Honoring a young man from my home state of Maine

/ lyncrain / 4 Comments

I want to extend my condolences to the family of Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Kyle Milliken, 38, he was killed during the raid on May 5 about 40 miles west of Mogadishu, the Pentagon said in a release. Milliken was a native of Falmouth, Maine and assigned to a Navy unit based in Virginia Beach. Milliken served in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning four Bronze Star medals.

Please add his family to your prayers.

 

Easy Crochet Coasters

/ lyncrain / 1 Comment

I know exactly what Tami means about shuffling through those balls of yarn and thinking what to do with them. These would make great gifts for family and friends. The directions are so easy, too!

Tami's avatarTanglewood Knots

As I was tidying up my yarn area – okay not entirely true – let’s try that sentence again. As I was shuffling around half skeins of yarn to get to the project I wanted to work on, I saw that I had leftover yarn from making Aimee’s birthday throw pillows. And thought to myself “You know what would look great with those pillows – some coasters to match!”

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Round 7 Mandala Madness complete and Tai Chi

/ lyncrain / 6 Comments

Phew,  Round 7 was a difficult section for me. I had to take out row 49 because somehow I forgot the half-double crochets in between the double crochets. Once I got that right, came the decision on whether to remain with the same color or change. I decided blue but then realized that the last time the pattern called for bobbles I had used blue. Dang, so I made another color change again. Candy apple red or so the yarn claims.  I’ve used 2 shades of green, 2 shades of red,  2 shades of blue, 2 shades of yellow,  1 pink, orange, black and white thus far. I still have 2 shades of purple, 2 shades of brown and one more shade of blue to add into my mandala.

I have just completed Round 52 and it is now 48 inches across. Our table is 60 inches around, I’m excited to see it reach the edge of the table. I can’t say I’m fond of the white at this point but it is part of my journey.

This past weekend we attended International Tai Chi Day with our dear friend and instructor Marcus Carbos at the Norcom Center in Philadelphia.

Tai chi does not mean oriental wisdom or something exotic. It is the wisdom of your own senses, your own mind and body together as one process. ~Chungliang Al Huang

Of all the exercises I’ve tried thus far, I think that T’ai Chi is the best. Our instructor swears it can ward off disease, banish worry and tension, bring improved physical health and prolong life. It is a good hobby to begin at any point in life because it is suitable for everyone – the weak, the sick, the aged, children, the disabled and blind. It is also an economical exercise. As long as one has three square feet of space, one can take a trip to paradise and stay there to enjoy life for thirty minutes without spending a single cent. So far, I’ve lost weight and improved my balance. ❤
“Tai chi is the one exercise that can universally help solve our growing health crisis. It has stood the test of thousands of years. We have a generation of baby boomers with increasing health problems; old people who are sick, in pain, fearful, and cranky; a middle class that is increasingly incapable of affording most of the drugs that are prescribed for their ailments; children that are flaccid, diabetic and asthmatic. People of all ages are addicted to drugs, alcohol, sugar, cigarettes, and caffeine. Stress follows almost everyone like a shadow. “~Bruce Frantzis

Life comes with way too much stress like you I am looking for ways to reduce its impact without giving up my precious coffee.

Thursday night, Vic and I will be in Philly hearing Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain Live. Holbrook’s been doing the show since it debuted in 1954 at the then-Lock Haven State Teachers College in north-central Pennsylvania. In 1966, he took the show to Broadway, where it won him a Tony; the TV version the next year won him his first of five Emmys.

For more than 62 years straight, more than 2,200 performances, Holbrook, now 92, has taken Twain on the road. Twain himself lived to be 74. Holbrook changes the show “all the time, suiting it to the moment, the time, the place, what just happened. Holbrook estimates he has worked up more than 15 hours of Twain material, an astonishing feat of memory. “When I come to Philadelphia,” he says, “I want to avoid stuff that I did before, and to make sure that I include material that seems to be talking about what’s happening today.”

I can’t help but wonder what Twain would think of our country today.

 

Quote

/ lyncrain / 1 Comment

 

 

 

“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself.”
~Anna Quindlen

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Let’s have coffee together

/ lyncrain / 2 Comments

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Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening… I think I have everyone covered.

I’m on Round 7 of the Mandala Madness. Phew. Round 6 had some interesting quirks that hopefully, I won’t be repeating the same errors. No worries, it’s not with the pattern at all. It was totally my yarn choices. I chose my light turquoise yarn to do the shells in Round 39 which was a huge mistake because in Round 41 you are using the back loop of Round 39.  You’re probably thinking so… well the turquoise wasn’t a Caron or a Redheart yarn which hold up very well with more complicated stitches. The turquoise was a Bernina product and it was very disappointing in this case. It kept splitting apart and stretching which means I had to work slower and pick up a lower stitch behind it to help reinforce the back stitch.  😦

I decided after this frustrating round I would read ahead instead of simply following the video. Esther is great but I need to plan so I am not stressed with my work. It defeats the whole meditation process if you’re frustrated.

http://www.crystalsandcrochet.com

The designer’s website provided me with all the tools I needed to plan ahead. Wow, it’s not a lap size blanket as I originally thought to glance at the videos. It’s 7 feet, okay I’m working on a queen size bed project. I can do this.  It’s 111 rounds. I can do that too.

Then I got thinking how to best maximize my color usage. I decided on 18 colors that would give me the vibrancy I am looking for in the finished product. These colors are very prominent in nature and in my home. That’s even better. Eighteen colors means I will be repeating the colors 6 times if I want to have a color balance throughout the project. I can do this.

Since we last discussed colors introduced I added white to my mandala because I wanted innocence to be among my meditative journey. As I completed the white round and was moving on to the next round I remembered how quickly as a child I lost that innocence in my life. I was only nine when my father decided to steal my childhood from me.

 I saw her nine-year-old trusting eyes

trying to cope with her father’s lies.

Her cheeks streaked with silent tears

whenever he tossed back a few beers.

She felt the guilt inside her swell

her young body revolted with the smell.

Needless to say, my color change became abrupt in the next round from white to black. Just like in my life, innocence shattered so did the colors in my mandala.  Unfortunately, so did my peaceful crocheting experience.

I wrote in my journal and wrote 2 poems discussing the abuse I faced as a child. Overall, it became a productive writing day and helped me get back on track for my next color choice which is gold.

I chose gold because I know how important it is to strive every day to be your best. It’s often said that change is the only constant in life. Yet humans are evolutionarily predisposed to resist change because of the risk associated with it. I feel change is essential to our existence, granted there will be the moment of relapse as I had yesterday but it’s important to recognize that you can’t linger in the painful memory you must move on.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished. -Benjamin Franklin

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better. -Georg C. Lichtenberg

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. -Maya Angelou

Be the change that you wish to see in the world. -Mahatma Gandhi

Thank you for joining me on this journey.  Crochet on… Write on

 

The Feminine Touch

/ lyncrain / 1 Comment

I chuckled reading this because many times in my youth, my brother would say to me you are so much better at being a boy than I am. I disappoint Dad as a son and you disappoint Mom asa daughter.
I try to draw on my tomboy times writing male characters. It’s not easy. I find it easier to discuss situations with male friends or to go to male oriented events and absorb all that I can about their reactions.

Paul's avatarWindblownwords

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Cross-gender writing is nothing new. When Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel, Jane Eyre, (1847) was published under Bronte’s non-gendered pen name, Currer Bell, huge arguments broke out in Victorian England as to whether or not the author was male or female. One heavy-hitting critic voted male because the novel reflected a “manly” prose. I like to think that some hundred seventy years later, we’ve come a long way.

All of this is to say that I, a male, don’t feel too uncomfortable writing a novel with a female protagonist. For point of view, I’m using third person limited. The protagonist is a public-school biology teacher. She’s twenty-five, moderately good-looking, intelligent, and single.

I realize that creating a protagonist whose gender is opposite of one’s own can be tricky business. A huge mistake any writer can make is to think: “Hey, this is easier than I thought.” At that point, one may…

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