Ophélie Lechat

I know that for the past week, I’ve been telling everyone to do yoga, how amazing it feels, how great my body is adapting.    I apologize for my sudden morph into a yoga-preacher.   And, humbly, I have only been doing it for about two weeks.

The change, so far, is amazing.  Last night’s class was even more enjoyable than the others, in no small part because I felt my body melting into the poses.  I understood when the instructor said to let the tailbone drop, I could feel it reaching for the floor.  I relaxed into the forward bends.  I lowered my body evenly, slowly.

I’ve never been athletic.  I used to love going out and dancing, and I did it a lot in high school and early Cegep.  Every summer, I take up running, and, every summer, I take too many days off, and eventually forget all about it.  I’m terrible at self-policing, but I am very skilled in talking myself out of healthy choices.   Now, though, I feel like I’ve found something.  Re-listening to the TAL show on first days, I realized that it’s completely normal to feel aprehension when walking up the stairs to the yoga studio.  There is a crowd of people in there, les habitués, and I’m the newcomer.  They won’t beat me up before accepting me (as mentioned in the radio show I linked to), but I’ll have to do my own pushing to make myself comfortable.

In knitting news, I recently finished a gift for a friend, something that popped into my head one day as something she needed to have.  I started the Featherweight Cardigan in some beautiful silk-wool yarn, hand-died shades of blue and green.  Three times I have tried to use this yarn, and three times, I have ripped out the project.  It’s special yarn, and it deserves a perfect project.

I’m also re-decorating what I’ve taken over as my boudoir.  What was once our shared office has become my quiet space, with a single bed for guests (or for naps!), a desk, and plenty of craft storage.  The walls will be a pale grey,  the desk will get a fresh coat of white paint, and I want to knit a blanket in shades of charcoal and ecru.  While I’ve been making many things in bright shades lately, and wearing more colour than I’m accustomed to,  I feel like I need to return to neutrals, to un-dyed wool, to tone-on-tone.  Maybe it’s this poor excuse for a summer we’ve been having.  Maybe it’s the yoga.

I know.  Blame the yoga.