Orkney 2022 - 5 Days

Brass plaque on a sidewalk in Oban,

uncanny affirmation that we were where

we needed to be.

It is just five days until we head out for our long-delayed Orkney trip. At "T minus 14 days" I was still hoping, not hoping, that we could take off. Not fully committed at that time I still laundered the gaiters of their Prairie mud, the Idaho baseball cap of summer sweat, counted the t-shirts and bought good sturdy socks.

Now I am all in on this trip, fully committed, and putting it out here, hesitant to say it out loud, bravely doing so regardless.

The final leg of our trip home is the only one so far to have been changed - and for the better. Our final flight lands us an hour earlier making our last few hours' drive home somewhat less harrowing as we both try to stay awake after a long day of travel through both space and time.

Lots to do this weekend - tidy the house, laundry, lists of don't forgets, pre-packing the backpacks. Like our other excursions we plan a trip to "Launderama" in Kirkwall about halfway through our stay which lightens our packs and covers any slips and slides, falls and failures in the cairns and moors, beaches and mud we plan to encounter. 

Weather predictions at this point look glorious, but then any weather anywhere on vacation is just that. On our first trip to Scotland, we were greeted with a skiff of snow, and it is predicted for this landing as well. Once out on the islands, however, the meteorologists claim the sun will shine; we will let you know if they guessed correctly.

So we are going, following the clear direction of our hearts and heads, yearning for adventure, understanding, rejuvenation and new colors for weary eyes. Enjoy this trip with us if you want by following us here on The Chair Outside. I will try to post something each day with pictures and narrative. 

Orkney 2022

We are on for our long-postponed trip to Orkney, the land between the sea and the sky. Just 26 days until we head over the ocean, to several islands in the ocean - Iceland, Scotland, Orkney.

Some trepidation lingers from 2020's need to cancel our trip; I am hesitant to actually go overboard in planning or thinking about it in the event we can't go again. Covid-19 doesn't seem likely to stop us this year; however, Russia's invasion (oops, not allowed to call it that) of Ukraine and the war it is now waging (oops, can't call it a war) has me slightly spooked.

Regardless, the TripIt app is loaded - still missing one ferry trip. We are more relaxed this time, likely because we've been planning it for three years! Once on Orkney and with a car rented, we have more flexibility than usual as the car can be taken on the ferries to other islands in the archipelago. Other than making key connections of buses, trains and ferries, our schedule is quite relaxed.

The islands we plan to see are checked above, left to right, Mainland, Rousay, Wyre, Egilsay, Eday and Sanday. These islands contain - you guessed it - stone circles, standing stones, cairns, castles and more. There is evidence that the stone circle called Ring of Brodgar on Mainland predates Stonehenge by 500 years. If this is the case, then, this cultural phenomenon was developed in Orkney and migrated south to England.

Transformation & Hope - Part 5

I turned 60 years old while working on this section of the project which got me thinking about my own work of transformation. Of living. Of aging. Of hope.

In my first decades I looked forward to birthdays and cakes and special attention; I couldn't wait to get older and gain the privileges of maturity like driving a car, staying up late, graduation, drinking beer. With each leveling up of age, with each acquisition of perceived privilege, aging has become less momentous, less remarkable. Now I'm 60 there aren't many more privileges to gain or major milestones to hit.

Life seems to follow our sun's path across the sky: dawn, sunrise, mid-morning, noon day, afternoon, sunset, twilight, dusk and night. 

I have reached a sunsetting time, I think, with the sun shining less brightly, nearing the horizon and the closing of my day on Earth. I am crepuscular, like a deer, living on the edge of light and darkness, of building a career and retirement, of child rearing and empty nest, of acquiring home and wealth to planning life without income.

This isn't maudlin or depressing; it is as all my Grandmothers from the dawn of time have experienced. I am learning to celebrate it, own my truth my age myself as my last decades approach. Observing, noting, watching who I am, am becoming, want to be to claim to have to hold. I'm not getting anywhere with this scrutiny; yet, I examine.

Not certain what all this musing has to do with the work of the mandala except that holding creation in my hands, spinning yarn into creation, sun into mandala frees my mind and heart to wander, inquire, muse and dream. 

So here I am.

This section finished with a nice round of "flowers", clearly serendipitous with the Spring equinox just a few weeks away. I love how the Universe does this! The project is now ready to transform into a square; can't wait to see how this will unfold, like my life!

Transformation & Hope - Part 4

I am now officially done with 66 rows of 114. It sounds like I've completed half the project; however, as I remember from the Mandala 2020, row count has very little to do with completion time or effort. As the project gets larger, the number of stitches in each row increases, which results in it requiring longer to circumnavigate - if I can use that word in a craft project.

The mandala has completed its transformation from star to circle. Part 4 is solidly, line in the sand, no questions asked, clearly stating: I am transformed!

The deep dark green yarn helps define the shift, and as I worked this beautiful color into the mandala I mused on transformation and hope.

There is a certain darkness, risk, and danger to transformation. Like a garden, transformation needs a time for dying, burying, tearing out in order to create space for the new life, form, structure. The quieting time of winter, plowing under, fallowness is vital to health and renewal, growth, rejuvenation and transformation in the spring blooming time. So it is with transformation. To bloom, energy has to be focused on the new life, not the deadwood, dry stalks. Those are dug into the earth to nourish the new crop.

What am I risking now, pulling out, plowing under in my own work of transformation? What darkness or unused "things" can I remove to make room for new growth? I have plenty I can work on; however, it seems that life surfaces those things that require consideration whether I want to work on them or not!

Then there is hope. Intuitively I wouldn't think that hope has a darkness in it, yet as I circled the Still Point in the mandala, meditating on transformation and hope, I understood that despair, fear, doubt, discouragement, disbelief are opposites of hope, and without the darkness, how can I know hope?

These last hard years of global loss of life and freedom have certainly been the dark side of hope. Perhaps as this new spring begins its annual flirtation with winter, pandemic restrictions begin to lift around the world, and family gatherings are more common again, we can steward the hope springing out of the deadwood of this recent past.

Transformation & Hope - Part 3

The pattern of the mandala is transformation personified. Starting in the circle, the still point, it became a six-sided star, then shifted its points 30 degrees and ended in a circle. In Part 2 it continued mostly round, laying in points and position for its Part 3 transformation into a 12-sided star. 

In the Mandala, each row has a certain duality: the beauty of itself and the building block for the next metamorphosis in the pattern. These changes, nearly row by row, are an objective lesson in the definition of transformation: crossing over, into new form, shape, structure, character.

Crossing over barriers such as bridges, rivers and objects is a well-used trope in old wives' tales, fairy tales, traditions and language. Charon, son of the Goddess Nyx, destined to be the Ferryman carrying souls across the River Styx, demanding coin of the dead for the ride; Moses leading the unruly tribes of Israel across the Red Sea on miraculously dry land; the three billy goats named Gruff, fooling the Troll in order to cross over his bridge; jumping the broom in marriage ceremonies, signifying the shift from two single units to one with all the changes required; and, "Over the Moon" which refers to ecstatic change and transformation.

These examples of transformation, from life to death, danger to safety, one side of a ravine to another, are physical transformations. There are other, deeper changes, spiritual and psychological into which the meditative nature of working with yarn and the repetition of stitching are leading me. I wonder what is on the other side of this transformative work. 

Transformation & Hope - Part 2

 Part 2 of 9; 45 rows of 114.

I've pondered the meaning of transformation as I circled around this work's center, Still Point, wondering what transformation is, really. I am transforming balls of yarn into a mandala, a work of art, of utility. The yarn itself is a transformation of wool into thread. The wool is a transformation from food and water and sunlight into fiber on the back of a sheep.

Could it be this simple, the change from one thing into another? Etymologically the word is trans - across, beyond, through, on the other side of; plus, form v. - create, give life to, give shape or structure; to make, build, construct, devise; n. shape, character.

Certainly this work of crocheting, then, is a transformation: from sun and grass to a Mandala. This thought literally sets me back on my heels: I only see the surface, the thing, the noun of items around me, when, possibly, probably, they are actually sunshine and grass transformed into shoes and curtains, tables and hammers. What life a toothbrush is when I hold it in my hand - holding sunshine transformed - the power and mystery!

In the 14th century the definition of "transform" leant more toward metamorphose, which means to change form, alter or modify the shape or character of. By the 15th century, metamorphose was connected to the ancient mysterious arts, especially witchcraft. And like all good things mysterious, pagan and inexplicable, the Church shifted the meaning of the word, took it for its own use, divided it into good and bad. Women and men who created, regenerated, devised, formed and reformed objects, health, people, and lives - metamorphosed - were burned at the stake. Perhaps they understood the power of transformation, the power of sunshine in the hand when holding a sprig of lavender, and it cost them bitterly when people around them could not see.

I want this year's crochet project to transform me. I want to be expanded by seeking deepward, inward, transformed, shape shifted, edge sharpened, edge blurred, alive in the best magical sense of creative, intuitive, inquisitive, re-formed, trans formed. Around the still point, not fixed nor moving, not flesh nor fleshless, not moving from nor toward, where the past and the future gather. This still point is where transformation happens. 

Transformation & Hope - Part 1

This project is an exercise in Transformation. It begins as a mandala, circular and contemplative then slowly and spectacularly transforms, reshapes, into a finished square. I am looking forward to this metamorphosis in the project.

Last year's work, Mandala 2020, was about grief, despair, resolution as treasured people in my life left and the pandemic raged across the globe, nation, state and community. We are still in the throes of COVID-19; some restrictions have lifted, the vaccine makes us braver and we feel lighter and more "normal". As always, time has eased the bright personal grief into a grayer, poignant memory, and the massive national and global grief of lives lost to this disease is simply becoming a new normal. 

Like the pattern of this work, life today is about Transformation and Hope. The last year of reflection, consideration, meditation, exploration and resolution resulted in a shift in me, in my outlook on life, my understanding of myself, my willingness to pause and consider, breathe in and begin the arduous chipping free of the chrysalis built around me. Us.

How can I not be anything but different? How can I not be in the midst of a metamorphosis, a change in my being, a transformation?  The world is different. My family is different. My friends are different. Work is different. Our lifestyle has shifted and is different. The way I get food, clothes, basics is different.

Like last year, this pattern is not my own. It is called Sacred Space CAL copyrighted by Helen Shrimpton of crystalsandcrochet.com. I followed her recommendation on the yarn - Stylecraft Life DK at 75% acrylic, 25% wool - and am very glad I did so. It is beautiful, perhaps the nicest I have used for many years. Thank you, Helen, for sharing your experience and craft freely and generously.