ROAD BLOG AHEAD

We don’t get boredom around here. It didn’t come included with the OEM package this incarnation and I’m too busy to have ennui circuits installed at this poit.

I’m finally just coming to accept that the internet connection is unreliable and will remain that way for the forseeable future. We’re working around those limitations and it’ll just have to be good enough. Fortunately, I’ve finally got Thunderbird installed and running correctly on my Vaio so that I can download message to read and respond to offline instead of being limited to accessing email only during online periods.

There are online periods most every day. Unfortunately, some days those just do not coincide with whatever the Fates have in store for us. 8-11 a.m. is the best time for connectivity. It is also when everyone and their brother Sam comes to our door with a question, a need, a gift, a problem to be fixed or well, whatever. This morning’s arrivals included an old friend from the U.S. with computer issues to resolve, an elderly lama with a paperwork glitch, a couple of nuns, a cell phone walla (to try and fix our friend’s Blackberry) a hotel manager, our future landlord and a pair of electricians, Malka, the woman we’ve hired to work for us cooking and cleaning and a couple of the Bihari boys from the hotel. Add to this non-stop phone calls from multiple countries and continents and hey, is it any wonder I get very little work done? Our friend Michael observed all of this, what is for us, normal chaos and commented that he really understands why we say it takes two hours to get five minutes of actual work accomplished. Whoops, now there was Malka at the door again to retrieve her tiffin. She’d brought us food which, unfortunately, turned out to be potatoes to which I am allergic. They say she’s a wonderful cook. Hopefully I will get a chance to find out.

So it’s now early afternoon, I need to go out and try to find some lunch, the connection is slow and the streets are jammed with folks. We’re heading into the Tibetan New Years (Losar) season AND the Indian wedding season.

Rewalsar is FULL and bustling and pretty high energy right now. Different groups are decorating areas for celebrations and the music tends to get jacked up really loudly. Even the monasteries are aflutter. The Nyingma monastery, which is the oldest one here, hosted some kind of big celebration over the weekend with many VIPS in attendance and half of Kinoor down to gawk. You could tell who were the VIPs because they were wearing big ruffled ribbons in many bright colours - the sort of thing awarded at county fairs to the “Best In Show”! Meanwhile, the Monastery courtyard was covered with tinsel and coloured lights - “tarted up” as Nyondo put it. It really looks like a funny kind of Christmas around here!

A few pictures of the Monastery in it’s finery:

It has also been the season when the pods of a certain auspicious tree dry and drop and are collected. The pods are remarkable for being huge and looking like dessicated cow tongues:

Inside are the seeds of this tree which are used in place of flowers for decoration and offerings during the winter. The folks down from the highest reaches of the mountains are particularly eager to snap these up. The old Kinoori women in particular, are fond of these pods and carry them around then wear the papery seeds proudly:

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I may come back later and add a few more pics when I have a chance.

Back - decided to send a boy to bring me some lunch from the Tibetan momo shop. One good thing about this place is that there is *always* a kid available to run an errand for a few rupees - and really happy to do so, both for the pocket money and for the break in their routine. Right now the hotel (Lotus Lake) we’ve been living in, has a surfeit of Bihari boys hanging out, hoping for work. The good cook, Raju, went off on holiday and returned a few weeks ago with what appeared to be a cricket team of other youngsters. At least that’s what they do when waiting for something to occur or some task to be assigned - they play cricket in the lobby. I don’t think they’re particularly good at it, just enthusiastic. And energetic. So five rupees (maybe 12 cents US) gets me a fast and vigorous kid to dash down the street or up the stairs.

A few thoughts in response to questions that have come in the comments the past week: Syl, I think the same way you do. That’s why my kitchen surfaces are marble also. Though I probably won’t bother with fondant as Indian sweets are everywhere and are cheap and plentiful and good. Of course there is the idea of staging a Khampa taffy pull which would be absolutely hilarious I’m sure. But croissants, pie crusts, oh yeah! Any suggestions for baking such things in a small clay and brick wood/dung stove? The government replants the slopes where wood is cut to prevent deforestation, but a lot of cooking and heating fires are largely cow dung which burns good and clean. And BJ, I am remarkably UN tempted by all the goods being sold. At least most of the time. See, I have been living on the road and out of suitcases for 2 years now and anything I buy I end up having to SHLEP! I get to look at the pretties and fondle them if I want, but I don’t seem to have any actual ownership lust these days. Except for yarn and fiber. It’s amazing what having had to offload 30 years worth of accumulated posessions in a big hurry does for one’s avarice. Mostly now I worry about the stuff I do have left and what I will do with it; I sure don’t want to acquire much more to worry about.

I think one of the reasons I like the yarn and fibery stuff is that I give away a goodly portion of thse things that I make from it. I have the pleasure of holding it, shaping it, fondling it, but then it goes to someone else to actually live with. THere’s so much satisfaction in making, more, for me, than in the owning.

Looking through my uploads, I find a lot of the pictures I take are of things I’ve made, will make, am in the process of making. Fellow knitters and spinners may want to continue on from here with those pictures, the rest of you have been warned - yarn ahead:

I love taking pictures of random people in this little town knitting away. These are not exactly rare photo ops - you can’t spit in Tso Pema without hitting a knitter - or at least a hand knit garment. Nyondo came back from Dharamsala with the news that the knitters there (just as rabid as the ones here) actually know about double pointed needles (DPNs) for knitting gloves. All the local knitters stare at our work on DPNs or circulars as though they’ve just arrived on the last flying saucer from Arcturus, but that’s apparently just a kind of provincial phenomenon, rather than a country-wide lack of the tools. Of course Dharamsala has so many influences from all over the world (it is, after all, the de facto capital of Tibet for the past half century.) Anyway, here’s a picture of the ladies who live next door sitting on their roof (quite typical of this region, being the kitchen, laundry room and generally sunny hang out spot) from where we were sitting on our roof knitting. We wave socks at them, they wave sweaters at us.

Then, down near the close by tea shop, more knitters, including a bunch of Kinoori pilgims who often knit as they walk around the sacred lake singing mantra.

Next, a picture of the “recycled” wool that Lena found me locally. You can see the flecks of colours in it that appear to be part of the recycling of many different yarns blended in with something that is pretty harsh but sturdy. It makes a nice, firm fabric that would be good for a barn jacket or similar outerwear type sweater.

Then, the first finished rainbow sock. We got a tiny trickle of rain during the night after I finished it and told it that there would be no mate unless I received some precipitous encouragement pronto. C’mon rain deities, you CAN do it!

And, yes, my feet really are that big. Size 12 wide. Which is one reason I like making socks for other people. It takes a lot less time to knit a sock for Lena’s size 7 1/2 foot:

Here’s the skein before it was wound into a ball. It really is mostly khaki and coral with a bit of gold. For some reason it looks more green and orange in the pic above.

I’m back on the second rainbow as of tonight. I want more than a drizzle dammit!

Lena went shopping a couple of days ago. I thought she was shopping for a couple of lamps, maybe some baskets and a clothes hamper, things that are actually hard to find around here as they are not made locally. Our friend Minchung Dorje (aka Yab which is sort of the Tibetan Buddhist equivalent of the nickname “Butch” and those who know the symbolism will get it…) knew of a shop that sold such things so they borrowed a car from the monastery and drove down towards Sundanaga. She didn’t get lamps, there were no baskets, but there were good hampers so she bought a couple. She also ended up buying this:

and this:

which will become the surface of my desk. The frame will be wrought iron. It’s weird that, around here, a 72″x30″ marble slab is a cheap or cheaper than a sheet of wood of the same size. So I’ll have a marble desktop which should be nice and cool in the hot weather, something that my laptop will appreciate. She also ordered a heavy wooden couch/daybed for my office and a nice long mattress for our custom made bed. Indian beds are generally only 6′ long which is a PITA when you’re 6′1″ tall! It’ll be great when I can sleep with my feet on the bed again.

The bamboo was a surprise (to Lena’s credit, she wasn’t expecting it either) - we had intended to have pretty simple wooden benches, Tibetan style, as our main seating, but this turned up. It’s sturdy, attractive and brought in from Assam. It wasn’t cheap exactly, but it was less than we would have paid to have benches and tables made here of decent wood. We’ll have nice cusions made to order at the mattress shop and it’ll be quite nice. Still there will be benches in the kitchen, but this is an attractive touch. I like bamboo furniture.

We’re still a couple of weeks from completion due to the usual chaos of India and the added chaos of all the other projects going on here, including a massive influx of pilgrims from all over the Himalayan region. More to come on this. It’s quite a whirlwind here. As usual. And still no real rain…

This is Pearl. She came home with us from the San Francisco SPCA in July of 1989 as a leggy adolescent who grew up to be the queen of the household, a regal feline with more brains than any other cat I’ve ever known. It wasn’t that she was bigger than the other cats   that made her the Alpha - she was taller, but always a sleek, lean cat rather than a bulky one. It was her ability to reason and talk sense into the other cats that made them obey her. She was always affectionate, watchful of her humans, but not cuddly - she demanded to be petted, but wasn’t a lap cat and refused to be held. Still, she made it quite clear that she loved her people and had our best interests at heart always. A cat through and through, her greatest loathing was for being wet (though she didn’t much like taking pills either) When we suddenly found ourselves without a permanent home, she moved into the already well-catted household of Lena’s closest relative - her cousin Diana - and her family. We could already see that she was getting elderly and less sharp than she’d once been (though no less imperious.)
I just got an e-mail fro Diana in Montara. Pearl died yesterday.  She was 18 years old, a good, long life for a cat of unknown provenance. Until the last day, she was still enjoying her pets and chin scritches, still jumping up and down off the bed and expecting to be treated like a queen. She was a queen.

It was almost exactly two years ago to the day that our princess, Velcro, died in our arms. Vel was not a queen and did not try to rule, she merely expected to be pampered and cosseted. She was younger than Pearl and her death was a terrible shock to us. It was the beginning of a period of sweeping, radical changes that overtook and changed the direction of our lives. Somehow this seems to be the other end of the cycle, but I don’t know how or why or what that means except that I’m going to start looking over my shoulder from now on as the sun enters Aquarius.

Goodbye Pearl. You were the finest of cats. You helped us raise a kid and a household and a whole bunch of other kitties that passed through our lives. And, at the end, you raised up Itty Bitty Kitty to take over your job as the queen and retired to the easier role of Queen Mum. You are irreplaceable and we’re going to miss the hell out of you.

Nyondo left for Dharamsala this morning. She’s got the stats on the Medical Emergency Fund so I’m going to try to figure them out myself and post an update. I know we’re over $1300.00 now. I’m in awe! We were able to pay for the injured bricklayer’s cortisone injections, the village woman’s tooth extraction, Sonam’s cough medicine, Sonam Yutron’s wheelchair and the wood for the ramp in process (pictures later) and a whole bunch of other stuff still ongoing.

I went back and finished yesterday’s post. This is really just to confirm that and say, go back and look. I’m coming down with this flu that’s been going around so I am not thinking in an orderly fashion. I’d like to think there’s some amusement value in that, but I’m too out of it to be sure. Keep those comments coming please, it’s the only way I know that there’s a world out there.

Just in case my connction goes down again while trying to post, I really will come back and explain these

Yay! Got the pictures uploaded. My connection keeps bombing today so I was leery about waiting until the entire blog was written to post it.
Despite the awful flu/bronchitis/menigitis/irritating crud that has leveled all of us as Chez Mommywizards this past week or so, we’ve been plugging away at a lot of geekery. Not so much by choice, but by absolute necessity in order to be able to function reasonably in the coming months.I have been trying to convert all my email addresses back into Thunderbird these past several days. First of all so I can sort and filter them more easily than I can do in Gmail, particularly now as we start getting ready for another tour with Lama Wangdor. I have to be able to track what email was sent to whom, when and about what or it quickly becomes a mess. I also need an email program that will download my mail and let me read and write replies when my connection is down, something that Gmail, for all it’s virtues and benefits while on the road, won’t let me do. G mail was great when all I had was internet cafes on the road as it saves all your email in its own archives that can be accessed from any internet connected computer. The drawback is that you must be connected and, up here, that’s an iffy proposition more than half the time. So I’ve been phasing out Gmail and phasing back in my several individual e-mail addresses. In the process, I’ve really noticed how often the connection fails right when I’m about to do something crucial - like hit the “publish” button on a blog entry or copy a month’s worth of email archives to a forwarding address! We’re also in the process of switching ISP’s as a big chunk of the problems we’re having are due to the glacial response time we get from Speakeasy’s servers, regardless of what sort of connection we are on.
Nyondo has recovered, not completely, but sufficiently that she is heading off tomorrow morning to Dharamsalla, the nearest city big enough to have something resembling high speed internet connections. She’s still hacking and sniffling so I don’t envy her the 8 hours of bus rides it could take to get there through the mountains. Once there, she’s going to spend a day or two parked in the best internet place she can find, downloading various pieces of open source software, updates and patches for various programs that should enable us to function more effectively. This includes getting an offline blog editor so I don’t keep losing massive amounts of time to rebooting my system every time the signal goes down. We’re open to any suggestions in the next 36 hours of potential “must haves”.

Okay, enough of the geekery. On to the stories and pictures!

Despite her debilitated state and congestion (I keep expecting to wake up and find a lung on the bathroom floor. Okay say eeeeewwww!) Or maybe because of it, Lena bought a tree today. The better part of one at least. When she told me that, I kind of blinked. See, I’ve always been the kind of gal who, when she needs to build shelves or somesuch, gets in her itsy bitsy lil pickup truck (hey, it’s tiny, but there’s still more butch factor in it than in a station wagon) and goes down to Goodman’s lumber or Homo Depot and starts pointing to nice boards, lengths of quarter round, sheets of plywood and so on.

This, however, is NOT Salem or San Leandro or Lawrence Kansas. This is Himachal Pradesh. You need lumber? Go get yourself a nice tree, preferably one that’s already been cut down awhile ago and left to age.

Then you take your tree here:

And explain what kind of boards you’d like to see the tree become in its next incarnation. The timber walla then uses his machine magic to slice Mr. Pine Tree into planks the approximate size and shape you’ve asked for. From there, you take it to a mystery (aha! the whole mystery mystery again.) In this case, you would go to a wood mystery. He (inevitably a he around here) would plane it and sand it until it was smooth enough to use and then make something out of it. Tables or door frames or benches.

In the case of Mr. Pine Tree, it’ll be something not very critical because pine around here is susceptible to termites, but it’s cheaper than treated plywood and a lot cheaper than the hard “mirinda” wood that is used for good furniture. This particular bit of pine is destined to become slats for the seat of a bunch of benches we’re having made. The benches will go in here:

This is the place we’re renting. Doesn’t look like much, especially in this photo when it was seriously an unfinished shell. But, for India, it’s going to be palatial. 5 rooms! A shower with hot water! A real toilet (see that little tiny cubbyhole with a door on the right of the balcony? There’s a toilet in there. On the same floor as the house, no going out and down to a squatter in the alley. This is fancy living! Or will be.

So, benches. Simple, inexpensive, sturdy. A table, a few desks and chairs, beds. We have to have it all made here. It’s still fairly inexpensive, which is good because this isn’t a permanent home. Sure we’ll make it comfortable and pleasant for us and visitors, but not to Western standards. For the most part, anyway.

We’ll get kitchenwares, pots and pans and buckets:

And a cabinet or two to keep them in. We wanted wood cabinets but these are cheaper and faster:

Come back again later and I’ll have had the energy to finish the explanations of the rest of these pictures. I need to update everyone on the Medical Fund and to explain to Catherine why all of those signs are in English.

So it’s later (tomorrow morning actually, I’m just not linear enough to make this a separate entry) In the comments to a previous entry, Catherine asked why so many of the signs in all the pictures are in English. Of course, just now, going through my photos looking for a good example, I can’t find one I haven’t alread used so the best thing to do is to scroll down and see what she means in earlier blogs.

As in many places that were colonized by Europeans during the previous centuries, the language of the Imperialists has become the de facto (and sometimes the official) bureaucratic language of the colonized nation, even after Independence. It’s often a unique and idiosyncratic form of the original language (think Algerian French, Afrikkans or Brazillian Portuguese) but totally recognizeable to a speaker of the root language who is willing to listen with an open ear and mind.

India is a huge country, a subcontinent really, with many distinct cultures that vary hugely from the Southern Tamil to the Northern cultures of Punjab or Kashmir. There is no one “Indian” language, though many of the several dozen (or possibly more) languages spoken in this nation are related, some closely enough to be merely dialects of one common tongue, but others different enough to be unrecognizeable by someone from outside the region. Of the most commonly heard languages of India, Hindi is probably the most universal and is an “official” language of government and law. English is the other. Most government officials, people with university educations, doctors, lawyers, insurance salesmen, etc. speak fair to excellent English. It’s often quite formal and lacking in idiom. I have gotten accustomed to being addressed as “Madam” by everyone from the mayor to schoolchildren who don’t know me. English is taught in school the way most schools in the West require a foreign language and it begins early in primary school. It’s not a vast vocabulary at that stage, much like the “Hello, how are you? I am fine. What is your name? My name is Marie,” kind of stuff we’d get in first year French or Spanish back in the States. It is, however, more widespread than almost any other language in India as far as basic vocabulary and some English is known and spoken by most folks under 40 who have any public education. Signs are usually written in both Hindi and English on the assumption that those who can read will be able to puzzle out one or the other. Most of the Indian languages use the Hindi script, although there are a lot of Urdu speakers and Urdu is its own completely different written language.
Up here in the Indian Himalayas where we’re staying, the language mix is really something. Even the Hindi spoken by Indian locals is a dialect that can be incomprehensible to people from the south, particularly when spoken fast and with all the idiomatic nuances. Again, most educated people speak the equivalent of “broadcast” or “bureaucratic” Hindi in business or legal dealings, but it may not be what they speak at home with their families. Most of the villagers from the outlying districts and many of the people of my age only speak dialect with a small handful of politenesses that cross over. Add to that the melting pot nature of Rewalsar and it’s quite quite interesting. Up in the mountains you have what can only be categorized as tribes of people, Indian only due to geographic boundaries, not culture or history. The Ladakhis have their own language. The Kinooris are really an isolated bunch and there is a joke among the Kinooris themselves that every family speaks its own language and that, in order to talk to anyone, you have to learn their language. Many of them come down to Rewalsar for the winter, finding it mild and warm compared to the frigid elevations of their homes. Then there are the Biharis, from the region around Varanasi which is one of the poorest areas of India. They send their young people to labour in other places and send back money to help their families survive. That’s a whole political issue right now as Bihari labourers have been being murdered in the North. They speak their own language. In addition, the town is at least half Tibetan and that’s yet another set of languages/dialects. They are of the Sino-Tibetan language group rather than IndoEuropean and it’s a very different language. I speak passable Khamkye, which is a dialect from the very isolated Eastern region of Tibet. The dialects of Lhasa or Amdo or Golok are quite different and we have to go slowly to understand each other. Finally there are more than a few Nepalis and Sherpas whose language is an interesting synthesis of Hindi, Tibetan and Southern Chinese. Add in the occasional Western pilgrim (we get them in twos and tens, not hoards) and the small community of ex-pats (a couple of Danes, a few Americans, a German, an Australian guy, a Canadian and one or two part time residents from France) and the language mix is quite amazing. Lena is our linguist - she’s pretty fluent in both Tibetan and Hindi from all the years she lived here as well as her native English, French and a smattering of about a dozen other languages she’s picked up in her travels. Nyondo is teaching herself to read Hindi which is useful when travelling and has a small but useful vocabulary as well as a dozen or so key words of Tibetan. I’ve got conversational Tibetan and, by now, probably 30 words of Hindi, but I can’t read either script. Between us we do okay. And it is helped by all those signs in English.

You can get your legal work done in English as well, since it is one of the official bureaucratic languages. Lena had to go to the district court in Mandi last week to get some paperwork done. She took a picture of it. Apparently it used to be just under that big banyan tree, but as the town grew and expanded, they added the tin awnings to keep the sun off the lawyers and clerks:

What amuses me is that the court doesn’t look all that different from the bus stand around the corner from here, except that the bus stand has better food and a lot less papers to fill out:

Speaking of food…

These are Khampa momos. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but each of these is about the size of a small woman’s fist.

The Khampas are an interesting bunch with their own unique culture. They are the fierce, hard-living nomadic herder folks from eastern Tibet. They’re good with horses, swords, drinking, dancing and laughing. They have what we think of as Gonzo - that is, everything the average Khampa does, he or she does with gusto, enthusiasm and intensity, whether that be fighting or meditating. It’s said in some circles that the reason that the Dalai Lama was able to successfully survive and escape Tibet during the Chinese occupation in ‘59 was that he was surrounded by Khampa bodyguards.

So it’s no wonder that their momos are as gonzo as they are. Nice, civilized Lhasa momos are about the size and shape of Chinese style potstickers or siu mai dumplings. A couple of bites at most. Khampa momos, like the Khampas themselves, are big and robust and potentially lethal. One source of entertainment at festivals, one of the methods by which these wonderful, lusty, alive people assess strength and life force, is by having contests to see who can eat the most momos, whether they are those whimpy Lhasa style momos or the big honking ones made with dense whole wheat flour and stuff with fist size lumps of almost chopped meat. 40 small ones is considered about the upper levels of accomplishment. The local champ (who happens to be a Buddhist scholar too) can put away 40 of those - or 15 of the big Khampa ones. He can also lift 200 kilos during the weight lifting competitions. This is a culture in which brains and brawn go together well.
Apparently there was a celebration a couple of days ago and the Khampas made momos. LOTS of momos. 400 is the number I heard. And sent a pot down the mountain with Lena for Nyondo and I. Poor Lena, sick as she was, tried to sprint down the mountain track so that they would still be hot when they arrived. It took her the rest of the day to recover. The problem is that she tries to keep up with all the Khampa guys a generation younger than herself. She does it most of the time, but right now she’s so sick with bronchitis that I feel like tying her to her bed. This particular bug that’s been going around has sent some of the heartiest of the young men in the village back to bed for a week. It’s really bad. Anyway, she brought the momos and then went back to bed herself, but not before bragging that she’d managed to down 8 or 9 of them at the celebration. Hmphhh!

On a lighter note, I took this picture from our window. A number of vendors have set up tables across from the hotel this past week or so, taking advantage of the good sunshine there and hoping to sell to all the pilgrims (mostly Tibetan, and Ladakhi) trickling in for Tibetan New Year (Losar) in February. WIthin a week or so, it’ll be much more than a trickle. This being a major power point, a lot of people come here for the auspiciousness and blessing of starting the new year by circumnambulating the sacred lake. Anyway… what’s a bit hard to see from this angle is that the group of Tibetan women in the picture are all knitting as they sit there and watch their booths and chat. Sort of a Himalayan stitch ‘n bitch.

Here are the alpaca fingerless mitts I made to keep my hands warm one day last week. I know the whole fingerless glove thing is really hot right now and hadn’t planned to get on the bandwagon, but my hands were COLD and I still needed to be able to type. So I fished out a partial skein of alpaca from Jeri and whipped these out. Not the fanciest, but they fit and they are warm and that’s what matters.

Finally, my rainbow sock in progress. Just so those interested can see what I mean when I say I’m not nuts about the striping but like the colourway. I love how it’s come out on the flap and the heel - that’s what I was hoping for in this yarn, but, with the short colour repeats I can get that effect on a 64 stitch round. Hey you folks at Lorna’s Laces, listen up - longer repeats okay? I love your yarn, particularly the great stitch definition I get, and your colourways are delicious in the skein, but they don’t knit up to their skeinly potential. Think about it. Think Noro. Think loooong beautiful stretches of colour. Oh heck, I’m still gonna love these socks!

All words and no pictures makes Joy a dull blogger. So today will be mostly photos of the this’s n that’s I’ve talked about in an effort to put forth a bit more colour into the world.

Uh colour, yeah. The first photo I was going to post was this:

Exciting and colourful eh?  I was excited when I took it - 100 gms of pure white angora bunny fur for spinning. This stuff is gorgeous and pristine and well, very very white. When I looked at the picture I realized it was lacking a little something. Like referenc points for visibility. So I took it again:

Better eh? That’s my lovely warm felted wool blankie shawl it’s sitting on. Actually, the stuff is sitting on everything around here. I forgot that angora gets everywhere just being in the same room with you. I have now moved wide masking tape and a sweater shaver up to the very top of my wish list for when I go back to the west. You know the old wrapping a wad of masking tape around your hand to remove the fuzz trick yes?  Only no one here has ever heard of masking tape. No onehas heard of masking.  But that’s a rant for when I finally get around to doing the post about mysteries.

Here are the Fixation socks. The angle is really weird and they look like socks for a Sasquatch with club feet in this picture, but isn’t the colourway nice? Love these things. Four days.

Here’s the rainbow socks in progress. I’m just including it because this shot actually shows the colours more truly. Still don’t like th striping much, but I’m really grooving on how the slip stitch heel flap looks with these colours.

And, for those who could care less about bunny fur or socks, some pictures of the main bazaar in Rewalsar. I realized I’d posted pics of the street along the kora path, but not the one behind where most of the businesses are:

I was going to post a picture of a batch of Khampa momos, but those require a story and I’m too lazy (read sleepy) to tell about them now. Maybe tomorrow once I’m done digesting them.

You know you’ve raised kids when you wake up in the morning, see the sun shining in through the window and the first thing that pops into your head is the theme song from Sesame Street. Sigh. Those days are soooo long gone with Veronica being a mother of her own small ones now, but the tune and the words “Sunny Days…” etc. are etched permanently on my psyche. After I die, I will probably encounter a demon in the bardo who bears a strong resemblance to Cookie Monster or else a shining avatar of Big Bird. Come to think of it, wouldn’t that be a real bummer - to get to the afterlife and, instead of the mythical figures of Thoth or Anubis, or Tara or even Odin, you find yourself standing for judgement before the powerful achetypes of Bert and Ernie? According to the Tibetan sages, those beings, both friendly and antagonistic, that we encounter in the gap between lives, are reflections of our own natures and beliefs. Attraction and aversion… does that mean that I am doomed to do battle with Barney?

I’m not actively in the process of dying (other than the fact that, at 51, my clock is definitely on the unwinding side of the twisted spring.) This virus I’ve got, however, does give me the kind of all-pervasive headache/neckache/eyeball agony that causes me to wonder, in the long, stretched out interval between awakening with a feeling that all the dwarves of Moria are hammering their little hearts out on my skull and the blessed moment when 800 mgs of Ibruprophen finally kicks in, if maybe death might be an improvement over the present state of things. Death, however, is not usually reversable by copious amounts of caffeine and doses of NSAIDs so I think I’ll pass on that option for the time being. Coffee truly is the elixar of life! I’ve thought about coming up with a pyramid scheme or chain letter that will result in my receiving many pounds of coffee in the mail as ten people send a pound to the person on the top of the list (who will always be me or one of the wives) in order to assure future happiness, prosperity, enlightenment, a lotto win, a larger penis and firmer buttocks - don’t let the chain break though or you may end up like Mr. Antoine Morporkian who sneered at the letter he received and kept all of his beans for himself only to wind up in the hospital with a terminal migraine when every hoarded pound of coffee in his larder mysteriously converted to decaf. Don’t laugh. It could happen to you! Act now, send two pounds of Peets Houseblend (or the equivalent) to Joy c/o Lena Bose, P.O. Rewalsar 175 023, Dist. Mandi, H.P. India. Ensure your safety, your karma and the well-being of the caffeine addicts in your life. Don’t let time run out…

Hey, I said I was sick. That really IS my address and I really AM whining about the fear of running out of coffee, but they’re not actually connected except in my fevered brain. Somebody wrote and asked me for my mailing address here in Rewalsar but I cannot for the life of me find the e-mail to respond to. Since it’s a PO box, I figure it’s relatively safe to post here since no stalker in their right mind would fly into the Delhi airport, much less take the 12-14 hr bus up into the mountains and then pay for a taxi up here to chase down a PO box. Actaully, all they’d have to do is ask for me or Lena. It’s a really, really small town and most people know us already. When a package arrives for us at the post office, we don’t get a slip of paper on our door, we get a rumour. Seriously. The last time we had a package, no fewer than 3 different people walked up to us on the street and told us about it. Packages are a big deal here and rumours are more efficient than paper. So, if you’re the person who wanted my address, there it is. I hope you want it so you can send coffee. Or yarn.

I would say I’m afraid of running out of sock yarn too, but hopefully the stash I have will last until I can get back to the States and replenish. Yes, even here in India, I have a stash. I gave up my home, most of my worldly posessions, many friends, security all that jazz and came around the world. Here I am up in the Himalayas (specifically, for the person who asked, in Himachal Pradesh, in the North of India. The town is called Rewalsar and I am given to understand that the lake here can actually be found on Google Earth. Though, on my slow system, I can’t actually use Google Earth. But my friend Marian from one of my lists said she found it and also Mandi, the nearest town of any size) and I have maybe two changes of winter clothes but I do have a fiber stash. BTW, if you haven’t heard Franklin Habit read his essay “The Univited Guest” on the Cast-On podcast, go thee forth and download it. Utterly hilarious to anyone with a knitting habit or who loves one.

Friends from other parts of my life may be starting to glaze over at this point. I know I write about a lot of things - life on the road, Buddhism, different cultural phenomenon, politics, my family and, my preoccupation with knitting and spinning. I’ve considered having several different blogs but, honestly, I don’t have the time or the inclination to compartmentalize my life quite that way. Deal with it! Or don’t. The covering of my brain is swelling, I just can’t afford to worry about whether I’m gonna say something boring or stupid. I’m bound to do one or the other at least once per entry anyway.

A couple of things - the rainbow socks continue apace. I’m not abolutely wild about the way this colourway knits up. The yarn looked great in the skein (wish I’d taken a picture of it before I wound it into a ball) but the way it comes out self-striping doesn’t quite work for me. The red and purple stripe together and are a much darker colour value than the yellow and green sections and the orange and blue just sort of get lost in the transitions. Very brightly colourful, but not quite a true spectrum that I’d hoped for. It might be more rainbow-ish if the colour repeats were a lot longer. I prefer a fully ribbed leg that continues the ribbing down over the top of the foot but, in this kind of striping pattern, I usually go for a short cuff and then plain stocking stitch on the leg to let the colourway do its thing. That’s what I tried here, but it isn’t making me all that happy, though leftovers might make cute booties for my grandaughter. I did the cuff on US 0’s and then switched to 1’s. I like a fairly firm fabric and find that anything worked on larger than a 1 gets floopy in most sock yarns. Now I did do a pair of socks last week in Cascade Fixation, that cotton yarn with a bit of elastic. Those work up on size 3’s which seemed absolutely enormous and just flew! Picture to come. Still, I prefer 0’s and 1’s for most small projects. I did an inventory of my needles last week and discovered I have at least 10 sets of size 1 dpns! Fortunately they pack vurra vurra small.

What I need to accumulate is more metal dpns. I ended up with so many sets out of sheer paranoia I think. I believe it started several years ago on a trip with Lama W when I found myself in a motel room in Albuquerque with a head cold and a partially knit sock (come to think of it Lena is still wearing those socks here) and TWO broken needles. One out of five I could work with, but not two. And nobody in a day’s drive had Crystal Palace bamboo dpns. One shop, a few hours away, had Clovers but I really cannot work on Clovers in small sizes - I find them too sticky. So I sat there fuming and stared at the unfinished work, growling a lot. When I got back to civilization (ie, the Bay Area) I ordered a couple of sets. And then a couple more. Over time I seem to have started a habit of stockpiling extra sets of double pointed needles to the point of absurdity that has just now hit home to me. Knitters will understand and not think it strange that I have so many so I won’t accidentally find myself stranded without that crucial needle required to keeeeeep going. Now Ive begun thinking that I really need to have a couple sets of metal dpns. They won’t break you see. Tien included one pair of 6″ Inox size 0’s in her last care package to us. That and the coffee she also sent have insured her a place in the upper regions of heaven among the gods of compassion and good taste. She understands these things.

I’m still hoping to knit up rain, though it was sunny today. I’d like to get back to the other project which is (surprise) another pair of socks, also in LL sock yarn (Irving Park colourway) but using the baby cable rib variation that my friend Sylvia (of Beadlizard infamy) used on a pair of really nice socks for her dad recently. I remember watching them grow and thinking, “hey that’s a nice twist. Adds interest, but it’s not too much, not too fancy.” Another occasion when context really matters. It’s interesting how different hers looked in a simple, conservative grey yarn (I remember it as Trekking XXL - Syl?) versus the purples, corals and fuscias of the LL’s Irving Park. The staggered cable ribbing in the variegated colourway looks… ummm… well, kinda girly. For me anyway. I may have to try it again in a solid colour instead, we’ll see. Or maybe I’ll live with one pair of girly socks.

Another fibery thing: Lena came back from overseeing the painting of our rental house with a bag of angora bunny fur for me to spin. Apparently the landlord’s family (brother? cousin?) raises angoras and is delighted to have a local market for the wool. They had thought to use it themselves but had trouble spinning it. I think they’re using a drop spindle because it looks lovely and like perfectly normal soft, lovely angora that I should have no trouble spinning on my Journey Wheel. I’ll give it a try and, if it’s as good as it looks, I’ll be ordering a kilo to play with.

The painting is in progress. The landlord, after watching Lena work with the painter to get the right shades of colour for different rooms, shook his head and said something like, “We Indians around here aren’t so fussy about getting the colours exact.” I suspect that was more a guy talking. And one whom we suspect, from watching his earlier decisions, is partially colourblind at that. I bet his wife would have a different attitude. Anyway, Lena thinks she managed to get the mixes right. We’re going for a basic off white in three rooms (office, guest room and our bedrooms) but the kitchen and Nyondo’s room will be a soft sunshine yellow, the bathrooms sea green and white and the courtyard terracotta and lapis blue. Lena has a good eye for colour so I think it’ll all work out.

For those that asked about contributing to the tickets for getting Rimpoche and Lena to the west this spring, I’ve emailed people with specific inquiries, but I’m mentioning here that there are two ways to help - either sending a contribution for this via Paypal now or making a pledge and I’ll be able to receive funds by mail when we actually reach the States. Do NOT use the “make a donation” button on the blog site however - that is only for the Medical Emergency Fund for the villagers and refugees here in Tso Pema and anything sent via that button goes directly into that fund. Contact me for the correct address to send contributions for the trip. Hope that’s clear. I am trying to do rather a lot of things right now and it does mean trying to be careful about what goes where when and with whom!

Whew! I have more this’s ‘n that’s to talk about but may have run out of steam about now so I’ll save the rest for later.

We got a good overcast today, all day. That is definitely a step in the right direction after weeks of sunshine. Still no rain though and damn, when I reach for it, all the wetness feels quite a distance away and hard to attract. However, cloud cover is a good start.

Woke up this morning sick. Not “a little under the weather” sick but ghastly headache, run for the bathroom, fever and chills sick.  I’ve done so well not catching the respiratory bug that’s been going around, but somehow I’ve gotten a special little virus all my own. Doesn’t feel like something I ate. After almost a year in Asia, I *know* what the effects of bad food feel like! And the headache is not part of that syndrome. Lena thinks it’s a touch of viral meningitis, which isn’t as uncommon as people might think. Pressure points helped about equally with Ibuprophen in huge doses. By tonight the tummy is settled enough that I had a bowl of noodle soup and we’ll see where that goes (literally.)

The rental house is coming along slowwwwwly. Lena went up today despite how rotten she feels. Good thing too as they had placed the handrails on the stairs so high that using them to climb up would have been a bit like hanging from the overhead bars in the underground! Even high for me and I stand 6′1″. So we had to make them do it over amidst much grumbling. Handrails are rarely used in India. Rails of any kind are uncommon for safety or comfort. It’s quite a wonder that anyone makes up up and down without falling, particularly since the stairs are narrow, steep and uneven. Kids play on rooftops with no safety railings or walls. It’s simply not the custom here to spend money or energy on such things. So it’s no wonder that the carpenters were clueless about placement of the handrail we insisted (and paid to) be installed on the stairway up to the house from the street. Tomorrow she is going up to make sure that the walls get painted the colours we’ve actually chosen instead of whatever the painters think is “pretty”. We got strong encouragement to paint things in colours I think of as “after dinner mint” pink and “sick room green.”  So she’s going to make sure that the shades of terracotta and sunshine yellow that we selected are the shades that end up getting used.

For those of you who have been wondering if Wangdor Rimpoche will be coming to North America this spring, the answer can now be revealed as an emphatic “yes!” I just got the go-ahead last night to begin making plans and seeing who is interested in sponsoring teachings this time. First order of business will be to raise the funds to cover travel costs for him and Lena to get to the U.S. from India.  Once that’s handled, I can go ahead and schedule dates for teachings. We’re looking at the end of March as an likely arrival time, but that really depends on how quickly I can start booking tickets. Nyondo will be updating Rimpoche’s web page as soon as we have anything concrete to tell anyone.

Finally, thanks for the enouraging comments yesterday. It seems like sometimes a whole bunch of people will buzz on through the blog but never actually say anything. Please, let me encourage you to post thoughts, comments, questions and all that good stuff. I really really LIKE comments   Also, as we get the blog facelift more together, I’m going to be posting more links to other blogs so, if you want to be included in that, please let me know.

Back to getting acupuncture needles poked into my head to try and calm it down a bit.

I had one of the more surprising requests (in a lifetime of rather surprising requests) put to me last evening. I guess I really shouldn’t be that surprised by anything anymore, especially up here in Tso Pema which is such a power point for people of so many different faiths and traditions, but, really, I was a bit nonplussed.
I’ve been working as a psychic and a shaman for… oh more than thirty years by now. Okay, I’m sure some of you who don’t know me are going, “oh yeah, okay, it’s another one of those airy fairy crystals and white light chicks.” Not that I’d blame you since I tend to do the same myself. Those who do know me however, know that I (and my partners) tend towards the very practical end of the spectrum. Why spend energy on magic when common sense does the job just as well? I’m very fond of what Granny Weatherwax (surely you know Granny Weatherwax) would call “thinkology”. In other words: use your head first! If the head doesn’t come up with something and it can’t be resolved with some sweat and grunting, a swiss army knife or a bandaid, *then* it’s time to get it on with the crystals and coloured lights This approach earned us the nickname of “The Mommywizards”. We use all our tools, including our heads and our hands. Still, I have some reputation as a psychic and a shamanic practitioner. I would consider myself fairly competent at what I do, though I am by no means the best I’ve ever heard of - I’m met some psychics and healers whose prowess left me eating their dust. Around here, in this place of meditators, yogis, sorcererors, saddhus, lamas and pundits, I feel like quite a garden variety of ngagmo. But difficult times call for pulling in all the resources I guess.

Anyway, the upshot is that the region is in danger of losing its winter wheat crop. The monsoons were too short this year and the winter rains haven’t come. If they don’t show up soon, there’s going to be some real hardship among those whose family income depends in part on farming. And, honestly, around here, that’s a majority of the village.

I’m too new here to be aware of what’s normal as far as weather patterns, so I didn’t actually learn about the severity of the problem until last night when I was approached on behalf of a group of local farmers and asked if I would do whatever I can to help bring the rain. Oh, I’m not the only one, it’s not like they singled me out specifically (for which I am relieved.) Apparently they decided to ask all the known shamans in the area to please do what they can and my name came up among the rest.

I’ve not done weatherwork before. Errr… well, not alone and not particularly with aforethought, though I have participated in a couple of storm callings now that I think of it. But rainmaking is outside my area of expertise. Rainmaking, any weatherwork, is big stuff. So I’m contemplating what I might do about this request that falls within my scope of practice and competence. In the meantime, I’m asking everyone who reads this and is willing, to send very wet thoughts to this region of the Indian Himalayas. We need it. And, while I consider what I can do on an esoteric level, I began a bit of sympathetic magic to help me focus. I’m sure some of you will think I’m stranger than you already think I am when I tell you that, in lieu of any other immediate ideas for causing rain, I cast on and began knitting a sock.

Okay, so I’m pretty much *always* knitting a sock, right? I don’t remember the last time I didn’t have a sock on the needles, even when I was essentially homeless and living out of a suitcase last fall. The only think I like better than knitting socks is knitting gloves. I think gloves are the perfect small project for someone like me who totally gets off on all the fiddly bits of shaping and construction, but still needs relatively quick gratification. Gloves are about as fiddly as knitting projects can be and I love them, but one never needs as many pairs of gloves as pairs of socks. Ooops, I’m digressing. What I’m talking about is the sock I started last night. I finish a pair of socks, I start another, right? This, however, is a sock with aforethought and intent. It’s a rainbow sock, out of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd’s Sock yarn that I’ve been saving. Rainbow colourway, so pretty. I looked at it and I thought, “You can’t have rainbows unless you have rain, right?” AHA! Sympathetic magical inspiration! I figured that, while I knit, while I contemplate what else I might do to help the farmers, I’d concentrate on the idea that I’m knitting rainbows and that, naturally, rain will have to come before these rainbows can be completed. Each stitch bringing the rain closer. Keeping my attention on the goal as it were.

So far it’s gotten overcast this afternoon which, after brilliantly sunny skies for days on end is a step in the right direction. I’ll know we’re getting warm though when my knees start to ache…

As you can see, the blog has gotten a face lift. I’ve been meaning to do this for quite some time and just finally got around to pushing the right buttons. I looked at a bunch of fancy templates with colours, whizzgigs, borders, pictures and, in the end, after narrowing it down to maybe a dozen possibilities, went for the absolute plainest of the high tech WordPress templates. I think this makes it much more readable and clear and lets my words and pictures do the talking. There’s still some room for fiddling and adjustment so let me know what you think, particularly if you find it easier or harder to read than the previous format.

The mystery mystery will remain a mystery for a few days more I’m afraid. The entire town appears to be down with this chest cold that turns to bronchitis overnight. Lena is still pretty sick, Nyondo has come down with it and I’m fighting it for all I’m worth. You hear everyone in Tso Pema hacking and coughing and sneezing. Nobody is sleeping well. We’ve handed out more decongestants, antitussives and, for those that really need them, antibiotics, than you could believe! The current theory is that Kunchok, who owns a store near Zigar Monastery, brought this virus back from Delhi on his last trade run. At any rate, nobody is exactly on top of the world here.

Speaking of medicines though, the Emergency Fund continues to grow and we’re so thrilled and delighted that we’ve decided to make it an ongoing thing and see if we can raise enough to continue to provide for the medical needs of the poor of this region, both the refugees and the villagers. I’ve put a progress bar in the right hand column of the blog and set the current goal at $5000 US. Right now we’re a quarter of the way there. I expect, however, that the need will exceed any ceiling I can think of. So please, keep donating and we’ll keep making sure that the poor and sick get the medicines, equipment, emergency care and support that they need. I’ll keep telling you all about them so that you know just what a difference your gifts make. Nyondo has kindly installed a Paypal donation button beneath the medical fund bar. Please use it!  Know that yours might have been the $10 that bought pain pills and groceries for the injured carpenter who is the sole support of his elderly mom and who got hurt on the job and couldn’t work for a week. Workman’s Comp? Not here!
So much to say. Slowly but surely, I’ll get it said. Here and individually to each person who has written me or made a contribution. And please, if you send a donation, also send me a jpg picture of yourself to joy@customjuju.com People really like to see the faces of their benefactors.