I'm going to post this on my zen blog later this week, but right now I want to post it somewhere and I'm too tired to compose a post over there, so I'll post here instead!

As we do every year, nyxie and I spent New Year's Eve at the Zen Centre for its New Year's ceremony. It's a longish ceremony, starting at 8 and going until 12:30 or so with a social ( Read more... )

Right on schedule! Wheeeee! I'm really happy with how it turned out.


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Halfway done! I'm pretty happy with it so far, most of the messiness is my handwriting, although I find when I try to "correct" the weirdness of my handwriting it looks worse (except for the "p" in "slips" which is driving me nuts and I might pull out and redo without the downstroke).


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Updated pattern, fixing line spacing, word spacing, and the suggestions from my last post. I figured I'd share it so those of you who made suggestions can see what I did :-)

Thanks to eyeteeth for the suggestion to just scan it in and manipulate it in a graphics program. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me to involve a computer in this non-computery ( Read more... )

So far so good! I've been practicing on my own handwriting, and learned some things -- that I need to use a smaller needle, for instance, and that two-strand whipped backstitch seems to be the right weight and slubbiness for what I want to do.

I also found a frame! This is great because all of the places where I thought I'd be able to find a nice ( Read more... )

I had a thingy in my to-do list to post an excerpt from a Dharma talk given by Edward Espe Brown, the cook at Tassajara Zen Center and author of the Tassajara Cookbook and Tassajara Bread Book. But I'm listening to the talk now, and there's really no one sound bite I can cut things down to.

So instead, here's a link to the whole thing. Listen to ( Read more... )

(Reminder: nyxie can't see these.)

Well, my embroidery project is off to a good start! Thanks for all the encouraging comments.

So that very day I went to a cute little knitting-and-needlecraft shop which was sort of on my way home, Knit-O-Matic. Note that it's not called "Needle-O-Matic" though. They had no black floss (bought grey to practice with ( Read more... )

Short version: If you know anything about embroidery, I need your help!
You're seeing this because you're in my custom friends group that does not include nyxie, because this is about her Christmas present.

So a couple of days ago I came up with a great idea for a present for nyxie, but it means that I have to learn a NEW SKILL and finish a project in it in ( Read more... )

Speaking of Zen, I figured I'd update on how things are going at the Zen Centre.

"Pretty well!"

nyxie and I have been going roughly once a week, although there was a bit of time off while the Centre was closed for an intensive retreat (sesshin). I'm starting to get used to things, although I still generally feel like a total noob ( Read more... )

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