Yoga, Paint and Photoshop

It all comes together.

Time For Me

The time we take for ourselves, gives us something in return.

Ernst Ferstl

Off to a weekend of Shakti Yoga, North Sea and sun.

 Enjoy your weekend, friends!

Yoga Time Out

My wish and my main birthday present was a day at the German Kundalini Yoga Festival. A full day just for myself, Kundalini Yoga and yoga community. I am so lucky that the festival happens just outside of Oldenburg, a mere 12 kilometers away. So on Saturday morning, at about 7.30 am I hopped on my bike and set out for a beautiful day.

a beautiful ride along the canal

I was in a great mood.

But I underestimated the power of nature

and soon my hayfever got the best of me.

I slowly recovered at the festival site.

an old converted farm

Then I could really enjoy the yoga, lectures, sunshine, company and food.

And I also had some time to knit,

very appropriately-coloured.

Just a perfect yoga day.

I came back home replenished.

Sat Nam

Oh, my dear yoga students!

Always up for a surprise

and a little crafty cheer-me-up

amidst this challenging month of May for me.

I got this beautiful envelope last night.

And it had a message inside.

(I have also worked with this mantra before)

So as I am packing for a weekend of teaching a prenatal yoga training

I am pinkly reminded of truth, beauty, kindness and essence.

Thank you so much, Mareike!

Stone Graffiti

That's the building where I teach my Tuesday night Kundalini Yoga class in. It has been a site of yarn graffiti before. Do you see that little blue spot on the ground?

photos by steinreich

Will there be more rolling stones around town?

Yoga Art

Sat Nam - 

we close every Kundalini Yoga class with chanting these two words.

Sat means truth.

Nam means identity.

Truth is my identity - I am my true self.

I just felt like painting some spirals.

Later I found out, 

that triple spirals are actually ancient symbols (here).

I wish you a soft spiraling into this week!

Pink Moment of the Week

... that's how my yoga students know me: pink.

Angel Wings

Yesterday I showed you the paper angel wings

 made by a super-nice yoga student of mine.

She gave them to everybody in the class 

at our Christmas yoga party.

I could fly home on pink wings.

I am not the only one who likes them.

I have a sneaky little angel in the house.

Let's go flying!

Yoga Stencils

If you come to my Friday night prenatal yoga classes, you know this little pink machine here. As it is only a limited circle of people you does, I'll tell you, this is the CD-player Clara is so generous to lend me for Friday nights. The yoga center where I teach is very beautiful (you can see some photos here) and tranquil place, so I need to bring my own little music maker to shake things up a bit.

The CD-player usually gets wrapped in the first bag I can somehow grab when I leave the house. So what about some yoga style, I thought and remembered those stencils here hibernating in my studio.

For this quick project I got a tote bag from the supermarket for 59 cents (probably produced under very bad conditions in a third world country, so if you can sew your own tote, go ahead) and used textile markers (use textile colours, if you prefer).

A couple of minutes later:

The music machine travels in yoga style from now on.

Pink Moment of the Week

Emil - the bottle has entered my yoga bag.

Instead of plastic bottles, I use this glass bottle now, secured and stabilized with padding and fabric. 

Read Knit Blog

This was a book given to me to read from a yoga student of mine. I had heard about the book (I have seen the German edition  lying around in the birthing home - of all places!-where I teach prenatal yoga classes) and had come across the regrets online. Australian songwriter and now-new mother Bronnie Ware interweaves the "regret chapters" with her personal story of breaking free. Reading the book I found it very positive and life-affirming and I think that the author's personal meditation and yoga background shines through in a lot of passages. And did I say that I love books written by vegans?

She doesn't knit or crochet in the book, but is already in the second sentence of the book "having a yarn" with a friend. And this is not the last aussie slang time in the book where she talks to a friend in this fiber-related way.

But I found one knitting grannie in the book, also right in the beginning. The first client in the book, an elderly English lady, would love her weekly routine where one appointment per day (doctor's, bingo, grocery shopping) would be enough "or it would ruin afternoon routine of rest and knitting".

I would love that afternoon routine... and sometimes manage a couple of minutes of it. So hopefully, those pink socks will come to their natural knitting end soon. No regrets. Just toes left.

Yarn Graffiti Revisited

They have been up for a while, those two pieces of yarn graffiti that hang and great me where I teach my Tuesday night Kundalini yoga class. But either I had no camera or it was still too dark for taking pictures. Yesterday both conditions were met.

Made my a yoga student of mine.

Little Liselotte Strick spring flowers (remember those?)

Pink Moment of the Week

a gift from a yoga student

a souvenir crochet hook from a trip to Vancouver 

in a size uncommon in Germany 

11,5 mm or P

Thank you!

Cat's Rikke Hat

It's hat season for me (remember, you can still win that Wurm hat here).

The Rikke Hat - this time a hat in a colour that I personally like. Until last year I didn't think I was beanie person, but as experience showed me, I wear my New House, New Hat a lot. Funnily, this Rikke Hat continues like the former ended - with purple garter stitch. Garter stitch in the round is a funny thing, too, because the place where the rounds meet looks like this:

Like a seam.

It doesn't matter, because that faux seam stays underneath. One cool thing I learned from this hat is the German twisted cast on (you can find a great video tutorial by verypinkknits here). It is fun to execute (loved the thumb twist) and creates an edge that is both firm and elastic.

And it mimics a garter stitch row (see those little bumps in the bottom?).

Living in Germany I never met anybody casting on that way. It is also called Old Norwegian cast on - I prefer that name. Sounds romantic and cold.

Before I start boring you, I'll show what the hat looks like on my head.

And from behind.

The hat is snuggy around the ears and is slouchy enough if I choose to put my hair under it. I love it! The shape, the colour, the whole hat. Makes winter so much more fun. My Ravelry notes.

With that Rikke hat I owe you one last story - I kind of  promised to tell it two years ago in that post. I once met the original Rikke the hat was named after. The pattern says: "For those of you wondering, Rikke is a wonderful globe-trotting customer of ours who was the first one to test knit the silver sample for Sarah, and the hat is named in her honor."

Globetrotting as she is, I met her at the German Yoga Conference in Cologne in May 2010. There were just the two of us in a room waiting for a yoga class with Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa (I did my Kundalini Yoga teacher training with her in India). There we were, in different corners of the room - and both knitting. Rikke was knitting her Multnomah shawl (Ravelry link here) and I was working on a pink Baby Surprise Jacket (here). Of course, we started talking, about yoga, knitting, yarn shops in Cologne. Yoga and knitting - it's a great combination.

Cat's Cradle

Last night in my Kundalini Yoga class I got a wonderful present - note the colours of the crochet strings (all intentional by the thoughtful giver, of course), which are part of the wrapping and the main part of the game.

Remember playing cat's cradle as a child? This is what this book from 33 years ago is about - and an immense number of other figures you can create with string - with poetic names like butterfly, lotus flower, starry sky, two islands connected with a bridge, birth of a child.

Did you know that this is an ancient international game with similar yarn

figures in Papua New Guinea, Siberia, Africa, Western Europe and among the Native Americans?

Carolina was fascinated with the book, as she is with most books.

And didn't want to give it back.

I hope, that the game will be something Clara likes - a game that practically takes up no space when going on vacation, with endless possibilities.

Thank you, steinreich. I love it.
(and your other well-chosen handmade gifts, too).