It's very rare that I find myself in a situation where I interact almost only with women for days on end.  The last four have been such a situation.  Aside from the yoga teacher I had yesterday, it's been women I've talked to, learned from and looked at.  We compliment each other a lot.  We tell a lot of stories.  We are subtly competitive with each other.  There's  a lot of talk of relationships of all kinds-in this crowd it was a lot about children, usually grown children.  But there was naturally a lot of talk about passion and creativity-over and over, I heard "I wish I had more time, so I could really do this."  Just about everyone in the room had another, usually unrelated job.  One women drove a school bus, one is a graphic designer, a retired nurse, a retired school teacher, an office worker.  I really, really enjoyed myself.  It was sad to say goodbye today.

Today was all about indigo, which is fascinating.  There's no other natural source for true, pure blue coloration-it has to be indigo.  You'd never guess from looking at the plant, which is a lot like alfalfa, that it would be possible to get deep blue out of it.    Really, I could go on and on about it, but I know I'll lose a bunch of you who are here for the travel stuff.  Sorry-I haven't been touring around much.

We made two different kinds of indigo vats-and both of them smell a lot like swamp water.  Which is not truly offensive to me.

Tomorrow, I'm going to drop my bags at the train station and spend the day exploring.