On Monday I took my granddaughters to the Martin Luther King Jr march here in Lewisburg, WV. I usually attend the march, lunch and speeches every year to honor his memory and to see his dream becoming a reality. When my now teenagers where younger and I was home schooling them they came with me. I continue the lessons with my granddaughters who are 5 and 7.
The march was chilly. Chloe, Trinity and I where bundled in several layers of warm clothing and coats yet our noses and toes still where cold.
I was wearing a pair of very warm mittens knitted by my Aunt Ginger. She sends our family a box or two a year of lovely hand knitted items such as mittens in different sizes, scarfs and hats. She is amazing!
All of the marchers warmed up quickly in the church where we sat down together at long school room style tables to share a tasty lunch of sandwich wraps, tummy warming vegetable soup and chocolate cup cakes.
We were not able to stay for all the post activities in the church sanctuary. The girls drumming group was energetic and kept my granddaughters attention but soon they began to fidget during the speeches and it was time to go.
Living with grand children is interesting to say the least. I recently found my Lilith alter in my room dismantled, placed in side a plastic jack-o-lantern and rearranged up under my desk. I took this as an opportunity to do some serious alter cleaning. I unlisted the assistance of my smallest but bravest granddaughter Trinity to help. This provided an opportunity to teacher her about Goddess Lilith. From experience I'm sure she is also the culprit who dismantled my alter. The picture represents only a very very small part of the whole ...
I am on call at work today and surprisingly I have not been called in to the hospital where I am a cardiac nurse. So this morning I had unexpected time to myself. I work hard at maintaining a daily spiritual practice. This morning I was able to give myself the gift of extra time.
Now I will shamelessly insert plugs and kudos for my previous teacher Thorn Coyle and one of my favorite books Feeding your Demons by Tsultrim Allione.
I live in gratitude to Thorn teaching excellence and assistance helping me understand and finally appreciate daily practice. I think it is up to the individual to craft their own practice. My practice embraces my Feri spirituality which includes meditation, devotion, honoring Gods/ancestors and connection to self divinity with different exercises that I enjoy. I will not be sharing my personal exercises or Feri. There is plenty of information out on the world wide web to explore and lots of helpful hints enabling others to create their own daily practice.
I like to meditate with other people but that is not possible for me or my schedule. I was introduced to insight timer by a friend and I love being able to connect and meditate with people from all over the world.
Feeding your demons, shadow work, mirror work or what ever name you feel comfortable with has been healing and self empowering for me. I love Tsultrim book and I reread it frequently. My book is filled with pencil notations and sticky notes. I love her approach because it taught me how to shift to tolerance, integration and compassion. Demon or shadows hinder liberation and Tsultrim explains how to change our story to what is happening, instead of what should be happening while embracing demons.
Believe it or not knitting has been very helpful tool assisting me on my journey to be able to focus, relax within myself and to meditate.
I consider myself a beginning knitter. Even though I learned to knit way back in high school, I have very few completed projects under my belt. Knitting is fun and frustrating at the same time. I have continued to try and try again because I like a challenge and (wink) I like to play with pointy sticks. I recently took a online class at Craftsy which was fun and a confidence building experience. I also learned I am an English knitter. This may explain some of my past knitting misunderstandings. I learned how knit from my grandmother who was from Nova Scotia . Do knitters from that area of Canada typically knit English style? I do not know. I have never visited but my parents have returned several times to visit our family living there. Some day I too would like to meet my distant relatives.
I have just finished knitting a top knot baby hat for a fellow nurse at work. She is now out on maternity leave with her daughter Anne Marie. I used size 6 us size double pointed needles for most of the hat. I usually don't use metal needles but this is what I had and I didn't want to buy another pair. I prefer bamboo or some type of wood. Metal is slippery and I have had to really concentrate when changing from one needle to another.
Knitting language can be confusing. The directions state, knit around to get the stockinette stitch. Well I did what I thought was knitting in the beginning but the stockinette stitch was forming on the inside of the hat. That is not what I wanted or what the directions stated. I was knitting on the outside of the stitch and when I changed to knitting on the inside or pearling everything turned out lovely. Another lesson learned!
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