Seattle Yogini

Code

I hab a code im by dose.

Courtesy, I believe, of the Chicago O'Hare Airport - again.  We flew to Indiana to spend the Christmas week with family.  It took us two days to get there due to flight cancellations.  Our luggage arrived a day before we were due to depart.  Our return flight was delayed such that it took us another two days to get back home.  If we can help it, we will try to never fly through Chicago again.  It's just too windy!

Anyway, along the way (or perhaps before I left), I picked up a cold.  It lingered in the gestational stages for the first few days of our trip, presenting the usual tickly throat, "kinda feeling funny" symptoms.  Then the day we were due to return home...WHAM!  A full-fledged head cold, complete with runny nose (and amazingly completely clogged at the same time, never ceases to amaze me), weepy eyes, sneezing, you name it.  The only thing missing so far is a fever, which I really wish I had because at least it would burn off the germs!

So, when folks ask how our holidays were, it's a mixed bag answer:  the time with family was lovely, the traveling was horrendous.  But now we're home, and I'm wrapped up in two pairs of socks, sweats, the "sick hat" and a big, wonderful crochet shawl my sister gave us a few years ago.  This morning I had a long soak in an aroma-therapeutic bath.  I've been eating garlic, Alpha-20 C, Esberitox, drinking plenty of fluids and using my neti pot morning and night.  I carry around my cup of Desert Sage tea, my hottie (a very timely gift from my mother-in-law, she made a felted cozy for it and I'm telling you - it's SOOOOO great!  The wool warms up and makes it much nicer to hold close than icky rubber, plus it stays hot longer), and a box of tissues.  My sore, chapped nose is slathered in Arbordoun's Caledula Cream (and so far it hasn't started peeling!), and I'm investigating methods for making my own, non-scary (why does the original have turpentine in it?????) "Vapor Rub"....oh yeah, and resting.  :-)

Heck, the last two days I've been so sick that I didn't even knit!  Now, the knitters among you will understand that this fact alone proves the severity of my cold.  During the week of travel and family time I did manage to get a good deal worked on Mr. Greenjeans and I finished a Snow on Cedars fingerless mitt (the other is just barely cast on).  Rob's sweater has a sleeve to the point of ribbing (though it was not brought on our trip).  So, while I'm recuperating...at least, once I'm up to it...I have plenty of knitting to keep me busy.

That's good, since I'm officially on orders to "take it easy".  Perhaps I can take some photos later this week.  Here's to our health!

At Least There's Buttercream

Spent today enjoying the smells of onions slow-cooking in the oven for French Onion Soup.  We wondered if it would turn out ok, since all we have to cook it in is a cast-iron dutch oven (all the Cooks Illustrated videos & photos show it cooking in Le Crueset).  After 2.5 hours of oven time, and an hour on the stove top, survey says....

A bowl of this soup would satisfy our requirement for iron for the rest of our lives!

Aack.  Guess it's time to bite the bullet and look into a piece fabulous Le Crueset cookware.  Can't buy it at the hardware store like good ol' Lodge, and it's about seven times the price.  But our soup will be edible!

Oh, well.  At least there's leftover buttercream in the fridge.

Layer Cake

Today, in honor of Rob's birthday, I decorated the first real birthday cake I've made in many years.

There was a time when I wanted to be a pastry chef, and so apprenticed myself to a bakery.  There I learned to decorate cakes, and found a talent that I love to use.  I can't draw to save my life, but man alive can I do it up with frosting!  :-)  Even today, I enjoy the occasional fantasy of having a home cake business.  The truth is, though, that I did not pursue the craft professionally because I found that I much prefer to bake for friends and family than for strangers/customers.  Rob had never been on the receiving end of a bakery-style homemade cake (i.e. complete with roses, writing, etc.) and seemed a bit intrigued that it could be done at home.  So he sat down and watched the process.  You can too!

Yesterday I baked the cakes.  It is very helpful to make the cakes you wish to frost at least a day ahead, then wrap well and put in the freezer.  This helps prevent the crumb from coming off in the frosting, and also makes it a nice, firm surface upon which to spread the frosting.  Here you see the tools I gathered for the frost-o-rama: 

(left to right:   doily on top of cardboard round, angled frosting knife, straight frosting knife, four frosting tips (petal, star, circle and leaf), two coupling parts, two bags to hold the frosting) and the big white thing in the middle is my turn table)

I was working with 9" round cakes (well, actually two rounds and one square, the corners of which I cut off because I only have two round pans) so I used a 10" cardboard round.  I stick a 10" doily to the cardboard with a small dollop of frosting, then put another dollop onto the doily and the first layer of cake goes on top of that dollop.  I pile on a couple of good-sized mounds of buttercream frosting and spread it to an even level.  On goes the second layer, plus more frosting, then the third layer, which is the stage you see here:

I made cake with spelt flour instead of wheat, and one of the results of this substitution is that the cakes are denser than they would be with wheat.  We don't mind that at all, and I found that the fact that the cakes didn't dome up in the middle saved me the (rather annoying) step of having to level the tops of each layer...which vastly increases the likelihood of crumb-strewn frosting.

A word on frosting:  I made a standard buttercream frosting, which I tripled.  The recipe, which calls for one stick of butter, 1/3 cup of milk, 2 tsp vanilla and 6.5 cups of powdered sugar, claims to be enough to frost a two-layer cake or one small rectangle cake.  Ha!  In fact, double ha!  Those quantities would have produced enough to barely cover a rectangle, I think, with a skimpy layer of buttercream.  Since I had three (albeit thin) layers to frost, and planned on really decorating it, I was glad that I had tripled the quantities.  In truth, I could have gotten by with a double batch, but I'll use the leftovers for cookies tomorrow or later this week, so it all works out in the end.  The point is, it's better to make too much frosting (which, in this project, is your artistic medium, after all!) and have leftovers than to realize part way through that you don't have enough to make the cake tasty and pretty.

So, back to the cake.  The next step is to frost the top and the sides with their *initial* layer of frosting (it'll end up with two coats).  Think of this layer as the primer you use on walls before painting.  Its job is to smooth out the surface, fill in gaps/holes and make it easier to put on the next coat.  You may have noticed in the picture above that the middle layer is the square cake I cut round.  It didn't end up exactly the same size as the round cakes, so this first layer of frosting will help fill in those discrepancies.

Clearly, this cake is not ready to present to anyone for their birthday.  It is, however, ready to be decorated!  I continue to focus my efforts on the sides, to which I add more frosting in narrow, vertical sections with the straight frosting knife, smoothing as I go.  After the whole circumference has received it's second coat, then with one hand I steadily hold the edge of the knife to the side of the cake while slowly turning the cake table with the other.  In this manner, I smooth out the sides.  Then it's a pretty simple matter to make the top smooth, using the angled knife to gently even and smooth the frosting on the top.  The edges of the top will be ragged-looking, which isn't a great surface for the decorations, so I gently make the frosting that's sticking up from the side press down and lie flat upon the top.

The bakery cakes of Rob's youth were always yellow cake with yellow roses on top, so I turned the rest of the buttercream yellow using a natural, turmeric-based food coloring.  It made a lovely shade of soft yellow.  Back in the bakery, we used paste food coloring, which is great because it doesn't affect the consistency of the frosting the way liquid coloring does.  That stuff is full of scary artificial colors, though, so we opted to experiment with food-based coloring instead.  I had my package of powdered sugar handy in case I needed to make the frosting thicker after adding the turmeric goo.  As it turned out, it wasn't until I got to the roses that I decided I would have liked a slightly harder frosting, but by then it wasn't worth the effort to adjust, so the roses are a bit blobby.  Blobby, but tasty (absolutely NO turmeric flavor, in case you were wondering)!

So with the yellow frosting I did the bottom trim and the writing.  Back in the day, especially when I was first learning to do script with frosting, or for very important cakes (like the Marine Corps Birthday Cake I did - it had lots of teeny writing on it), I would use a toothpick to just barely etch the lettering into the frosting.  Then I'd go over it with the actual frosting.  For this cake, I did it freehand:

I like to get the whole top decorated, flowers and all, before putting the trim on it.  Otherwise I'm likely to drag a sleeve edge over it, or something equally disastrous!  I spooned out a large dollop of frosting into a separate bowl so that I could turn it green for leaves and stems.  For this purpose, I had some blue natural food coloring, made from blueberries.  While it smelled delicious, it didn't exactly make the yellow frosting green - or blue, for that matter.  It was more purple than blue, which turned the yellow stuff a sickly grey.  Sigh.  Rob and I commiserated, and found the greenest food-product we have in our home:  a capsule of Spirulina!  I opened it up and dumped the powdered algae into the bowl.  The color in the photos isn't exact, but here's the before and after:

So, that rather weird green became stems, upon which the yellow roses grow.  Then back to green for leaves (here I would have preferred MUCH thicker frosting, as well as new leaf tips, but I did my best with what I had):

Once the flowers and leaves were done, I added the top trim, and that was that!  Not bad for the first cake I've decorated in years, eh?  :-)

It is, of course, a bit time-consuming to decorate a cake to this degree at home, but it'll taste a million times better than grocery-store cake (ugh!  that nasty frosting!) or box cake, for that matter.  For me, decorating a cake is a wonderful opportunity to use my creative juices in a way I don't often do.  I feel blessed for the reminder of how very much I enjoy baking and cake-decorating.  It isn't how I'd want to spend 10 hours a day, but for the occasional Saturday it's a swell way to spend my time!

Obstacle Course

In my Intro to Yoga class this morning I presented the 5 Klesas (Obstacles - pronounced "Clay-sha-s") to Joy, as defined by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras.  They are the first steps one takes in the path of self-study.  It is by overcoming the Klesas that we free ourselves from suffering.  Theoretically this work precedes the adherence to the "ethical code" of yoga, called the Yamas and Niyamas (more on that later).  And yet, working on the klesas may be a life-long endeavor...so don't wait until you've "got it" to start the next step!  The Yamas and Niyamas are great tools as we strive to surmount the Klesas.

I like to use the translation by Sri Swami Satchidananda.  It is very user-friendly, in no small part because it is comprised of lectures he gave over the years.  This makes the explanatory paragraphs that follow each sutra's translation very "chatty"...something that I have found helpful when trying to understand such a weighty subject.  In fact, in his translation of the 5 Klesas, Sri Swami Satchidananda gives a nice, succinct paragraph explaining how each obstacle leads to the next.

So what are these obstacles?  These feelings/thoughts that keep us stuck in separateness and suffering?  They are:

1.  Avidya (Ignorance)
2.  Asmita (Ego)
3.  Raga (Attachment)
4.  Dvesha (Aversion/Hatred)
5.  Abhinivesah (Clinging to the Body/Life)

It goes something like this:  humans suffer because we maintain an ignorance of our true self - that of Oneness, unity with each other, unity with the Divine.  When we are ignorant of our own Divine essence, the Ego is in charge of our decisions.  The Ego is the concept of "I-ness" (rather than Oneness).  The Ego cannot be satisfied - whether it seeks fulfillment through power, money, sex, food, giving, receiving, you name it! - there will never be enough to satisfy.  The more you feed the Ego, the larger it grows and the more it demands of you.

One of the things the Ego talks us into is attachment to that which pleases it.  Things become very important, and whether they are useful to your situation in life or not, it somehow matters that you have enough things, that the things are of the "right kind", etc.  Should you lose a thing, it pains you deeply.  Sometimes the "things" are people.  Sometimes they are inanimate objects, concepts, ideas themselves, but often they are things with which the Ego identifies and therefore clings to.

When you are attached to things, you are likely to develop an aversion to the loss of said thing.  In fact, should you somehow be denied of the thing to which you are attached, you may even feel hatred for the person/thing that has created this "void".  So attachment leads to aversion/hatred.

And when we are ignorant, egoistic, attached to stuff and hateful of those who deny us of our stuff, we are very likely to cling desperately to our bodies, which we mistake for life itself.  Clinging to life is a sure sign that one is living from I-ness rather than Oneness, because one identifies oneself as one's body...which will die (eventually).  Since humans have not yet figured out a way to keep the body going indefinitely, we clearly need these bodies of ours to be healthy and strong for as long as possible.  Physical health and longevity ensure that the body carriesus through our lives while we explore and learn and connect with each other and God.  When the body dies, however, it does not mean that We die...how can Spirit die?  How can God die?

Once the body dies, it can no longer enjoy all that stuff we worked so hard to accumulate and hold on to while alive!  So we cling in order to maintain the status quo of the previous 4 klesas!

And so, in the end, each of the klesas may be broken down, dissolved and discarded, starting with number one, ignorance.  By shedding ignorance of our true nature, and by living by that nature (i.e.  Live Like You're God!  See what a difference it makes in how you live.), we will be able to let go of ego, attachment, aversion and even the body.  This is why it's called a yoga practice, by the way, because it requires constant work and discipline.  It is as simple as deciding to "make it so", and as challenging as you might think it would be to overcome these obstacles.  Simple or challenging, what I know is that it's always enlightening!

Just for fun

Two of my "regular reads" posted something about the "Big Butts" song today, and I just have to give you the links here.  When the song was actually on the radio all the time, I was too young to have developed much of a backside and so did not fully appreciate this ode to (a version of) the female form.  As an adult, however, my posterior attributes are muscular and "well-insulated", therefore making it all the more noticeable.  :-)  This song is always good for a smile, but the links below may just have you laughing off of your chair!  If you're at work, you might want to wait until you're at home.  The links don't go to anything nasty, but there is a video and I don't want you to get in trouble...

First, a gentle reminder of why we of the booty-ful butts consider this song our anthem - it's appropriate for any occasion where big butts are appreciated.  Check out that dancin'!  That shakin'!  That fun havin'!!!

Second, an updated, love-song version to listen to over a romantic meal (or...something).  For the first time, I can actually understand all of the words!  Ha ha ha!

Enjoy!

The Time is Now

The spirit lives in the present.  What we call the Heart Center - the physical "home" of the spirit within the body - is all patience, all wisdom, all love and truth. The more I strive to infuse my body and mind with this knowledge, which resonates deeply within me, the more I realize how very attached to the future my mind is, and how very affected by the past my body is.  If I connect more deeply with my heart center, and through that connection with God Itself, then I am without pain of past or future.

This practice requires constant attention and dedication, but it is definitely one of the most important parts of my spiritual practice.  Being fully present in each moment has helped me heal and grow more over the past few years than perhaps any other part of my practice.  Please understand, when I say fully present it isn't the same as paying attention mentally to the goings-on around you.  That is simply being attentive.  Being present indicates that one's spirit is involved in each moment of one's life.  Indeed, it is the incorporation of the spirit into the activities of daily life that takes you from being an actor in the play of your life to being the writer, producer, and director all rolled into one!  So your life isn't full of things that "happen to you", but rather with things that you (your spirit) make happen.

My mind loves plans, and for many years was very future-oriented.  Plans represented action (albeit kinetic action....something that was not yet actually underway, but that had the potential for activity!), and for me the constant action of all my mind's plans was the best numbing agent available to me.  I was so wrapped up in the future - When will this, that, or the other dream become reality?  How about if I do X, Y, or Z to make it happen?  How/when shall I start my business?  Where will I be in five years?  Ten?  Twenty?  How many children, dogs, students will be in my life?  What if I can't get insurance?  What if I can get insurance?  What if I have another ectopic pregnancy?  What if nobody signs up for classes?  What should I pack? - that I wasn't fully experiencing the present.  I was more or less going through the movements of life, but so utterly focused on the future that my present circumstances were hollow.

My body, meanwhile, holds the stories of my past.  Those responses and conditions that the keen eye picks up on, which belie not only my physical history, but my emotional past as well.  So those tight glutes aren't simply from years of dancing (it's rarely - perhaps never - so simple), they hold the tales of my painful first marriage.  That funny click in my shoulder reminds me of boot camp, and what can go wrong if you're in a hurry and not paying attention to your body.  The "superficially cracked" tooth betrays the clenching of my jaw in my sleeping hours - what is it that my jaw would have me say when I'm awake?  Being present is helping me help my body to let go of these old stories.  I trust that I have learned the lessons I needed to learn (of course, if I haven't then I am sure to get another learning opportunity!).  Its aches and pains and seeming betrayals of secrets are wonderful signposts along the way:  glutes still sore?  I must still have some work to do there.  Jaw tight?  Must work on speaking my truth.  Etc., etc., etc.  All of that is work that I must do in the present, because I cannot - and would not - go back into the past to change things.  Each sign is there to point me in the right direction, to remind me what areas of my life still need some work.

Truly focusing on the present moment and helping my mind let go of its variety of plans for the future, while nurturing my body to release the ages-old stress/pain/wounds of the past is a gift that is worth the effort.  The mind and body are useful tools in learning to live in the present, but the process must be governed by the spirit.  Healing goes hand-in-hand with present-ness.  When we are really living in the present, and are fully participating in our lives the body responds by releasing the past, while the mind sighs in relief as it shrugs off the future.

As Far As Dentists Go....

mine is the best!  We actually found a "biological and holistic dentist" upon moving to Seattle.  He treats oral health as an integral component of overall health.  Each tooth is an organ.  Mercury doesn't belong in the body.  Root canals are not necessarily the best option for severely decayed teeth.  TMJ may be corrected/alleviated without surgery.  These are just a few of the wonderful principles he puts into practice.

Two weeks ago I had a cleaning/check up, and we found three things:  (1) a small cavity (2) wear and tear on my teeth indicating that I am still grinding/clenching/chomping my teeth at night and (3) the bacteria that live along my gum line, whose numbers were alarmingly high last May, had decreased in number.  Yay!  While not back to my normal low levels, it was very good to see that they had diminished.  The only major change that we figured could be the source of their overgrowth was the chemotherapy drug used to treat my ectopic pregnancy in the summer of 2006.  To keep those creepy-crawlies dwindling, I'll be adding an herbal mouthwash to my oral hygiene routine.

So today I went in for my filling.  After two oral surgeries (one pre-braces, the other to remove wisdom teeth), four years in braces, two fillings and one root canal (when it became clear that my first filling was inadequate) - all before my current dentist - you'd think that getting a simple little filling would be no problem for me.  But I have to admit, I work very hard to ease my anxiety while at the dentist.  Thankfully I have many yogic tools to choose from, but it helps a lot that our dentist is very gentle, very kind, and very good with the anesthetic!  :-)  That last bit of praise may sound funny, but I actually have had a hard time getting numb in my lower jaw prior to dental work (same with my Dad, it's something about the nerve being a little off from the "usual" place) and it's AWFUL.  During treatment, I'm all about the focused mind, deep breaths, calm detachment and filling my body with Light.

Now I'm back home with numbness in half my face, and feeling that the anesthetic has begun to wear off (he warned it might be sensitive this evening).  I got to pick up my new night appliance, which should help protect my teeth from all of that night-time jaw activity:  grinding, chomping, clenching, etc.  Even though my personal and professional lives revolve around the alleviation of stress, I had to accept that if the stress  my body holds is working its way out while I'm unconscious, then the night appliance was my best bet in protecting my teeth (and my jaw muscles).  At least, it should prove to be a great stop-gap measure until there isn't any stress to "work out" - asleep or awake!

Anyway, if you're in the Seattle area and looking for a good dentist, I highly recommend Dr. Mitch Marder.

Because Patience is a Virtue....

You may recall that back in August I began knitting Rob's never-ending sweater.  Admittedly, it feels never-ending because I work on multiple projects at a time, but once it reached a point wherein it was no longer easily portable, it became my "main squeeze" for evening & movie knitting.  Still, due to its size it's taking a long while to knit.

Last week I worked in all the ends except for the neck (which I have to re-do for the second time, but more on that later) and picked up stitches for sleeve one.  I had three balls of yarn left, from the bag of twelve we'd received in July.  One ball made it 5 inches.  Five inches!  The sleeves, together, will be a bit over 40 inches long.  My sharp-as-a-tack math skills told me that, um, three balls was nowhere near enough. 

Drat!

I started calling around, looking for a dyelot match.  Now, we ordered the yarn in early summer, and picked it up in July.  Since it's luscious yarn, I feared our chances of finding a match locally were slim.  As luck would have it, though, on my third call I hit the jackpot.  A local shop had three balls left.  That would give me three balls per sleeve, which ought to do it since the sleeves will become narrower as I go....right?

I continued on sleeve one, having gone through a whole ball of yarn, when it occurred to me yesterday that I should have Rob try it on.  The sleeves seemed rather wide, and upon closer inspection we agreed that they were ridiculously large - even on his "big guns".  :-)  I set about threading my needle back through a row at the beginning of the sleeve, and frogged the seven inches I'd knit.

Unsure exactly of how to proceed, I considered just winging it, doing two decreases every sixth row (my pattern called for a single decrease at that interval), but thought "Hey, this is where those much-talked-about "basic" math comes in handy."  So I set about figuring out the circumference of the sleeve at the shoulder, its desired circumference at the wrist, how long we want the sleeves to end up, and the number of rows in which I have to reach that smaller circumference (based upon my row gauge).  That part was easy, simply a matter of gathering measurements and gauge of information.

Then I was stumped.  How does one calculate the interval of decrease rows?  That is to say, if I needed to decrease 24 stitches within 80 rows (for the desired circumference at elbow length), and I planned to decrease two stitches per decrease row, then every X row would be a decrease row.  How to find X?  I asked Rob.  He's completed some very scary college-level math.  We made a graph.  My brain hurt.  I think we figured it out.  Wanna see?

Now, in my defense I would like to say that I attended (at last count) twelve different schools in twelve years of schooling, Kindergarten through high school graduation.  Such is the schooling of a military brat.  All that moving around makes for a lot of holes in one's education.  My math skills probably suffered the most from it.  I made it through high school Algebra II by the skin of my teeth (didn't even bother attempting Calculus), and figured out a way to avoid college-level math all together.  I'm great at basic arithmetic, enjoy it even, but when letters and numbers mix it up in a single "sentence", my brain turns to scrambled eggs.  So, figuring out X, when we're talking about stitches and rows, was starting to make me feel nauseous.

Kind of like when, in the sixth grade, I had to go to the board to do an algebra problem.  After standing there staring at that mind-numbing tangle of letters and numbers until well after the other kids had finished, the teacher exclaimed, "I really don't know why you're having so much trouble with this." - and not in a "here, let me show you" kind of tone.  Thanks, Mr. H., for teaching me how NOT to get through to kids.

Right, back to the sweater.  So now that we've figured out a better rate of decrease, given his measurements and my gauge, I'll be back to work on sleeve one.  I had hoped to finish it in time for Rob's birthday next week, but unless sleeve one version 2.0 works out more to his liking, and I magically find more time to knit, I don't see that happening.  New goal:  finish the sweater in time for him to wear it on our Christmas trip to my parents' house.  Don't worry, I'll keep you posted!

Just let me know if you want to see more math.  Ha ha ha ha ha.

 

Look!  I can't even fit the whole sweater in the camera's view finder!