Denne taske af Isager er meget smuk. Mette skriver om den her: http://knitforwardsunderstandbackwards.blogspot.com/2009/05/i-have-wanted-for-long-time-to-knit.html
Den vil jeg lave en dag...

Yesterday, I scored a giant bag of white raw wool for free. It was at "Dyregården" here in Albertslund. It was quite a monumental experience to see and touch (and smell!) this giant heap of dirty wool, while two curious young horses were watching me and Trine searching through the wool, trying to find the nice bits and avoid the wool with poo. We filled a big bag each, but you couldn't even see that we'd been at it afterwards.

I have never had my hands on raw wool before, so I am at quite a loss to how to treat it now that I have it. So Google is my friend. Turns out people in Denmark don't clean raw wool and write about it, but in English I am luckier.

So here's a list of links for future reference (for when I actually have time to clean the yarn! Mind, I have an 8 months old son, am writing a thesis and so on...)

Guides to all steps:
http://www.joyofhandspinning.com/

Cleaning raw yarn:
http://mmandmyy.blogspot.com/2007/01/dear-god-it-is-all-clean.html
http://www.rogersstark.com/wool/wool/she.htm
http://www.hjsstudio.com/washwool.html
http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?p=11251963
http://homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=157527
http://sweetleafnotes.blogspot.com/2009/01/washing-wool-fresh-off-sheep.html
http://www.woolgrowers.org/education/wool_pdf/Wool%20and%20Fiber/Washing%20Wool.pdf
http://www.unicornproducts.com.au/unicornfibre/woolfibrewashing/washing_fibre_athome.php

I will continue this public travelling journal as my knitting journal. I am pretty obsessed with knitting, so I'll use this blog as a way of keeping track of my ideas an inspirations...

Baby underthing: Picture from blomstermagt.blogspot.com/
I think I will try to unknit this when I'm making my first underthing for my little boy. He needs to keep warm this winter, and I have loads of fingering weight yarn in pretty colours.

Ok, I have no time for computers, but!

I have to say that Rasmus and I went walking 4 days in the mountains and it was amazing! we passed a pass of 4700 meters, which was terribly hard, but the rest of it was ok. And now, pictures!

Rasmus paa toppen! look how close the ice is. It was sooooo cold up there...



mountain. We have a billion beautiful nature pictures, but I won't torture you with them...



us in front of a lago llanganuco


group photo!



and... Uh, a fruit salad I made...

Last night I dreamt of Harry Potter. I have been out walking in the mountains for four days, and despite an unhealthy level of Harry Potter obsessiveness, I haven't really been thinking about the new book. However, during this night it was full on, intensive dreaming about it.

Most of it was a blur of strange things happening, but the last dream was very significant. It was this saturday, at 17.45, but I was at home in Denmark. I was in the shop I used to work in, but they only had the book in Danish. It was only 150 pages, it seemed, and with a black and white cover, with beautiful drawings. I wanted the English version, so I tried to run to the bookshop close to the shop, but because I had been walking so much, I could run REALLY fast. However, it had been raining, and I couldn't stop, once I'd started, because it was too slippery. That was too dangerous, so I had to slow myself down by holding on to leaves and branches on the road. I eventually managed to stop myself completely, but then I was at the home of my parents, and it was too late to get hold of a copy. My mom still hadn't received hers by mail, so I had to settle with waiting until monday.

However, I then found myself, my mom and my grandmother in a beautiful, light, but mysterious, forest. My grandmother told me that she had looked on the internet looking for information about the relationship between me and Rasmus. I told her that was silly, because no one on the Harry Potter internet knew us. Then my mom got up, and pulled out a strange "plug" from a secret place in the forest. It was hidden in a sort of military style cloth/mouth coming out of the forest ground. We then walked together to this ENORMOUS mainframe computer thing, as big as a gigantic building, but built like an 80s futuristic vision of a "computer mainframe". I knew the place, I'd been there before with friends, but without knowing what it was, or why it was there. Back then I only knew that it was a secret, illegal and dangerous, yet strangely beautiful place. My mom, however, seemed to know exactly what to do. She put the plug into the computer, pressed a few buttons, and then the giant machine started... printing! a book! All over the place I saw pages rolling, while being inked. It was awe-inspiring. After a few moments, my mom sabotaged the machine to make it stop, and all over this giant machine, pieces of a book were lying there, in random order. All people present started assembling the pages to make it a coherent book, and I saw some of the pages - they all had words and beautiful black and white drawings on them. The front page was also black and white. I knew we had to hurry, though, because the people who really owned the machine somehow knew of our presence and would be coming shortly.

Then I found the very last page of the book. It contained only this sentence:

The story ends. The seer sees no further.

This dream carries enormous importance and symbolic meaning. It is also unusual to actually be able to see writing while you are dreaming, and this sentence has haunted me all day.

I realised today that I change what I wear to seem less sexy. I bought a really cute top with hearts on in Lima, but I am not wearing it here, because the one time I did, I think half of all men on the street wolf-whistled at me! And even though I have been here for ages, it still pisses me off. Please just let me walk here on the street, minding my own business. When I am just wearing my normal clothes, I don't get as many comments, which is a relief. 

There's also this really bloody annoying guy walking around on the streets, trying to sell tours. He has approached me twice while here in Huaraz. The first time I had a fever and felt really anxious, and I just wanted him to go away. The second time, which was yesterday, I was waiting for Rasmus, and he recognised me and was all "did you drink coca tea?", and I replied "I don't have altitude sickness". And then he was like "oh, I know, Danish people are very strong." And then he went on to talk about his tours. I stopped his rant and told him "I already have a tour with Quechuandes", which he duly ignored and continued listing those tours. URGH. I then tried to tell him that I wasn't interested in talking to him, but he pretended to not understand. When Rasmus came I just abruptly walked away from him, without saying another word to him. Heh, I love being rude like that to people who are rude enough to talk to me on the street like that. Seriously, if I want to buy a tour, I will go into a store and buy it. 

I like it when I chat with nice people, though, and I generally try to be very polite. I just have pet peeves of being approached in the street.

Note to self:
Do not drink real coffee (a rare treat in SA) at nine PM if you actually have any ambition to sleep the following night...

Oh well, at least I got a chance to think real hard about how I want to redecorate the apartment when I go home. And listen to sounds. And think about my stories. And think out whole entries for my blog. 

I did eventually fall asleep at four, I think. 

And now! fruit salad!

Only the big market is closed and I want strawberries. Yaarrgghh. There's a block-down of the whole country for reasons obscure to me, and it's impending my strawberry demands. Capitalism is suffering!

Yes. Ok, really maybe I am still high on caffeine. Ironic that coca-leaves are a class A drug when coffee is so much harder.

drawings:

Anatomy:


politician:

I should mention that the Harry Potter "seven" I found a few days ago is actually fan-fic. 600 pages long, no less! I had a fun day of actually believing it was real, until I did the wise thing and looked at the interbets. Good thinking, Eline.

Oh!

Forgot to mention that I met senor tortuga (mister turtle) again, resting in a resting in a river... he is a good friend.


And here's Indy looking thoughtful and at peace...

My first four/five days in Huaraz I spent in the fine company of Indy and Ariel, two wonderful women from the Aldea Yanapay project in Cusco.

The first day we went to hot springs in Marcara, close to Huaraz. They had natural caves that were real saunas, and we sweated out our travel-worries and enjoyed the beautiful walk up the hill. On our way back we picknicked next to a river, and it was very tranquil and beautiful. The river had big stones in it, and we sat there for a long while...


Until the piggies started eating our food!


They don't like onion...

The next day we went horseback-riding, which was initially frightening, but after I came to terms with sitting on the back of something that is alive, it was merely painful.

The third day we headed up to lake 69, which is a really sad name for a very beautiful lake and an extremely beautiful walk.
This is our first view of the river we walked next to during our entire walk:


And these are the plains that made up the first part of our walk:


We walked further into the landscape and were met with this breath-taking tree, standing on top of a giant rock:


We saw a waterfall to our right:


And to our left:


This is one of the many mountains we could see during our walk. It is so incredibly beautiful...


And one more:

Don't ask the names of these mountains. I am slightly useless in that department, but I do have a map which I can consult in case someone REALLY wants to know...

It took us about 3 hours to walk up up, and 2 hours down. I appreciated the down-ness of our walk down, because ascending for three hours straight is hard for me. I have to admit that I didn't make it all the way up to the Lake 69, because I had to climb a really steep and high mountain for 30 minutes to get there, and I was knackered. I settled with a smaller, but pretty lake perched between two mountains:


And the view from the lake:


Yay! we were so happy to be there.

During out ultra-short stopover in Lima, we stayed at a hostel with the cutest/weirdest dogs ever.
They mostly reminded me of Gremlins...
This furry little monster was about the size of two of my hands, and it had the cutest, well, I wouldn't even call it a bark, it was more like a squeak...

We played with it, and I was doubled over with squee for hours...

These cute furries sat on top of the men's toilet (and sometimes defecated in there). My immediate instinct is to not feed them after midnight...


For comparison:

We are still in Huaraz, Rasmus is busy writing articles and getting bad sunburns... (lying outside in the sharp midday sun in the Andes is not a good idea). And I am busy writing stories and reading about Jung and the subconscious. After finally (intellectually) understanding the purpose and use of symbols and metaphor, it interests me a great deal, and I'd love to learn more about Jung and his theories. I found a book by June Singer, and she is very good at articulating the complex and immaterial nature of the conscious and subconscious. She also speaks of paradoxes, which is another subject that is tantallising me.

In other words, I cut Rasmus' hair! He looks so purty and fine, I want to make him mine...

I mostly cut his hair in the neck - I cut off maybe five centimeters, imagine a mop he was carrying around!

And I cut my own bangs, look!


I think it's funny how my hair can look so sleek when dry, because when it's wet, it looks like this:

Cusco is not only swarming with tourists, it is also packed with different species of spiritual people.

Anything vaguely related to the spiritual life of indigenous people has become quite a business in Cusco. On every corner in town stones, necklaces and other "exotic" paraphernalia are sold to the people passing by. There is even a "Shamanic shop", which surprisingly does not sell drums, rattles or guidebooks to shamanism - instead, about half the store is dedicated to... hashpipes. The rest of the store has a bunch of necklaces, stones and different types of incense.

Another lucrative business is pretending to be a shaman and selling drug trips with San Pedro or Ayahuasca to curious tourists. Both plants are traditionally used as medicine plants and as part of  rituals by indigenous peoples in the Andes and in the jungle-lowlands. However, when it is a business in Cusco, the socalled shaman will prepare the drink, and then take the customers out into nature either during the day or during the night, and watch over them while they are high.

 Now, it doesn't bother me in the slightest that people want to try these drugs, and I don't think it's wrong of these people to feel that they get some kind of spiritual experience out of it. What really gets on my nerves is the arrogance of the socalled shaman. I highly doubt that they are in fact real shamans with year-long training, extensive knowledge of the spirit-world and strong healing powers. If they are anything, they are businessmen, a guide almost like any other. I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject, but despite the multitude of variations of shamanism in the world, and the fact that you can easily contest the expression "shamanism" (oh, words!) even having any meaning at all in a global context, I think it is safe to say that watching over people while they are high and offering "full body massages" during, is not shamanism.

Read more about shamanism here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism
Read more about plastic shamans here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_shaman

As I was reading through Wikipedia I came upon an article about "neoshamanism", and I think they make an interesting point about the difference in the role of fear in neoshamanism and traditional shamanism. Neoshamanism (often western practicioners) tends to neglect fear, whereas fear and destructive forces often play a great role in traditional shamanism. And why would it not - our world is made of construction, destruction and reconstruction. Personally that is one of the things that bother me about "spiritualism" in a new age sense. They tend to draw up rosy pictures of blossomy harmony, of neverending bliss, of a constant state of exhiliration. I like my life being nitty gritty grey and ambigious. I like my life being filled with practicalities that distract me. This is life. I am not a monk. Nevertheless, I am very interested in religions, belief, and spirituality. All though christianity is an important backdrop of my childhood, it has nothing for me anymore. There are just too many aspects of christianity that rub me the completely wrong way, and I simply don't believe in the christian god, nor the bible. But I am religious, in an uspecific way. I know that is what half the population in Denmark is, these days, scrambling together their very own makeshift religious philosophies. I lean toward pagan, nature-centred religions, but I don't know if or how I should practise it, or how to express myself about it. Intuitively I feel that what is religious is a greater power that is unspeakable. Any attempt at describing this power will infest it with humanity and the incompetence of our language. I love languages, but they are incompetent because the languages I know are so wound up in dualities, in invisible power-struggles that determine/shape the psycho/social structures of our lives.

In that sense it is interesting that I find shamanism interesting, because it is so much a world of symbols, worlds and trinkets. I took a course in what I recognise as neoshamanism last summer, and it came on very powerfully to me. I must admit that I to some extent believe in the existence of a spirit-world outside the realm of my own head. I knew nothing about the spirit world when I did this course, but I seemed to tap into this world which exceeded the whims of my own head. But this is all intangible and very personal.

And now I need to get off this bloody machine!

!!!

well, you can get anything off the street here in Peru. At the market in Cusco, I could buy Mescalin (San Pedro is the local name of the cactus here) at the Mercado Central. An opportunity I did not take advantage of, however. 

But today!

I bought...

THE SEVENTH HARRY POTTER BOOK IN SPANISH!

!OMG!

For those of you not in the know, the official version isn't coming out before july 21st. But that doesn't stop the pirate-people here. I swear my heart is beating fast and I'm SO AMAZED, because I am a ridiculously big fan. I wouldn't normally buy pirated things, especially not things I care so much about, but I can't help myself with this one.

I am not going to expose anything, though, so don't worry. AH! Rasmus doesn't believe it's actually the true book, but it is - I read selected paragraphs and it IS the new book. 

It will be a bit of a challenge to read it in Spanish, but I read the first page, and it was "alive" for me - I am happy I am so good at learning languages quickly, because that means I can actually read the book, instead of having it mocking me with all it's unknown content...

Huarez!

We landed in this pittoresque city this morning, and we're now safely tucked in to a good hostel. The plan is that Rasmus will write articles while I don't do much... When deadline hell is over, we'll head up into the GORGEOUS mountains that embrace the city, to do trekking for a few days. Huarez is north of Lima (Lima is on the coast pretty much smack in the middle of the country) and it has the most beautiful mountain range of white mountains - the cordillera Blanca. We can see it from the top of the hostel, on the roof, several stunning mountains.

Ok, and because I am cranky and haven't slept:

Things I will not miss about Peru
1. Bad hygiene - especially the toilets. Though they are not even close to chinese public toilets...
2. Throwing toilet paper in a basket instead of in the toilet
3. Reggaeton - It's not that the music is extremely bad - it's just that it's the ONLY music they play here on the radio. I seriously want to stab something everytime I hear it. It is so monotonous and stupid and ARGH. And they are playing it right now. A great factor in my current crankyness.
4. Shady taxi-drivers
5. The fact that I can't drink tap-water and that I have to suspicious about all foods. 
6. The cold nights/shade
7. People trying to sell me stuff in a store by pointing at random things while saying "chompa... mochilla... chalina... etc..." It's not like randomly seeing a chompa will make me buy it. But being pestered and not left alone will make me leave your store.
8. People trying to cheat you.
9. Being constantly paranoid about people trying to steal your things. I carry my whole life in one backpack, and if I lose my passport, I'm pretty fucked.
10. Panflute versions of The Beatles

Other than that, I am a happy lark - and now I will go to the market and be random...