pictures of how the wall sections look in a completed yurt

the best thing about yurts is that they are collapsible and portable. our three sections fold up small (each less than 2 feet wide), but then open up very wide (about 16 feet long). when they are folded up, the sections are about eight feet long, but we will stretch them until they form a wall about 5 feet high.

(both pictures from here)
the two wall sections meet and are simply tied together.



"Their huts or tents are formed of rods covered with felt, and being exactly round, and nicely put together, they can gather them into one bundle and make them up as packages, which they carry along with them in their migrations, upon a sort of car with four wheels."
Marco Polo (1252-1329) The Travels

working on our yurt

(one of the yurt's wall sections, partially completed, taken earlier this week)

we're making progress on our yurt. tonight, we finally completed the 3 wall sections. they are supposed to be the most time consuming portion of the project, and we hope they are, since we've been working on them steadily for the past 3 weeks. next up, door, roof, and canvas covering. each a pretty major project, but then again, it's a home we're building, so it's not supposed to be that easy.

in the video below, adam is drilling one of almost 800 holes in over 100 pieces of wood. we also sanded and then oiled each board, before assembling them into three wall sections. each of the wall sections (khanas) are made of 36 pieces of wood, and then fastened together with knotted ropes.



(in this blog, a girl very thoroughly documents her process building a quite similar yurt.)

we're excited to be moving forward with something that's been a dream for a long time.

standing still

if you travel a lot,


you will see a lot of different sights.


but when you stand still in one place,


the view is also constantly changing.

inspiration

i've always been visually inspired. i don't get addicted to fa*cebook or yo*utube, but can lose hours browsing through beautiful pictures on blogs or websites. i've saved hundreds of jpg files on various computers and browsing through old ones gives me a sense of how my tastes have changed over the years. the ones below are some that still speak to me.

i've nursed an obsession for rustic little homes in natural settings.


brooding landscapes...


the picture below reminds me of a house i loved in ireland, with ladders up to a loft.


i can see myself in a kitchen like this one someday. handbuilt cabinets, running water supplied from a tank above the sink. open shelves, lots of light. function first.


the old, dark wood here..


the slanted ceiling makes for a cozy feeling here:


and this perfect space that simply welcomes you home.


...

lately i have been challenged to focus less on images of other people's lives and instead training my eye to see the beauty in my own life, and in my own creations. it is satisfying to live in the real world rather than in the idyllic world of photographs.

but returning to these pictures is like browsing a scrapbook of dreams.

a thought

This may not always be true, but I've noticed that often when someone does something "to" you that you do not like, they actually also are doing that same thing to themselves.

I know that some people seem to treat themselves better than they treat anyone else.

However, my instincts tell me that if you look more closely, you'll see that they are ignoring and not listening to you in the same way that they ignore and do not listen to their true selves.

Or they constantly question and doubt you just as they question and doubt themselves. Even if their own self-doubts are thickly cloaked in defensiveness and loud proclamations.

..

In this context, the following makes sense to me: "You must learn to love your self before you can love anyone else."

yurt cluster

image from here

Also, here is an article on a couple living in a yurt in Alaska.