ROAD BLOG AHEAD

In the Western world, one of the ways that the Winter holidays are celebrated is by the making and sharing of sweet treats: Christmas cookies, Yule logs, mince pies, plum puddings and a variety of traditional confections. Most cultures have some cake or pastry type of thing that typifies regional tastes and available ingredients. In the Tibetan community, New Years (Losar) is celebrated by the making, eating and exchanging of kapsas.

You may well ask “what is a kapsa?” For which effort you are likely to be rewarded with a number of different answers, including “it is a lightly sweetened, delicate cookie, best eaten fresh and crisp” and “It’s a dense, heavy object of fried dough, roughly the size and shape of a cricket bat which lasts almost indefinitely if allowed to sit around until it hardens sufficiently.” Both are true, depending on the maker and the customs of their region. People from Lhasa, where ingredients like baking powder and sugar are known and available, tend to make small, ornate kapsas that are slightly sweetened and leavened. On the other hand, nomads from Kham (who are sort of the Tibetan equivalent of Klingons) make enormous kapsas of very solid twisted dough which, after a few weeks in the old saddle bags, could effectively be used as weapons.

At Losar, kapsas make the rounds throughout the village. First they appear during the celebrations. They’re piled high in front of the presiding lamas and their attendants:

Those of us sitting in the “VIP” seats also get a plate of kapsas to much on while we watch the dances and games, along with butter tea in real china cups, while young monks circulate among the unwashed multitudes (I mean that literally) with bowls of kapsas, handing them out by hand.

Here are some of the most common shapes:

Making the kapsas for the big ceremonies is a community event. A few days before the big celebration, local townspeople gather in the monastery’s refectory. Massive amounts of dough have already been prepared:

Everyone has a task and makes whatever size and shape of kapsa is traditional in their home place or their family. In this town, there’s a preponderance of Khampas so most of the dough sculpture is in the cricket bat configuration:

After shaping, they are dropped into a vat of hot oil and fried

Until they float and can be scooped out and more dough bats put into the hot grease:

That’s the big ceremony aspect of it. Then there are the hundreds of dozens of kapsas made by individuals and families. For days after Losar, everyone goes visiting their friends. They bring treats: fruit, candies (especially rock sugar candy which is traditional) package biscuits, butter, dried fruits and… Kapsas. Lots of kapsas. If you have a lot of visitors, as we did on Saturday, you end up with massive amounts of… stuff. And it’s traditional to present them piled up in elaborate and decorative stacks and wrapped in a white scarf. The old timers would also decorate these sculptural edifices with whorls of fresh butter.

The really wildest moment came when a large box was delivered to us by coolie from Palga Rimpoche. Special “blessing kapsas” made by the lamas, filled with other goodies. They are one of the more amazing things I’ve ever seen. I can’t help but think of them as either boats or boots made of the fried dough.

And, of course, you sit with everyone and you drink tea and talk and hug and enjoy their company and friendship. I made 2 huge flasks of Tibetan tea (a fermented tea made with salt and butter) and our housekeeper made at least 2 flasks of sweet chai before the day was over. I have to admit I felt pretty good about the fact that most of the old folks remarked, after a sip, that it was really good butter tea, “real” Tibetan tea, not that “health stuff” that the younger Indian acculturated Tibetans drink (meaning low or no fat and salt.) Almost all of them had seconds or thirds. Hey, it’s not every day you get somebody from the old country complimenting your traditional cooking!

From each gift bag, a portion was put on our altar. We are blessed to have so many good friends here. If we have too many more friends, we are going to run out of room…

By this morning, the kapsa situation had gotten a wee bit out of control:

This isn’t including about 2/3 of the fruit and almost all the packaged treats and fruit juices, which would have filled a table themselves. Fortunately, it’s traditional to pass along not only the kapsas you make yourself, but some of all you receive. Eventually everyone in the village gets some of everyone’s kapsas. We bagged up a big portion of these and added to them packages of butter and milk. The butter and milk are high-end gifts, especially for those of our friends who are just village folks for whom a half kilo of butter and a sealed liter of milk are useful and expensive. We can, so we do. It’s really nice to be able to give back to those who have made us feel so welcome in their community and who share their lives, their customs and their homes so openly with us.

Okay, this last isn’t actually kapsas, though it did come with one of the Losar goodie bags. It was part of one of the kapsa and candy towers that a nun erected on one of our largest steel plates. If the picture isn’t absolutely clear, let me describe it as a handsewn bag of flannel with odd little pictures on it and the word “love” in candy colours, the sort of thing you might make a baby’s pajamas out of. When Nyondo asked what it was, both Lena and I guessed some sort of sachet or potpourri to put in a drawer or cupboard, or possibly a packet of the cedar incense that is burned for purification. Any of those things would be an appropriate gift, though food is more common. So, when the hordes had left for the evening and we began disassembling the towers, I picked it up and sniffed it to see what scent it might be. And began to laugh uncontrollably. I knew that smell; it’s absolutely impossible to mistake it for anything else on this planet.

“It’s cheese”

“cheese?”

“Take a sniff.” I tossed the rather grubby pouch to Lena who held it to her nose and joined me in chortling at the musty, old sweat socks aroma wafting from it.

For a moment, Nyondo and Winna seemed nonplussed, not quite having made the transition from sachet to a modern Khampa’s way of gift wrapping churra, the strong, hard, very dried cheese made from yak* milk after the butter has been churned out.

“Why would someone want your underwear to smell like cheese?” came the innocent question, causing us to laugh even harder. Because the truth is, wearing the same clothes day in and day out as people do in places like Kham, after about a year, pretty much EVERYTHING smells like cheese.

* a “yak” is actually the term for a bull of this cattle species. The female is called a “dzo”.

On Thursday we went into town to the Monastery for Losar celebration. It rained. Oh goodness how it rained! Many of our pictures didn’t turn out well because there is no camera setting for “light reflecting off of wet concrete” or “condensation on lens”.

By Friday the rain had turned to snow, particularly on the top of the mountain, in the retrul - the community of practitioners living in the caves and shacks built up there. These days most of those making retreat up there are nuns, but there are still a few yogis who have lived in those caves for more than thirty years, growing old, meditating in solitude and time to time celebrating in community. Certainly it would be hard, after so many years, to give up the breathtaking views:

The picture above was taken earlier in the year, before the snows. This is the view looking East, much the same direction as from our balcony, only several hundred meters higher. The foot path up to the retrul (cave community) begins from the road right next to our house.

This is the short (but much steeper than it looks in the photo above) route to the top. You can follow the road, but it winds to give access to the tiny farming villages. It is 8 kilometers by road to the stone steps leading to the caves.

My guess, having climbed those stairs and repeatedly forgetting to ask someone how many there actually are, is that it’s about the equivalent of a twelve-story building, perhaps a bit more.

Did I say it was snowing yesterday? It was snowing - great big huge hunks of snow plopping out of a leaden sky that, the day before, had been gushing rain. On the one hand, the rain melted all the accumulated snow on the mountaintop. On the other, it was wet and then it was freezing and then it snowed. That makes slippery slopes to say the least, particularly on rocky, lichen covered paths void of anything to grasp. I find the path from the upper parking area difficult in clear weather with my bad knees and poor balance. In ice and snow with poor visibility, it’s treacherous to the nimble. Lena is still recovering from her tumble at Christmastime. In the end, much as I love that community, I decided not to risk it and stayed home while Lena, Nyondo and Winna went up. I think it was the right choice because Nyondo, who is the most agile and sure-footed of all of us, slipped on the path and fell. Fortunately she was unhurt. They brought me pictures however, to share with you:

Above, a path between here and there. Below, prayer flags in the snow.

Passing a spot not yet snowed in:

Despite the precipitation and cold, the Rimpoches were piped into the temple with all the usual ceremony. Umbrellas are only somewhat optional:

Once under cover - though still outdoors - the wives greet old friends:

Those who braved the elements and came up from all over the region

And those who live in the caves full time. From right to left: Ani Chonyid who was one of the first inhabitants of the caves and has lived there since the 1960’s and Ani Khandro, whose residence there has been almost as long. To Khandro’s left is Nyima, a monk who lives down near the lake and is one of the friendliest people in the village.

Don’t you just love a pretty woman in a fur and brocade hat? No wonder she looks so happy - she’s got warm ears!

Today’s last picture is for all our friends from Whidbey Island, Washington. A big hello from Mully and Carrie who made it up for Losar. Here they are with Lena seated in the cave temple:

Happy Losar! It’s the lunar new year, celebrated in Asian communities around the globe under various names and traditions. Dragon dancing, firecrackers, auspicious gifts of money and oranges, feasts, visits from friends, ceremonies solemn, joyous or hilarious are all a part of welcoming in the Year of the Wood Pig.

Here in Tso Pema, the past 2 days have been a nonstop party in the Tibetan communities (and friends.) Thursday the town came together at Zigar Monastery, down near the lake. People from all over the Himalayas - Tibetans, Indians, Ladakhis, people from Kinnour, Lahoul, Spitti, Kashmir and visitors from East and West gathered under leaden skies in the monastery’s courtyard to watch the Lama Dances and then have a grand feast.

The dances are performed by monks in elaborate, brocaded costumes in brilliant colours, representing guardians, gods and elementals. The spectacle is beautiful, eerily graceful and steeped in monastic tradition.

Although I appear in the first photo below, I was definitely NOT a part of the dance - merely trying to make way through the throng to our seats near the dais. I’m the large figure in brown with a white shawl over one shoulder at the right rear, with Lena right behind me.

In the dance of the guardians of the four directions

a demon is eviscerted by the guardian of the East,

a role danced by Palga Tulku Rimpoche:

Tomorrow, pictures from the celebration in the caves at the top of the mountain.

Tomorrow is Losar, the beginning of Tibetan New Year. Everything comes to a halt in this town as people start preparing for the festivities. The Tibetan calendar runs in 60 years cycles. This year marks the beginning of a new cycle. Only the oldest people here remember the opening of the previous cycle of years and that was in another place, a homeland that, only a few years later, was occupied in the first wave of Chinese takeover. Most of the previous cycle has been spent in exile and most of the young generation of refugees have never seen their homeland. One can’t help but wonder what this next 60 year cycle will bring for these people exiled from what has been called The Roof of the World.

The old year is ending in icy cold rain and fog here in Himachal Pradesh. Occasionally it morphs into a few moments of snow, but mostly it’s just wet and dismal and overcast. In the past couple of years that we’ve been here, the lunar-based new year has fallen late in February and those few weeks have made a difference in the local weather. Not only has this been the coldest winter in a long, long time, but with the new cycle, Losar now arrives early in February, before the chill starts to abate and the sun make an all-day appearance. No one is sure what will happen to the outdoor celebrations if this weather continues through the weekend. In Tibet, of course, it’s much much colder in this season and the festivities are all out-of-doors. But it’s a dry cold in February, none of this seeping wetness falling from the sky to make puddles where the dancers feet are supposed to go.

It’s the time of year when people visit one another and bring goodies, usually homemade kapsas, the Tibetan fried cookie/bread/pastry treats that range in size from a few bites to elaborate twists the size and density of a cricket bat. Sweets are usually included for decoration. This year’s kapsa inundation at our house started yesterday when a coolie arrived at our door carrying a BUCKET of still-warm kapsas. Yup, a bucket. That’s how it goes and doesn’t stop for weeks. By the time the holiday season is over every person, cat, dog, cow and monkey in Rewalsar has eaten enough kapsas to hold them until next Losar. Then, this morning, another friend came by and left a tray of more kapsas and a sprinkling of wrapped candies. The kapsas were pretty much as expected but the candies gave us some extra entertainment. Nyondo, who is violently allergic to nuts, has a habit of reading the labels on any commercial food product that comes into the house. So she reflexively scanned the candy wrappers and began to hoot. These were funny enough that I took pictures so I can share with you:

Read the print towards the bottom, next to the trade mark. and then:

One has to wonder…

Nowhere, on either of these wrappers, is there anything recognizeable as a flavour. Unless “litter” is now a taste.

I have to admit, I love weird takes on language. There’s a web site called engrish.com that has lots of fractured or bizarre wordings and images. I aspire to find a package or sign worthy of being on engrish.com! I might as well post another picture I’ve been saving which is from the side of the only box of plastic food wrap I’ve ever seen in India. The stuff is impossible to work with as is the packaging, but it was worth the 30 rupees for the notice on the side of the box:

Haven’t you always wanted to squeeze a cartoon and watch their little animated eyes bulge out?

Y’all should know that I’m continuing this blog somewhat later after having had a New Year’s eve libation so I might be a tad bit sloppy and/or verbose. Mostly I wanted to share some random images from here there and around that haven’t quite fit into my more serious posts. I certainly have enough serious stuff to contemplate, but I’m not by nature a solemn sort of gal - I’d rather make people laugh than cry. I’ll settle for smiling though.

So, looking through bits and pieces, I find that several people wrote me or commented about the Indian glass buttons. Here’s a shot of the whole lot of colours we found:

I’m thinking of possibly auctioning off a bunch of these little jewels to raise some money if there’s any interest. That and some of the traditional Himalayan socks that you won’t find anywhere else in the world. Let me know if people might be interested in an auction or raffle of some sort. The orange ones that look like Pondicherry rubies are really gorgeous, but that might just be me and my new orange fetish, thank you Claudia. Oh yeah, on the orange note, I have to show off my new project bag.

It was a gift from Zigar Chotrul Rimpoche, the head of the Zigar Monasteries of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage, who is in town for Losar. The cloth is traditional Bhutanese handwoven with geometric designs on a base of… orange. It’s just the right size for carrying my smaller knitting projects and the mesh pouch of knitting tools and the colour lets me spot it at a glance.

Our house is buzzing at the moment as friends stop by to visit and raise a glass of… whatever is cheerful for them. Our dear friend Winna, who has repeatedly opened her house in Bolinas, CA to us and been one of the kindest people I know, is here with us for a couple of months.

Not only is she the most beautiful woman I know, but she personifies all of the best possible qualities that I connect with the word “friend”. Can you tell that I love her a lot?

We’ve got company in the kitchen tonight too so it’s not just a “hen” party. Yab is entertaining us with his many stories of life. Some people know him simply as the father of Palga Rimpoche, the most rocking young tulku of the Kagyu lineage. Being the dad of this amazing young man is a great thing, but Yab has had quite a life all on his own and we’re lucky to count him as family. Never a dull moment with him around, I promise that! And Naru, our Indian friend and neighbor popped in after work. Those who have been reading this blog awhile might remember him as the diabetic farmer who was walking around in shoes with the nails poking into his feet. He’s doing much better now - his blood sugar is under far better control than it was a year ago. Naru is also the kind of person I am proud to call my friend - loyal to the core of his being.

Another person whose presence is an asset in our life is Chinta, our new housekeeper, a jewel among women. She’s smart, competent, curious, thinks at problems, notices things that need doing and just does them and takes pride in her work. She’s also amazingly strong for her size and not afraid at all of hard work.

We “stole” her from the statue construction site on Yab’s recommendation for the three days a week we need someone to help with the housework. Malka, Lena’s old friend, just really wasn’t up to the challenge of learning our “Western” ways, though her heart was in the right place most of the time. She was with us for a year during which time we got all her dental worth fixed and a new set of teeth, brought her health and weight up to a good condition, established her in a room and made she she had enough to keep her well for as long as it takes to find another position that suits her age and skills better. She’s still our friend and we wish her well. Chinta, on the other hand, is dynamic. She’s the mother of two teenagers, raising them well and supporting the family. I mentioned that she was doing construction work? Here’s some photos of construction taking place above our house showing just how that work goes. I am amazed at how the women work so smoothly in their bright clothes and trailing dupatas, carrying huge loads on their heads:

I guess, after hauling rocks, doing laundry by hand must seem a lot lighter load. I know I couldn’t do it at this time in my life. I genuinely admire the strength and stamina of these women workers. I feel like we got ourselves a real treasure if Chinta continues to be as competent and cheerful as she has the past two weeks. It’s great to have someone around who sings as she works! Oh, and she’s a great cook too. That could get dangerous…

If there are any twelve-year-old boys among my blog readers, they’ll probably be tickled to know that the Hindi word for snow is barf. I learned this - from people who didn’t understand why I was amused - because it’s been barfing off and on all week.

There’s snow on the mountainside above our house and quite a bit at the caves at the top of this mountain. It’s hard to see though, though the intermittent fog and haze, just as it’s hard to see the more distant white capped peaks off towards Manali - woodsmoke and clouds obscures almost everything. Because Tso Pema is surrounded by the mountains on all sides, it sits in a little bowl with the lake at its very center. The warm air of lake and town keeps the ambient temperature down there just high enough that snow rarely sticks. The higher peaks trap most of it before it actually gets here, the warmth of the lake then turns what does get in to an icy rain by the time it touches down. This past week has been cold. People are saying it’s the coldest winter in at least a decade. So there has been snow falling in town.
Nyondo grew up in Los Angeles. Her first experience with snow came when she was a student at Harvard many years ago. Since then, she’s lived back in California. Even up in the North part of the state we rarely get more than the occasional five minute flurry. It’s not a weather condition she is accustomed to. So she was quite amazed when this began on Tuesday:

And rather overwhelmed when, after half an hour it became this:

and we couldn’t see beyond the road for the white stuff falling from the sky.

Now I grew up in Chicago where something like that in January wouldn’t even occasion comment. I originally learned to drive in three feet of snow and winter playtime as a kid meant snow forts, snowball fights, sledding and ice-skating in subzero temperatures. Still, I lived in San Francisco from the time I was 23 until I was 49 so I’m no longer sick of the snow as I was when I moved West. Last spring, when I was in the States with Lena and Rimpoche for a few months, I spent some time in Vermont and in Western Massachusetts and was totally enchanted by the snowdrifts remaining in shady woods and hillsides. I never tire of looking at the higher Himalayas to the North and the East of us with their crowns of white reflecting dawn or the setting sun. It sure is pretty!

The cold though is really hard on the older folks and those of us with lousy joints. Even with my Fibromyalgia under pretty good control these days as long as I get enough rest and take my meds, I still wake up in the middle of the night or at dawn and say, “Weather’s coming in” and, sure enough, within a few hours, clear skies will give way to rain or snow or fog as the barometric pressure changes. Being a human barometer is not fun and I am hardly the only one around here feeling it. Almost everyone who has a bit of arthritis or has ever broken a bone is kvetching at the moment as weather systems blow in and out with precipitous enthusiasm.

Lena has been busy handing out the local equivalents of aspirin, Advil and tylenol as well as packets of the green Biofreeze gel that seems to work really well for rheumatic type pains. I bought what I thought was a huge supply when I was back in the States, but it’s going like the proverbial hotcakes at a firemen’s breakfast. At some point soon, we’ll have to figure a way of replenishing our supply. Nothing locally available has proven to be an adequate substitute. We’ve also been buying up all the decently made hot water bottles we can get our hands on. We’re passing these out as fast as we find them to the elderly, the sick and those whose circumstances mete one of the precious bottles. People don’t aways have the means to warm their houses in the freezing weather, but they can curl around a source of warmth and sleep well or put it on an aching knee, a frozen shoulder, the bad back or cramping abdomen and get some relief. In a place with sketchy electrical power and no knowledge of central heating, a hot water bottle makes lots of difference.

There is something we’ve learned though about giving a hot water bottle to a newly arrived refugee. You have to teach them how to use it. Though it may seem so to the rest of us used to such complex technology, a Tibetan nomad who has lived in a tent and spent her life herding yaks and having nothing that was not handmade, some things are not obvious. Lena found this out the hard way when one of her patients, a nun living in a cave, handed her back one of the rubber water bottles and said, “It doesn’t work. It leaks. My bed got all wet and I got very cold.” Gentle questioning revealed that this otherwise reasonably intelligent refugee had not realized (and none of us had thought to explain) that, once the bottle was filled with nice hot water, the nice hot water does NOT stay in the bag. Unless… you. screw. in. the. stopper. Oh. Now there’s a little explanation that goes with each giving. Cultural dissonance. Never, ever assume anything. Got it.

For this moment, anyway, we have been assured by the people who know who’s who and what’s what in this place, that there is currently nobody in serious danger of freezing to death, starving or sick and uncared for.

Oh, there are sick people aplenty in the cold and damp. The digestive disorders of the warmer months have given way to a preponderance of arthritic pain and respiratory illnesses. Pneumonia, colds gone to bronchitis or sinus infections, sneezes and wheezes and coughs galore are what we expect in this season. Something common here however, that might not be expected in other places is the upsurge in asthma attacks we’re seeing. It’s not surprising if you know the local systems though. When I say I can’t see the distant mountains for the haze, the haze I’m talking about is mostly smoke from the thousands of wood fires lit all over the valley first thing in the morning. Sticks, paper, pine cones, cardboard boxes, advertising flyers, pretty much anything that will burn is set alight to keep people warm or to heat the breakfast tea at five a.m. The air is full of smoke and it is not particularly clean smoke. It gets into the lungs and into noses and ears. This time of year people often go around with hands and faces blackened from tending open fires.

The other culprit is also burning, but it’s the deliberate burning of things not meant to be put to the fire: plastic garbage of all sorts, bags and packets, styrofoam, broken toys, straws, spoons, cigarette butts, dead sneakers, old balloons all of it ends up dumped in a wadi at one end of town and, periodically, is burned by some representative of the “powers that be.” On nice days, the air here is fresh, clean, touched by mountain breezes all the way from Tibet. Other times its toxic, reeking with fumes from the burning chemicals and we’re all gasping, sneezing, eyes burning and streaming with tears. Even partway up the mountain it’s bad. Down in town it becomes just awful. Those who already have asthma are in bad shape and new people seem to acquire reactive asthma every week. For many, albuterol inhalers for emergencies and preventative inhalers such as asthmacort keep the worst of the wheezing under control Of course, a lot of people have trouble affording these inhalers since they are comparatively pricey - particularly the prophylactic ones that keep you from reacting in the first place. Frequently, by the time people come to see us, they’ve been out of their medicines for awhile due to costs and are in bad shape. We use the emergency fund to subsidize what we can and hope that the donations keep coming because a lot of these folks are going to be using an inhaler every winter for life.

A few are already too sick for the inhalers to break the asthma cycle and need more urgent care. We did bring a nebulizer, a machine used for administering a medicated breathing treatment to someone in bronchial distress, with us to India. It relies on electrical power however and, because it was originally intended for use in the U.S., an adapter is required to permit it to run on Indian 240 volt current. Not only does the frequent power outtages stymie us in its use, but the automatic circuit breaker on the nebulizer is tripped every few minutes, making it of minimal use. At some point, we’ll need to spend the money to get a good, battery powered machine that can be used here regardless of circuitry or whether the power is on.

Oral steroids are not anyone’s first choice of medication for severe allergies/asthma, but sometimes it’s the only recourse when the inhaled medicines aren’t doing the job. At the moment I think we’ve got a couple of people on prednisone, including one elderly nun whose general condition has us pretty worried. We can’t save everyone, but she’s not expressing any readiness to go and is asking for help so we will give her all the help we’re able as long as we are able to do so.

Hmmm, other cold and snow related topics… Ah, yes, staying warm. I’m doing a whole lot better at this the past few days because I have a new sweater to curl up inside, nice and toasty. I’ve tried a bunch of times to get a really good picture of it, but, because it’s simple and of a single colour this is the best I’ve been able to do:

What isn’t evident in that shot is that it’s incredibly soft and fuzzy. Here’s a close up of an arm that shows the texture as well as a slightly more accurate version of the colour:

The yarn is one of the locally produced no-name mohair blends that are the most natural wool available around here. The owner of the shop couldn’t even tell me exactly the composition, except he swore that it included some mohair and some angora. From the softness of the finished knitting and from the burn test of the yarn, I’d have to assume that he was correct about that and that the core around which the mohair/angora is spun is nylon. It’s very soft and wonderfully warm and I haven’t taken it off except to sleep since it was finished on Wednesday morning.

Okay, before any of my fellow knitters start congratulating me on an FO (finished object in knitting parlance) let me confess that, while handknit, this sweater was NOT handknit by me. I chose the style and the fit, I chose the yarn out of what is locally available since I didn’t bring a sweater’s worth of anything but a silk tweed yarn with me to India. So when we discovered a treasure of a knitter who was enthusiastic about taking on commission work, we dug into our growing stash of “local mohair” and put her to work.

Um, growing stash. Hey, I though *I* was bad, but here’s Lena, the household’s NON knitter, just returned from an expedition to the Fancy Wool Shoppe across from the post office down in town:

Ha, I say. And Ha again! She bought yarn. Lots of yarn. Some is as soft as the cocoa brown of my new sweater, some is harsher, suited more for outerwear, some has a higher wool content and smells faintly of sheep, some is clearly more acryllic, but soft, fuzzy and still enough natural fibre to make it truly warm. Now that my sweater is done and turned out so well (fits like a dream, almost unbelievably so) she’s commissioned one of her own, a wrap type jacket similar to her woven one from Nepal. That will be in charcoal grey of a rather rougher mohair suited to a jacket worn over other clothing.

The woman doing this lovely work first came to my attention when she brought us gifts to thank us for helping her sick husband. That would be Rigdzin, the young lama with leukemia whose monthly chemotherapy bill the Emergency Medical Fund has been paying for awhile now. She sent each of us, Lena, Nyondo and I, a pair of hand-knitted socks in good wool, done in a traditional Kinnouri pattern (they’re from Kinnour) but without the ghastly day glow patterns in contrastic acryllic that are so common in this region. Here’s a photo of some of the traditional socks we’ve been given. Can you guess which ones she made?

Mine were on my feets when I took the photo (and are on my feet as I type this, keeping them warm on the concrete floor of my office.) But the white with brown patterning and the grey with white patterning are her work. Now, I don’t absolutely hate the bright patterns. Or rather, I adore the patterns, I just don’t much like the day-glo acrylic yarn used to create them, even when the body of the sock is good, natural wool. But at present, bright colours are only available in acrylic, there aren’t other options. So there’s this great colourwork in sweaters, hats, gloves, etc., but they aren’t as warm as they might be since they’re not wool. Here are a few more examples:

So, seeing someone using only natural colours got my attention right away. Then I looked at the quality of her work and just about fell over. These were by far the best knit socks I’ve seen since coming to the region. Knit in the round with perfect shaping, gusset and flap heel, subtle patternwork… I had to meet the knitter. So Lena went hunting for her and came back with some photos of other work she’d done. I looked at intarsia, cables, more traditional patternwork, a sweater she’d designed… wowza. So we set a date to meet and, when she came, she measured me (using her hands as a measuring tool) asked about details and then I gave her the yarn and introduced her to circular needles. People have donated needles to give to those here who need them. I’ve given many away already, I gave her a few more, much to her surprise and cautious delight. We don’t, by the way, have a whole lot of language in common. The Kinnouri dialect is its own unique critter.

I wish I could stop referring to this amazing person as “Her” and “she” but I have lost her name. I know, not so bright of me eh? It’s written down on a piece of paper. Okay there are only 3,654,239 little pieces of paper on my desk. It’s in there somewhere. What I do have is a picture of her, her husband Rigzin and their 3 year old son:

Need I say that, now that we’ve seen what this knitter can do (she produced my sweater which is an XXL, 30″ long with perfect stitches, finishing, an exact fit in less than 10 days) we also see that the future of this family may be less precarious. While she may not be able to both support the entire family AND pay for Rigzin’s ongoing chemotherapy by knitting on commission, she can certainly earn enough, at $25 plus cost of wool per sweater, make enough to feed, house and clothe them. We’ll continue to try to find sponsorship for Rigzin’s treatment and pay it ourselves until we do so. And, because her husband’s survival is NOT assured at this point, because there is the potential that one day she will end up a widow with a small kid to support, all of them have been under a great deal of stress. If we can help her get started with commission work (and doing something she loves to do anyway and does beautifully) that will take a great deal of fear and stress away from them all. So that’s what we’re brainstorming here.

As for my own knitting - I’ve not had a whole lot of time for it the last few weeks, but I did manage to finish a pair of Fetching fingerless mitts for myself (with several extra inches added to each cable section to accomodate my longer hands.) Even without fingers, gloves are necessary in this climate. I’ve been known to sleep in them lol! And I cast on, in some of the local yarn we bought, a sweater for granddaughter, Danika. I knew as soon as I saw the yarn that I had to use it to knit her something. The orange colour just screamed to me to be hers:

So I cast on for a Haiku (Knitty, Fall 02) which is an easy and fun little project:

and then I remembered something Lena had found in a vendors stall: Buttons. Old, glass buttons that had been there for unknown ages, exposed to the dust of India and the bright sunlight until the ones on the top of the box faded, eroded their edges and came to look like nothing so much as the beautiful old bits of glass you find on the beach, polished to a matte finish and amorphous shape by sea and sand:

There are many colours, but it was the ones on the left in the above picture that I wanted. Their peridot green is a lively and interesting compliment to the persimmon coloured wool. Green and orange? I’m knitting in green and orange? Hey, Claudia, what did you do to me!!!???