Vacation . . .
As mentioned on Tuesday, I didn't mean to take such a long blog break.
I went on vacation for about two weeks! I headed to the Northeast to visit my friend, T, in Connecticut. We had a great time! I got to visit WEBS America's Yarn Store! And, being on vacation and all, yes, I bought yarn :-D And interestingly enough, a lot of it was yarn either without wool or with a very small percentage of wool in it.
I happen to love a couple of Berroco yarns - ReMix and Comfort Sock. So, what you see here are sweater quantities for two sweaters of the ReMix, in Ocean and Eggplant (on either end), and in the middle, five skeins of Comfort Sock. I also got some Hempathy, in green and cream on the left, for a shawl called Edradour that Linda the Chicken Lady and I are both going to knit. Finally, there are three skeins of Noro Taiyo because it makes awesome hats, and one skein of Opal for good measure (and because it's one of my all-time favorite sock yarns). So, quite a haul, but with all their discounts, not all that spendy in the grand scheme of things! Wheeeeeee!
The main reason for my trip East, however, was to go to Kripalu and study yoga with Peggy Cappy for a week. Disclaimer up front. I'm not a yogini. Most of the poses are not things I can do (at least not at this time), but Peggy's focus is on adaptive yoga and on making it accessible for all people - hence her DVD series: Yoga for the Rest of Us. I've talked about them before :-) It was a great week, and Kripalu is a pretty amazing and inclusive place. The food was extremely healthy, although much of it was not to my taste, but I tried a lot of new things, and they always had some other, more traditional options on their Sandwich bar. They also have a Buddha bar that is vegan, and a lot of vegetarian choices.
Kripalu itself used to be a Jesuit monastery, so our room was cell-like and very small, with only a sink. The main building it not air conditioned, but thankfully it was cool in initially. Every room has a box fan and we used our occasionally. The beds were mattresses on a frame - no box spring, so that made them very low, and they were memory foam, which a lot of people like. They were certainly comfortable once you were lying down, but I find that stuff very difficult to roll over on. Thankfully I have strong quads and was able to make pillow nests for my shoulder. We went down the hall to use the bathroom and shower, which would have been OK except that I was thinking it would be like it was in Germany in a gasthaus, where you always go down the hall. But that's a house-like structure - Kripalu's main building is a massive structure (a LOT of monks must have been there back in the day), so it was more like hiking to the bathroom. Not ideal if you wake up to pee in the middle of the night - you have to attempt to roll over to get out of the memory foam, get your quads ready for a strong squat and push to get up from the really low bed, remember to grab your room keycard, and then be blinded by the bright hallway light as you stumble down what felt like a block-long hall to get to the bathroom :-D
There are other accommodations available - and I will choose them in the future, because I definitely see myself returning - but it was my first time there so I didn't know what to expect. Live and learn :-)
It was a great week and Peggy Cappy is amazing. I'm hoping to study with her again next year. Our class was small - 20 people. It was the perfect size, and it was a very diverse group. There were a number of yoga teachers in the class wanting to learn more about adapting poses because they were getting a lot of seniors in their classes. There were people of all ages, both men and women, from early 20s to early 80s! It was so great and I met some really wonderful people there.
Kripalu has a great shop, and so, of course, I did some shopping. I bought mostly books - which necessitated my shipping boxes home filled with them and yarn :-D
Books - mostly on Ayurveda because I wanted to have a better understanding of it, but also some written by one of the staff members, Aruni - I heard her speak and she was very interesting. She also has a blog that I'm going to check out. I got a sweet fountain - over on the left - unfortunately it doesn't work :-( I took some photos and need to contact the Kripalu store. Some beautiful cards came home with me, too :-)
I got some great CDs. One of Girish's older CDs, Diamonds in the Sun that Peggy used in class. He combines the chant form with English lyrics and it's really beautiful stuff.
Enjoy . . .
I went on vacation for about two weeks! I headed to the Northeast to visit my friend, T, in Connecticut. We had a great time! I got to visit WEBS America's Yarn Store! And, being on vacation and all, yes, I bought yarn :-D And interestingly enough, a lot of it was yarn either without wool or with a very small percentage of wool in it.
I happen to love a couple of Berroco yarns - ReMix and Comfort Sock. So, what you see here are sweater quantities for two sweaters of the ReMix, in Ocean and Eggplant (on either end), and in the middle, five skeins of Comfort Sock. I also got some Hempathy, in green and cream on the left, for a shawl called Edradour that Linda the Chicken Lady and I are both going to knit. Finally, there are three skeins of Noro Taiyo because it makes awesome hats, and one skein of Opal for good measure (and because it's one of my all-time favorite sock yarns). So, quite a haul, but with all their discounts, not all that spendy in the grand scheme of things! Wheeeeeee!
The main reason for my trip East, however, was to go to Kripalu and study yoga with Peggy Cappy for a week. Disclaimer up front. I'm not a yogini. Most of the poses are not things I can do (at least not at this time), but Peggy's focus is on adaptive yoga and on making it accessible for all people - hence her DVD series: Yoga for the Rest of Us. I've talked about them before :-) It was a great week, and Kripalu is a pretty amazing and inclusive place. The food was extremely healthy, although much of it was not to my taste, but I tried a lot of new things, and they always had some other, more traditional options on their Sandwich bar. They also have a Buddha bar that is vegan, and a lot of vegetarian choices.
Kripalu itself used to be a Jesuit monastery, so our room was cell-like and very small, with only a sink. The main building it not air conditioned, but thankfully it was cool in initially. Every room has a box fan and we used our occasionally. The beds were mattresses on a frame - no box spring, so that made them very low, and they were memory foam, which a lot of people like. They were certainly comfortable once you were lying down, but I find that stuff very difficult to roll over on. Thankfully I have strong quads and was able to make pillow nests for my shoulder. We went down the hall to use the bathroom and shower, which would have been OK except that I was thinking it would be like it was in Germany in a gasthaus, where you always go down the hall. But that's a house-like structure - Kripalu's main building is a massive structure (a LOT of monks must have been there back in the day), so it was more like hiking to the bathroom. Not ideal if you wake up to pee in the middle of the night - you have to attempt to roll over to get out of the memory foam, get your quads ready for a strong squat and push to get up from the really low bed, remember to grab your room keycard, and then be blinded by the bright hallway light as you stumble down what felt like a block-long hall to get to the bathroom :-D
There are other accommodations available - and I will choose them in the future, because I definitely see myself returning - but it was my first time there so I didn't know what to expect. Live and learn :-)
It was a great week and Peggy Cappy is amazing. I'm hoping to study with her again next year. Our class was small - 20 people. It was the perfect size, and it was a very diverse group. There were a number of yoga teachers in the class wanting to learn more about adapting poses because they were getting a lot of seniors in their classes. There were people of all ages, both men and women, from early 20s to early 80s! It was so great and I met some really wonderful people there.
Kripalu has a great shop, and so, of course, I did some shopping. I bought mostly books - which necessitated my shipping boxes home filled with them and yarn :-D
Books - mostly on Ayurveda because I wanted to have a better understanding of it, but also some written by one of the staff members, Aruni - I heard her speak and she was very interesting. She also has a blog that I'm going to check out. I got a sweet fountain - over on the left - unfortunately it doesn't work :-( I took some photos and need to contact the Kripalu store. Some beautiful cards came home with me, too :-)
I got some great CDs. One of Girish's older CDs, Diamonds in the Sun that Peggy used in class. He combines the chant form with English lyrics and it's really beautiful stuff.
Enjoy . . .
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