Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

I felt like I jinxed the weather by talking about it last week. We were subjected to a few cooler damper days after that, though it has cheered up a bit since then. Things feel kind of spacious, even as my sewing deadlines get closer. 

Last week I went to Zen Center for the always enjoyable Thursday evening group, and stayed on for sewing. With a lot of help, I finished with the straps and got the neckpiece together. Once I was at home, I managed to finsh that step, and magically pull the straps through to reveal the right side of the neck piece. That means I only have to attach the straps and sew the culminating pine stitch, and the rakusu is done.

I also spent a number of hours over the weekend completing the first row of the long borders on my okesa. I wasn’t too happy with the results, even having re-pinned several times on each end to avoid having little folds in the fabric – something that I had to deal with when putting each panel together as well – and I took out stitches more than once to try to get everything a little straighter. 

When I was sewing this part of my first okesa, twenty years ago, I was at Great Vow; I just remember sitting in a chair outside and sewing for hours one weekend, as there wasn’t much else to do. I think I worried that the whole thing was not going to be a perfect rectangle, but once I put it on, a few years later, I never thought about it again – much the same way that people never really notice the stitches on a rakusu or an okesa, no matter how finely they are sewn – or how waywardly in some cases on my robes.

I also managed to get a good long ride in on Sunday morning – though it ended a little prematurely. I was just getting ready to climb a short stretch of Columbus before tackling the uphill blocks home when, with a clatter, my back wheel seized up. It turned out my derailleur had sheared off from the frame and had got tangled up in the spokes. It was a close echo to what happened on my old road bike (I am trying to find a reference to this, but not managing – it was around the end of 2018 in any case), where the derailleaur hanger snapped off the frame; again, amazingly, I was just a few blocks from home. 

In the afternoon I tackled a project to get all the weeds out of the small back yard of the house; it seemed likely they were exacerbating allergies for Ruth and others, and while they were pleasant enough to look at, pulling them all out revealed a large pot of succulents that had been completely buried, as well as uncovering another long planter with long-suffering succulents. It was very satisfying to get it all done.