An old friend is back again...

August was a difficult month for my little family. It all started when my baby brought home a stomach flu... a bad one.... and it quickly became 'the guest that wouldn't leave'. Over a very long three weeks, the baby got it the worst, my oldest had it the longest, my man was the most pathetic and I didn't get much more than a tummy ache. Since we were in the throws of a heatwave, what had once been my living room had now become an infirmary and I was the on call nurse. Bodies were drapped over various pieces of furniture, buckets littered the floor and there was a veritable obstacle course of fans to overcome if one wanted to enter or leave it.  About 8 or 9 days into being housebound, I was tucking my son in and preparing for a night of fever checks and reassurance. I got up and wandered my home looking for something, ANYTHING, to do. I was ready to throw the television out the window at this point and was just too tired to read. Somehow I found my way into my linen closet and noticed my old basket of yarn and needles. I grabbed a set of needles and a ball of yarn and headed for the computer.
My mother taught me to knit at a very young age...  All the women in my family knit, very well in fact. My mother I must say, is a rare talent. She is quite an exceptional artist in so many mediums but the sound of ticking knitting needles will only ever remind me of one person. In the long, very cold Québec winters, anyone who was loved by my mother was always literally warmed by the fruit of her labour. From sweaters to mits to hats to scarves. In all my years of knitting (and I have always enjoyed knitting), I have only ever made scarves and though from the heart, none of them were worth writting home about.
Having spent alot of time on Soulemama's website that week, I had seen that she knit a sweater for her youngest child (Harper) who happens to be my baby's age. In retospect, I am surprised that on that night, sitting in front of the computer, I downloaded that pattern and started to knit.

For the next two weeks, through the hard times and slow progression towards health, I could be found sitting on the floor?..in the chair?...on the side of the tub?.. in the backyard under the fig tree?... smiling with the sounds of ticking kntting needles in my hands. Put down knitting, pick up bucket, encouraging words, wipe a face, kiss a forhead, pick up knitting, continue, repeat.:) By the end of the 3 week ordeal, I had completed that sweater and even after accidently felting it by putting it in the washing machine on delicate (who knew?).. it still fit my boy and I was proud of myself.

This first sweater finished, I set my eyes on the winter holidays.. the Yule Sweaters I call them. Three sweaters for my men and a knit bag for myself.  I fell in love with a little yarn shop on Main St called Three Bags Full,  filled my yarn basket with a bounty of new yarn, found some patterns and off I went. So far it has been quite a challenge but I haven't given up yet:)
Coming from generations of knitters, it feels like I have found something I had lost.. I am thankful.

Lucid Dream Tea and Me.

I thought that I should start this blog off by explaining the reason behind the title. Dreams and I have always had an interesting relationship. Some of my earliest memories are actually of the dreams I had as a 4 year old, and my mother helping me work through them. Always so vivid, intense, frightening, magical. For a young child.. too much. They are not fortune telling or psychic in any way, just vivid... so much so that now, I feel I carry alot of those experiences I've had in dreams into my real life and honour them as true experiences in some way. Anyone who has lived with me for any extent of time has experienced (and by experienced I mean been scared by) my crazy dreams. Of course, the older I got, the more I wanted to control them (I beleived I could). Tried meditation, exercise, pranayama breathing (to name a few)... In college I really got into Carlos Casteneda. I read all of his books several times...His book  The Art of Dreaming, to help one control ones dreams,... sounded like a good idea..I was spiritual and grounded (ha!) ...that was a disaster to put it mildly. Remembering that experience still frightens me to this day.  You must be very strong of spirit to take on that book fully.
So about 10 years ago, I was in Montreal at a wee organic grocerie store in Westmount and came accross this little purple box in the tea aisle. Beautiful box, so inviting.

Lucid Dream Tea by the Algonquin Tea Company.
An incredible tea :
"100% certified organic hand picked indigenous Canadian herbs.
All of our herbs are wildcrafted (handpicked in the wild) in a sustainable manner, picking amounts that a deer would graze. Those herbs which are more rare are grown organically using non-mechanical, ecologically integrated and permacultural methods."

It had such a positive feel to it that I thought it might keep the bad stuff at bay and the good times rolling (in dreamland that is ;)).. I have not been without it in my cupboard since then.  My good friend Matthew remembers it helping me find some clarity in dreaming, what I found this tea did was to help me become more 'lucid' in my everyday life. Now that I am a mom, my cups of tea are less frequent and my dreams are hard pressed to win a battle with my sheer exhaustion on any given night, but every once in a while I get to experience the wonder and grandure (and less oftern, terror) of my dreams. In my daily life however, I've learned that lucid dreamings are endless. Just have to slow down long enough to see it all happening around me. What a gift, in such a little box.