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Showing posts from November, 2017

Sewing & crochet

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Dear Diary, Recently, we had a family project of clearing out the attic (before the ceiling fell in on us).  We found something that Vati had made about 15 years ago.  At that time, he lived in an authentic Arts & Crafts house.  There were windows in the closets and he began to crochet a filet crochet curtain for one of them.  As things turned out, he moved before finishing the curtain but over the years he could never bring himself to throw it out.  We found the curtain and suddenly I had a fantastic idea - it would be the perfect coverlet for my Arts & Crafts bed.  Luckily, I was right and all Vati had to do was fasten the last stitch.  Vati was grateful he didn't have to crochet any more on it because he couldn't see the small stitches! T his was crocheted with size 20 thread using size 12/1.00 mm crochet needle.   I'm all ready for bed now. Vati made these pyjamas for me out of an old pair of men's pyjamas.  I lo...

Zen gardening

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Dear Diary, As a follower of the Buddha's teachings, I have an interest in all things Buddhist.  I follow the Secular Buddhist path which means I don't believe in religious Buddhism.  I've studied all the major schools of Buddhism and found Zen to be of great interest. At one time, for a number of years, I practiced Zen.  I have moved on since then but I still use some of the practices I learned in that time. A concise definition of Zen is "a Japanese school of Mahayana Buddhism emphasising the value of meditation and intuition rather than ritual worship or the study of scriptures" (taken from the Google Dictionary). Zen gardens are well-known in the West.  The strategic placement of rocks, gravel, trees, statues and the like is a meditation practice for the Zen Buddhist.  the placement of objects and raking of the gravel has symbolic meaning.  The quiet and focused work in the garden is meditation. The garden's simplicity is meant to ...