I had a lovely visit to this North East Alberta yarn shop in Portland, Oregon and came away with some sparkly grey worsted for a sweater project.

This was the first day of a visit that involved a fair bit of Shiva Nata, a practice where you wave your arms around your head in increasingly complicated patterns until your brain becomes truly scrambled. It looks something like this:

Unravelling patterns and making up my own new ones (or maybe just making it up as I go along) was the theme of my visit to the Rally.

Calling this a surreal experience would be an understatement. Strange things happened, seemingly irrelevant activities provoked major insights and any attempt to do what you thought you were there for proved futile – although everyone came away having achieved way more than they thought possible. The magic of elastic time, shmurfling, weird costumes and interviewing monsters all played a part, but the Shiva Nata had the most powerful effect on me. After one session I lost the ability to write. I’m not kidding.

General Portland wackiness just added to the feeling that coming home again was a bit like landing after a trip to another planet. I’m full of fresh ideas and still making some adjustments. I’ll find out soon if brain scrambling has any effect on my knitting…