conversation? Because I sure don't have this all sorted.

I have plenty of my own trash that needs to go out.

I've read a couple of the latest books on decluttering. They come from very different standpoints, but I'm intrigued by what they have in common... which is something I haven't really seen addressed before. They both bring in the spiritual.

The books:

Amazon link 

Amazon link

Who hasn't heard of Marie Kondo's book? Her prose and her method are simple, and the book is short. I'm seeing Instagram photos of people's closets and drawers hashtagged #konmari. I've even heard it discussed on podcasts. However, the discussions always get to the exceptions people are making for themselves from Kondo's method; for instance, "I don't greet my house when I come home." More about that later.

The coauthors of Breathing Room are a "spiritual intuitive" and a psychiatrist. It's a much denser, more complicated book than Kondo's. I had to force myself to keep reading, to the point where I wasn't finished when it came due at the library, and I turned it in with a sense of relief. This isn't a review of the book; I just want to point out that their method has far more to do with the emotional and spiritual causes of clutter than any physical method of clearing it. A reviewer on Amazon says the spiritual principles in it are Buddhist.

And, the spiritual principles in Kondo's book are Shinto. I've heard people try to dismiss her approach to objects as merely cultural, but they must be ignoring Kondo's statement that she starts each decluttering project in her business by kneeling in the center of the house and praying to it.

Now, I'm not about to go off on a rant. I'm just establishing that these authors have found, in practical experience with their clients, that decluttering success involves spirituality.

Could there be a lesson here for me, as a Christian, in my struggle with clutter?

I think so.

If there's a spiritual component to clutter and decluttering, we ought to be able to come at it from a Christian point of view. Maybe that would help?

Basic tenet from Jesus: "...one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." (Luke 12:15, ESV)

Forgetting that is one cause of clutter. Forgetting it can also make it hard to declutter, if part of the problem is a difficulty in letting go of things. These aren't the only issues, for sure. I have a complicated mix of motivations and hangups that go into my clutter problem, and I'm sure it'll be different mixes for different people.

Here's ALL of Luke 12:15:

15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

Being covetous can be a root of clutter. It's a sad fact that I often buy yarn faster than I can knit it up, books faster than I can read them. Just yesterday I almost bought a new journal even though I'm only four pages into the current one.

Does covetousness also make it hard to let go?

Let's brainstorm: spiritual issues that make it hard to declutter.

• Fear (of needing something after it's discarded, etc.)
• People-pleasing (I can't get rid of that--Mom/Grandma/Aunt Betty gave it to me)
• Clinging to the dream or fantasy that caused you to acquire the item in the first place

Let's see more ideas in the comments.

Of course there are non-spiritual roadblocks too. Time, energy, all that. Getting around to it.

Here's an idea though: I'm thinking it might be good to start a decluttering project by kneeling in the middle of the house and praying not to the house, but to our Lord, for His aid in overcoming whatever it is we need to overcome within ourselves to succeed at decluttering.

I'd love to see comments... what are your thoughts?

20 things I learned in 2014

I'm participating in a blog linkup with Emily P. Freeman at Chatting at the Sky--What We Learned in 2014.

1) I learned about African refugees from Congo and elsewhere, right here in Illinois, who fled persecution for being Christians.
     Among others, I got acquainted with two sisters who came here with their aunt--their parents were murdered.

2) Don't leave hand-knits within reach of a puppy.
     (Really I knew that, but it only takes a lapse of a few minutes...)

3) That Jeremiah 17:9 does NOT apply to the Christian regenerated under the New Covenant.
     It gets quoted a lot: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" That's the King James and I still have it memorized. But that's an Old Testament verse about the carnal heart! I learned this from John Eldredge's book Waking the Dead.

4) To accept my childlessness.
     Thanks to the Beth Moore study Breaking Free.

5) That I have insulin resistance and the ketogenic diet is the one for me.
     ... in other words: "Butter makes your pants fall off!!"


6) I really really need to journal.

7) Also, I'm supposed to be blogging.

8) However: Writing is not an end in itself.
     whaaaAAAA???

9) I learned disturbing things about the founder of the cult I grew up in.
     More about that some other time... maybe.

10) Why my husband felt sick more often than not for almost a year.
     He had a hidden pocket of infection. When it was finally drained, he felt better immediately. In a friend's words: "No wonder he felt bad--he was full of toxic goo!"

11) That I can buy yarn faster than I can knit it up.

12) It's all very well donating to a cause; the challenge is trying to help a real, live, flawed and neurotic human being whose problems have no easy solution.
     There's someone who just exhausts me. Mostly I just drive her to church, because she doesn't have a car, but just listening to her talk wears me out. I'm not sure if I just need to let her chatter just roll off my back, or what. Do I just need to learn patience?

13) Even mild sleep apnea takes a lot out of you.
     I wrote a whole blog post about it.

14) The power of the Holy Spirit in my life means I don't have to succumb to my fears and weaknesses.
     um... duh?

15) I may have made an agreement many years ago to the effect that I should never reveal my heart.
 
16) Listening to an audio Bible while knitting rocks!

17) I learned about hybrid cameras, and got one.
     Many settings available--aperture, shutter speed, plus digital effects--but the size of a point-and-shoot. Perfect for me!

18) Lots more about introversion.
     I read Introverts in the Church by Adam McHugh, and Quiet by Susan Cain.

19) That I'm a direct descendant of John and Priscilla Alden of the Mayflower.
     My aunt did the legwork to prove it to the satisfaction of the Mayflower Society, which she has now joined. I could join too by just appending proof of my descent from her parents.

20) How to survive a polar vortex.
     Wear all the wool!

Change happens

Sometimes unforeseen changes come with blinding rapidity, one after another, just when you were settling into a routine.

I'm starting a new job tomorrow. I wasn't looking for a new job; this one came looking for me, by way of a former coworker letting me know about an opening where he's working now.

At first procrastinated following up, assumed it wasn't for me, told my husband I wasn't really considering it. In fact, I tried to push it away. I wrote a high desired salary on the application form; I told the interviewer my limitations quite frankly. "I don't want you to think I...."

But when the interviewer told me what the job actually entails, I realized it would be a good career move for me. If nothing else, it'll look better on my resume than what I've been doing the last 18 months. They didn't offer what I had asked, but I negotiated them up to about halfway between what I'd written down and what they'd initially offered. (First time I ever negotiated; I guess it's true what they say about being prepared to walk away!)

Meanwhile, our 15-year-old dog died. Butch wasn't sick long; he had some sort of crisis at 3 a.m. and went rapidly downhill from there. By the time I got home from work, it was obvious his time had come. My husband and I took him to the vet and had him put to sleep.

I would have been fine with just our cats for a while, but Brian missed having a dog. So long story short, we brought home Sassy from a local shelter on the day before Thanksgiving. Going from an arthritic 15-year-old dog to a 7-month-old chewing machine is quite an adjustment! But walking the dog is back to being good exercise for me.

By the way—this all happened in November!

So I am trying to cut myself a break. My attempts at writing a blog post during this past month have been abject failures; but I was trying to write something Penetrating and Profound, and I just didn't have the bandwidth. So here you go: Prosaic and Paltry.

Even the good changes require that we give ourselves time to adjust.

overwhelm

Been feeling a lot of overwhelm lately. At work, at home. It often leads to collapsing with Facebook... which is counterproductive, of course.

I was thinking about writing about overwhelm earlier this week, jotted down a few thoughts, but Saturday came and I had no rough draft. And I helped with a fundraiser this morning, and vacuumed this afternoon, and I'm pretty tired...

But guess what—Ann Voskamp wrote about overwhelm in her little daily Facebook post (today? Yesterday?) and I ran across it today.

Can I quote her? And here's the rest of it. (scroll way down to the bottom... there's a photo too)

Hey Soul? See that little index finger you have right there?
Here’s the deal: Whenever you feel overwhelmed today? You just point that little index finger out like an arrow. Like an arrow pointing you to that One Rock who is higher than you:
“When my heart is overwhelmed:
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” Ps. 61:2....

No matter what comes at you today: 
Your heart has a rock higher than *any waves.* 

#TalkingGospeltoMyself #LeadMeToTheRock

This comes from Ann Voskamp's blog A Holy Experience, which is on my blogroll. I love the way she writes. I had never heard of her when she spoke at a women's conference I attended. Her talk rocked my world. So of course I purchased and read her book One Thousand Gifts. Heartily recommended.

Failure to breathe

Sleep apnea. a•pnea = not breathing

When we sleep, we can fail to breathe.

Something happens inside, and air can't get in; carbon dioxide can't get out, and builds up in the blood.

My husband wakes me from a dream. "You're going to be late for work..." I grab my device and stare at it in disbelief. Did I shut off the alarm in my sleep?

I stumble out of the bedroom... and land in the recliner, trying to pray, trying to clear my muzzy head.

I'm told I have mild sleep apnea. It barely clears the official definition—I only stop breathing seven times an hour. Only every eight minutes or so.

How many times can you stop breathing in an hour before you never start again?

The brain and the body are trying to repair and rebuild in sleep. It doesn't go so well with inadequate oxygen. So they keep trying to snatch more sleep, while I'm at my desk, while I'm at a stop light.

Pneuma = breath; Spirit

It's so easy to fall asleep spiritually, and let the flesh block the Spirit. To neglect the word of Life, and let our own negativity build up inside.

How many of us are sleepwalking through life, going through the motions without energy, without zeal? Without the refreshing of the Spirit?

Let's breathe.

Stepping out on the water

Did you ever feel the Lord nudging you to do something, and you sort of said, "Oh, OK," but actually did little or nothing?

I've had the Spirit nudging me repeatedly about something. Sometimes I've self-analyzed: "Really? Maybe that's just coming from me..."

I have felt like I don't have time, don't have energy, can't commit to doing something like that regularly. And at other times: I will, I will—real soon now.

More recently, I actually started to try to start—yes, I mean that as convoluted as it sounds. Two days of trying to set a habit, and then... I don't even know what happened. I simply forgot.

I went to my local church's annual women's retreat last weekend. 24 hours away from the grind, at a beautiful Wisconsin resort overlooking a lake and surrounded by fall colors. The theme of the retreat was Sow - Cultivate - Reap. Two things that got to me were:

• Daily Discipline
• Walk on the Water

I know our speaker talked about Peter walking on the water, but the only note I jotted down was the question: "Is He calling you to walk out on the water?"

It might not have stuck, except our little three-girl worship band led us in a song called, "If You Say Go"—twice.

If You say go we will go
If You say wait we will wait
If You say step out on the water
And they say it can't be done
We'll fix our eyes on You and we will come....
Your ways are higher than our ways
And the plans that You have laid are good and true
If You call us to the fire
You will not withdraw Your hand
We'll gaze into the flames and look for You.

—Rita Springer 

During the first time through I remembered what I was supposed to be doing. The thing I'd been getting nudged about. Blogging.

Yes, just blogging. And not even starting a whole other blog—just reviving this one.

For me, it feels like stepping out on the water... because it's NOT coming from me. I don't know where it's leading.

In the "Reap" session, our speaker pointed out that we often don't know what kind of harvest God is bringing. I don't have to have it all figured out before I even start.

The other day, a Christian friend took a step of deeper obedience to the Lord. It surprised me at first only because I would have thought she had long since obeyed in that area. She had, sort of... but held a bit back. She wanted to erase that tiny trace of disobedience.

My dragging my feet on blogging has been disobedience. I realized I couldn't let that day end without writing at least a first draft of a post, even if it took me the rest of the week to click "publish."

So here it is. First step.

Next, Daily Discipline...

...to be continued

Dee's No-Twist Circular Cast-On

I knit in the round a lot—and I've twisted my cast-on a lot, too. That is, when I've cast on all the required stitches and go to join the two ends, I have accidentally let the stitches twist around the needle, even though I tried to check for that. It's really frustrating when I don't realize it until I knit a round or two. And of course, the more stitches in the cast-on, the more likely this is to happen.

A few months ago, a knitter named Dee posted her solution on the "Techniques" forum in Ravelry. I didn't see it until a few weeks ago, and I wish I had sooner! "Dee's No-Twist Circular Cast-On" is simply the best way I've heard of to prevent twisting your cast-on when you join to knit in the round. You can use it with any type of cast-on, as far as I know.

Here is a link to the original forum thread on Ravelry, where this technique is discussed at length. (If you're not a member of Ravelry, I think you'd have to join to see forums. But if you're interested in this topic, and you read blogs, and you're not a member of Ravelry... the mind boggles.)

Dee has also made a YouTube video:


Dee knitted up a strip of fabric to use, but somewhere in the thread someone suggested using a ribbon that has loops along the edge, and I latched onto that idea. There are limits to my DIY-ing. I only have so much knitting time. I'm lazy. Pick an excuse, any excuse.

I went to Jo-Ann Fabrics and found a wide, stretchy ribbon with loops AND gaps along the edges. The loops will accommodate needle sizes of perhaps U.S. 8 on down, but the gaps are stretchy and could go much bigger. It's a bright lime green that will contrast with just about any yarn I might knit.

I "hang" the ribbon either before or after the first stitch, and then every ten stitches (using it also to help me count!).

 

As Dee says, the fabric or ribbon must remain BEHIND the cast-on. Here you can see my cast-on stitches in front of the ribbon, with a loop of green every ten stitches.

I have way too much ribbon for this project, but that's OK—it just hangs down, no big deal. I figured too much would be better than not enough. I cast on over 600 stitches for a project once, and you never know when I might do it again!

I found out the hard way that even doing this, it's still possible to twist the stitches when I join them in the round. However, it's obvious right away. I didn't have to knit a whole round before I realized it. The whole width of the ribbon twisted up and forced me to face reality.

Here's another view of the same cast-on, in case it's helpful. Another thing about my ribbon is that one side is satiny and the other side is matte, so I can tell at a glance which side I'm looking at (and therefore, whether it SHOULD be in front or in back).

I won't be surprised if this technique starts showing up in knitting reference books—it's that handy.

Hugelkultur: next steps

Sticks, sticks, and more sticks. I finally had time and weather to start the next step in my little Hugelkultur bed.
First I dug up some leaf mould. This has been sitting behind my shed for two years... last year I put most of the shredded leaves directly on my growing beds.

This was harder to dig out than I had expected—roots had grown horizontally through it.

It's very very matted. It kind of just sits on top of the sticks. It rained later that day, but that didn't affect the appearance of it that I could see.

I tried breaking this up with my garden fork, but it's VERY matted. The weather between now and spring should do most of that for me.

No matter. There's a whole winter of snow coming.

The idea behind hugelkultur is to mimic what happens on a forest floor, to create a similar spongy, soft garden bed. When I first heard about it, it made all kinds of sense to me because the closer you can get to how God set things up, the better. Worms will come up out of the ground to work this over, and it's already full of beneficial microorganisms.

I did put SOME of last year's leaves to the side of the shed. Maybe I should have started with those! They would have filtered down between the sticks. Ah well--I finished off with the rest of the old old mould after these pictures were taken. Besides, I have lots of other beds I can use last year's leaves on.

 

Next, a surprise... There was a dead tree in the lot next door. A large limb broke off and was just lying there. They had piled other branches that fell next to the garage.

I asked if I could have them. The neighbor and her son were like, sure. Not only that, but the son pitched them over the fence into my yard for me. Woo hoo!

Alas, her landlord sent someone to take down the rest of the tree and I didn't get any more lumber from it. However, I used the large limb and branches to start a much longer Hugelkultur bed. Any new sticks from my maple and the neighborhood are going onto this pile now.

I placed a couple of pizza boxes on the ground underneath to block the grass, but it's so long, I need about three more pizza boxes.

Below is a photo of our cat Buster on the largest tree limb, for scale. He, of course, thinks I put it there just for him to sharpen his claws on.

I've started grabbing bags of leaves off the curb when people put them out for pickup. Our county requires people to put yard waste in these large doubled paper bags for composting. Yes, the county composts them—but what do they do with the compost? They spread it over the top of the landfill. wha???

I asked over at the All Things Plants website in the Hugelkultur forum if I should put compost on top now, or wait until spring. Now, they said--to prevent any of my leaf mould from blowing away. I haven't done that yet, but I will soon.

I have a lot of work ahead of me yet with this, but I'm looking forward to having these dedicated vegetable beds!

Next year's experiment: Hugelkultur

I first heard of Hugelkultur on the podcast A Way to Garden. The link takes you to that episode's shownotes, which also list the basic steps to creating a Hugelkultur bed. (I'm capitalizing the word because it's obviously German. This idea has apparently been around for hundreds of years.)

The basic idea is to create a new bed with sheet composting—except that your base layer is WOOD. Twigs, branches, even logs. Just like in a forest.

Here's a website with some terrific diagrams.

The flaw in the forest bed logic, of course, is that you don't go trying to grow vegetables in a forest—it's a different type of plants that flourish in forest undergrowth. Nevertheless, they talked about how the sticks foster pockets of air in the bed. Plus, my main problem with starting any raised beds was trying to fill them. That could get expensive fast, if I had to purchase the soil. Wood in the bottom means perhaps not having to come up with as much soil. It's sort of the same principle as putting rocks in the bottom of a planter—and also would serve the same purpose of helping drainage.

I had no worries about where to get the wood. I live in a neighborhood full of mature trees, including the maple in my back yard. They're always shedding at least twigs, and often larger pieces. As soon as I heard this podcast, I stopped putting the fallen maple bits on the curb for pickup. I just kept adding more in the old cracked trash can I keep for the purpose.

When Gardener's Supply Company put their basic Grow Beds on sale after the spring planting season was done, I ordered one 3'x6' kit. It has 10" high walls. I figured that would make it easier for me, plus my neighbors would be less likely to object if my pile of sticks were contained.

My yard is configured with a triangular bed in the SW corner, which gets the most sun, and 2-foot-wide beds all around the rest of the perimeter. (These were already in place when I moved in, and mostly filled with perennial flowers.) This new bed is my first step toward filling the sunny third of the yard with vegetable beds that START organic. (I'm having to regenerate the existing beds, which were addicted to chemicals before I moved in.)

I set up the raised bed a mower's width away from the perimeter bed to the south and the corner bed to the west. Underneath it I mowed very short and then laid out the boxes that the raised bed came in, to block the growth of grass and weeds. Then I dumped in my collected twigs and branches.

Oops... not quite enough.

But that was July. I still had plenty of time to collect more wood. I started watching for downed branches around the neighborhood while walking the dog. I chose the largest ones, since I could only use one hand to get them home. I got a real prize one day after a storm—a piece of tree LIMB over 5 feet long and about 6" thick.

As of today, I've pretty much got all the wood I need in there. I still continue to add anything that falls off the maple, plus anything I see during walks that's irresistible. But as soon as I get over the bronchitis I'm fighting right now, I'm on to the next step.

What'll that be? Leaf mould. Stay tuned.