Category Archives: Handcrafts

Bamboo Yarn for Knitted Knockers

I love bamboo as a textile. I have bamboo sheets that are soft, silky, warm, cool, antibacterial and wear like iron.  I’m also a knitter and have begun knitting with bamboo yarn…a newcomer on the textile scene.

Here’s a picture of a yarn called Universal Yarn Bamboo Pop Cream. Click on the pic and it’ll take you to Amazon and the description page.

bamboo yarn 

Universal Yarn Pop Cream

Have you ever heard of Knitted Knockers? It’s a group of knitters who knit breast prostheses for women who’ve had mastectomies and don’t want silicon implants. Since bamboo is antibacterial and so durable, it’d be a great yarn to use if you’re inclined to be part of this amazing group.  You can Google them and get the full story on how to get involved.

Winter Solstice

Dancing in the Light
Dancing in the Light

This Tuesday, December 21st, is our longest night. In the Pacific Northwest, we now have 16 hours of darkness.I arrive at my office and it is dark.I leave my office and it is dark.

My animals curl into balls and rarely wake.

It has been a steady move to this darkest day, since the longest at the Summer Solstice.

Then my tomatoes were growing.Now I am using the canned sauce in stews, breathing in summer scents in the dark, cold afternoons.

Time moves and things shift.We still call this furthest hour of earth tilt the Tropic of Capricorn, but it isn’t anymore.Precession has shifted us into the constellation Sagittarius.Things change.The Mother turns and leans this way now, turns and leans that way later.She dances with the Sun and the Moon and with herself.

We will gather and celebrate the end of the dark, the tilt of the Earth, the Emergence of the light.

Winter Solstice Sunrise over the Cascades
December Sunrise over the Cascades

To celebrate, we will make a circle, call in the directions, and be with the dark.We will welcome our shadows and bravely visit with them.We can do this because we know the darkness creates the light, and that there is a time for everything.We say goodbye to the time that is gone.

We will invite the light, and breathe life into our possibilities.We will have faith that the light will come again.We will pray for the healing and grace for All That Is, all beings, all life and all death, all that was and will be.

How will we celebrate?

By dancing.We will dance on the back of our Mother, pound our prayers and love onto her back, so that she will know we are here, and that we work to heal her and ourselves.We dance in our bare feet, or in our handmade moccasins, so that our love and faith move out the soles of our feet into her back.We dance with intention, sending our love and awareness into the Earth.

We are here.We know you are a living being, our Mother, and you are being harmed the world over.We are here, and we are helping to bring in the light so that others know you are a living being, and our Mother.

At the darkest time, is the emergence of light and possibility. Here are prayers for all the People.

Dance and celebrate and bring in the light.

Peace Friends.