The Curious Mind of Xta

Summer season of hooping kicked off with a gorgeous day up at Whistler on April 23rd, dancing to the Wasabi Project and Michael Franti and Spearhead.... SO good. Such a lovely day, so much hooping.. and a great road trip with a handful of other Vancouver Hoopers that I'd met at my workshops or online... Managed to avoid getting burned, except for just a teeny little area just at the bottom of that "X" on my top...




If you asked me a year ago if I would be a successful professional hooper within the next 12 months, I probably would have snorted and replied "Uhm, nooo...." and wondered what you were smoking.

Today, I had three hoop-work-related surprises:

1 - emails started flowing in at around 10:30am. Apparently, my roomie's g/f had submitted info about my hoop classes to something called Vitamin V, which is a daily email newsletter about hip happenings in Vancouver... requests to register in classes, queries about birthday parties, and an invitation to join a business network followed. (that last one, I declined... even if I COULD knit during the hour-long weekly meeting, I still wouldn't get up early enough to get downtown for 7:30am to listen to a bunch of people whose skills I can't afford and don't really need..)

2 - got a call from Heidi at Public Dreams... she was the Volunteer Coordinator for a few years, so I did a lot of volunteer work under her, and she is now the Performance Coordinator for their big signature events, in charge of organizing artists (say, hoopers who may or may not hoop with fire) to perform at Illuminares and the Parade of Lost Souls.. and she wants me to either be a small-scale performer in a garden-themed area of Illuminares, or to be part of and help organize one of the main fire shows! Oo! Note to self: hurry up on building that fire hoop, dammit!

3 - showed up to the first night of my four-week set of Beginner Hooping, expecting four people.. and got SEVEN! Three of them bought hoops, too! Like, Wow! I can actually pay mself something reasonable after expenses for this session! Wooooooo....



This is a continual reminder to me to have faith and express gratitude to the universe, for putting me on this path and sending things my way just when I am ready to experience them... it has been an amazing year so far, and according to a tarot reading I had done on New Years Eve, the rest of the year is supposed to be Most Excellent as well. I can't wait.

(wonder if that last bit causes any cringes in my parents, who identify as Christian and are deeply involved in the work of the United Church.. but who have stopped asking if I'm going to start going to weekly services at a local church here in Vancouver.... my idea of religion and spirituality doesn't involve a leader and followers.. more of a one-on-one relationship with the Supreme Omnipotent Being.. with or without noodley appendages.. and if you don't get THAT reference, Google "spaghetti monster" and have a good giggle :) Anyway... having put dreadlocks in, and THEN done a bit of reading up on it, it seems that my views are pretty similar to those of Rastafarians. Who knew, eh?)

Happy spring!

Weather: overcast, moving to sunny... which will be welcome after the last two weeks of dreariness.

Chai's: one, cold, in my knockoff Nalgene bottle just before tonight's hoop class.

Water: tub, plus a trip to the pool for what was supposed to be just a hot tub, but wound up including an hour of passing with Ali, Claudia, and LV from the polo team.. and LV taking time to do some drowning (er, I mean teaching) while showing me the finer points of getting rid of the ball quickly while having a big man pushing you underwater.

Wardrobe: tie-dye tank dress covered by handknit heavy-cotton sweater 'cause the house is still chilly in the evenings...

Craft in progress: Oopsie, have finished neither the Dink hat nor the hippie bag, but am 80% done a sweater that I will be giving to Vince in exchange for the use of ALL his camping gear for my trip to Burning Man. Only problem is, I ran out of the wonderful handpainted yarn, and the store doesn't have the same dyelot anymore, so I'm doing major fudging.. ripping out the hem, using that yarn to hopefully finish up the neck, replacing the hem and cuffs and collar with a coordinating solid.. It just ain't so beautiful anymore. Ah well.

Dreadlocks: Good news: no mold. Bad news: not particularly dreaded, due to lack of wax.. I've been in the water so much in the last month (due to teaching a bunch of courses) and have another month ahead of the same, that I've been afraid to wax, lest I trap water in my dreads and lett them molder. So.. spent three hours the other night re-backcombing them, and haven't gotten them wet since, so they're doing OKAY.... but not great. But not moldy! Oh, and sunburned diamonds on my scalp may look interesting if/when I shave the dreads off.. but all the flakes of peeling sunburned skin don't look so hot while stuck in dreads. :( Again, ah well. :)

# posted by Christa Giles @ 12:06 AM