Posts from ‘d.i.y.’
Image via interiorod.blogspot.ca
On the Spring Equinox, I have my own ritual to celebrate the turning of the seasons. I call it, affectionately, Moth Patrol and I do it at the beginning of each new season.
It’s the weekend that I go through most of my personal belongings in search of evidence of moths. This is what I do:
1) Take everything out of my closet and examine each piece for holes or traces of moths. I look for casings (the larvae cocoon left behind when it hatches into a moth), eggs, dead moths. I keep my eyes open for living moths, although rarely do I see them.
2) If I find any piece of clothing with evidence of moths on it, it goes into one of two piles: for the laundromat, or for drycleaning. After moth patrol, I take the piles to the appropriate place.
3) Spritz cedar essential oil (mixed with lavender or a little orange) on everything. There’s only anecdotal evidence that cedar is effective, and I feel intuitively that it’s useless, but it smells nice and makes me feel better, so it’s part of the ritual.
4) Empty drawers, searching for aforementioned signs (particularly my precious lingerie drawer, full of bras and silk teddys).
5) Vacuum. Everything. Every little crack and seam in my floorboards. Then empty vacuum bag (since eggs are hearty and can hatch inside). Continue Reading
For the past six months, Carol Horton and I have been working on a secret project. We sent out a call to some of our favourite voices in the online yoga community and invited them to contribute a long-form piece of critical writing. We engaged each contributor in a rigorous editorial process and spent time reading, offering feedback, shaping, supporting. We emailed, Skyped, researched self-publishing options.
The result is a completely unique and groundbreaking book, 21st Century Yoga: Culture, Politics, and Practice. The intention of the book is to bridge the immediacy and relevance of the blogosphere with the deeper thinking and idea development possible in a collection of essays. Now, to make this book a reality, we’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. This project has been DIY and collaborative from the start, and we’re rallying for support from our online community to make this happen.
This is how we describe the book:
While yoga may be rooted in ancient India, it’s morphed into something new in contemporary North America. Precisely what that is, however, is difficult to say. Yoga today is taught everywhere from spas to prisons, and for everything from weight loss to spiritual transcendence. With its chameleon-like ability to adapt to everything from advertising to ashrams, it’s a fascinatingly slippery postmodern beast that calls out for critical investigation. Continue Reading
Here’s a little secret for y’all: last year I took a business class. With a group of a dozen or so women, we created plans for our dream businesses. I didn’t follow through on my business idea. Many of the other women didn’t, either.
But Liven, a fellow yogini who had been laid off from her corporate job and was searching for her next steps, followed through. Her business idea changed and morphed over the three months of the business course, but on the final day she presented prototypes for her own line of organic skin care products.
A year later, after endless kitchen experiments and tests, Liven has launched Sukha Botanicals. All natural, mostly organic, not tested on animals and handmade on the island of Montreal!
Her line includes handmade soaps, bath and body oils, bath salts and travel candles. And it all smells divine: pink grapefruit and tangerine; lemongrass and ginger; lavender and clary sage; and vetiver and orange.
Sukha means happiness, joy and ease. These delightful self-care products are like settling into Sukhasana (Easy Pose – cross-legged position) at the beginning of a yoga practice: grounding, centering and effortless.
There’s nothing I love more than supporting ladies doing it for themselves. So I’m excited to do a giveaway of three Sukha Botanicals gift sets. All you have to do is answer the skill testing question: What is your favourite method of self-care?
Leave your response in the comments below before 9 a.m. on Monday, December 5. I will randomly draw three winners.
The folks at the Craft blog discovered this adorable pattern for a yoga mat bag in 10 easy steps. Marimekko, a world-renowned Finnish textile and design company, designed the pattern to use up remnants of their fantastic mod fabrics. But you can use any upholstery or heavy weight fabrics that you have lying around your craft room!
All you need to get started is:
- ½ a yard of Marimekko Upholstery fabric (or any fabric!)
-1 yard of Aalto webbing (for the strap)
-yoga mat
-sewing machine
-scissors
-pins
-pencil
I haven’t actually seen the movie Pay It Forward, in which a young boy comes up with a plan for direct action and encourages people to do 3 good things for other people, creating a “charity pyramid scheme,” but I’m intrigued by the concept. So when I saw that Eco Yogini was inviting readers to participate in a blog version of the pay it forward philosophy, of course I wanted to get involved. I love memes and virtual connectivity, and I love crafts and mail!
Here’s the lowdown:
- I will make a handmade gift for the first three people who comment on this post.
- I technically have 365 days to do this
- What it will be and when it will arrive will be a total surprise
The catch for gift-receivers:
- You must have a blog to participate
- Before or after you comment here, you must do a write up of the pay it forward on your space and keep the “Good Karma” flowin’
You should know:
- I love crafting! You will receive something unique and marvelous and most likely knitted!
- I’m also a total procrastinator and leave everything til the last minute, so you might not receive it until November 2010
So if you want in, comment below! Be sure to include your email in the form (this will be private; only I, as the administrator, will have access to it) and I will follow up with a message.
These kinds of reciprocal actions are small, but I think they’re very powerful. Taking the time to make something and then mail it to somebody is a direct and active way to participate in the slow movement and craftivism. It’s also a way of engaging with “gift economy,” a grassroots alternative (based on social theories of traditional societies) to the dominant market economy where “valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards” (hmmm… sounds a lot like karma yoga, n’est-ce pas?).
And just in case you need more inspiration, check out this TED Talk with Carl Honoré, journalist and author of In Praise of Slow.
[ted id=73]
