Look at the birds....

^{Yesterday, while in the workshop, I began to talk about why I've been stressed of late. Besides an imminent house move to where I still didn't know -- which will come as little surprise to those who know me -- I've also had the usual dilemmas of whether my editorial clients will or will not pay and a sense of time slipping through my fingers. So, I was moaning about how working for entire days in the internet imparted a sense of irreality to how I spend much of my time and what I do, and the frustration I often feel about doing so many things just to be able to get round to what I really want to do, only to find that I never get there, namely, writing. So I've spent years trying to work myself into a niche -- enough income, time, space, etc. -- from which to write, but without being able to do any writing at all and, worse still, without seeming any closer to my goal. "And at my back I always hear/Time's winged chariot hurrying near...." aaaaaaargh! And it occurred to me that perhaps the birds were right. I've been doing this for nearly 10 years now, getting nowhere. Perhaps it's time to change direction.
The birds? Yes, birds, Bible, Matthew 6:}

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?

Just perhaps I would be better off and have more time for what I should be doing, if I just got on and did it and simply had the confidence that somehow, somehow, the bills would get paid, and there would be rent money and I would find a really nice place to live and, and, and.... "I lack faith," I admitted, "I do lack the faith that that would work out." At that very moment, someone who I had met some months back in my initial house hunt came up the workshop stairs. "I wonder if you would be interested in doing me a favour," she asked, "do you think you might be interested in a house sit during April?"

Some house sit! Valle Grande, or "Big Valley" (I like that!). "It's got a shopfront area, so maybe you might like to sell your things over the Easter holiday, and you'd be doing me a great favor if you watered the yards. The view is jaw-dropping, and other than the noise of the river at the bottom of the garden, utter silence. So far from city lights that the dark is actually dark at night, the starlight real starlight not those palid pinpoints of lights. And freedom from the pressure of bills for a month? Would I?! You betcha!

"We'll talk about May when we get close to May," she said. Was I going to start worrying about May in the middle of March? (Think birds, look at the birds....)

P. S. I'll post pictures soon! Meanwhile, the image above is from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of nature) (1904) which are amazing and visible at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kunstformen_der_Natur and http://caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/~stueber/haeckel/kunstformen/natur.html

For the woolly-minded

Trying to be coherent, with proper beginnings, middles and ends, seems a bit futile, as every "thread" is woven in amongst so many others, so rather than try to make sense by offering context and prefaces, I'm just going to start: llama shearing. It was on the trail of peacock feathers, that I actually came across three llamas in the sweltering Argentine heat.
"They look hot."
"They are hot. But we don't know how
to shear them."
"And if I find someone who does, what about
the wool?"
"The wool? Have the wool! You'd be doing us
and them a favour."
So, pertaining to a group of weaving women, it wasn't very hard to find a real "puestera" -- someone originally from one of the many rural shareholds dotting the countryside -- and a pair of shears. And quicker than you can say "Alpaca bag", we sheared two of the three llamas, garnering a winter-white and one caramel brown fleece. Having acquired some skill along the way with a drop spindle, I've scoured the internet as how to prepare the wool, but hand carders, wool cleaning and separating tools that look something like wiry dog brushes, (I've never held any before, hand carders, not wiry dog brushes, or wiry dogs, for that matter, but apparently they're basic essentials in Navajo and other North American Indian spinning) are much more difficult to find than llama-shearers... Meanwhile, here is Margarita (la puestera) doing her handiwork.
Where, you might ask, is this going to fit on my CV? Camelid Applications Manager? Flocculence Theory? I don't know, but it makes its own kind of sense to be weaving and spinning and, when I can, writing again. The rest will just have to unravel itself from here.

I've got my first captive!

Thanks to you, Talin, I'm now "real". Otherwise, I'd be out here talking to myself... Sitting in a cafe in London, drinking hot chocolates on a cold winter's morning, Talin -- equestrian-extraordinaire -- usefully pointed out to me the rather cartoon-like horses in the iconic Argentine painting by Angel della Valle (1852-1903)La Vuelta del Malon. La Vuelta del Malon, or Return from the Raid, is a painting that, though first displayed in the window of a hardware store in Buenos Aires, resonated in the Argentine imagination of life under Indian threat in the vast interiors, or Pampas. So much so, that the vast painting now hangs in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. There are many internal conflicts, however, expressed in the painting (including the fact that the "captive/cautiva" looks way too comfortable, a pose that scandalised turn-of the century BA citizens) which I hope to write about further. But after we finished giggling over the rather Dudley Do-Right looking horse on the far right, it left me wondering, why would someone go to so much trouble -- the painting is 186,5 cm x 292 cm! -- only to get so many perspectives wrong. Was he trying to signal those very distortions to his audience? Or is it that our vision is often distorted by things we think we see, but really, our imaginations are running away with us? Hmmm.....

Bumpy Beginnings

Now this is as easy as it should be....

Now we're up and running! And whereas I did have things in mind to write about this morning -- good sign, that! -- the technical hitch has set me back a day. Today is a wares-selling day (about which, more later) so I've got to get going early. But if you would like to see my current weaving...

Now we're over here....

OK, folks, sorry and thanks for being patient.... I'm hoping this will be better (easier!) as every time I checked the WordPress blog, the page didn't show up correctly. That is, when it finally showed.

So, here is my original entry:

Well, last time I was in Florida my Dad told me that I needed a blog. He's probably right. So here goes.

I'm new to this, so hang on to your hair as we career around the learning curve.

But first, for the clamouring punters, a look at what beyond the back of beyond looks like....if I can figure out how to upload a picture.

Hmmm, I couldn't get the caption to show. So, for those of you not satisfied with a mere picture, I'm in San Rafael, Argentina, see the Whereabouts column. The photo was taken on a bike ride to the 25 de Mayo, a village nearby of more which later on. Perhaps.

Okay. Now I've got to figure out why everything is taking ages, or I'll have to give up my day-job. But, yes, I can see the thrill in having a soapbox to stand on: ah, the power. Next time I'll try to post something a bit more interesting. Cheerio! Rosvita