make yourself yours

We each have our own paths, dreams, visions, creations, experiences and lessons as we live our lives. These are the things I journal about here on this web log, sometimes with long pauses in between. Lately I've been listening and dreaming about the coming year. What seeds to sow, projects to begin, commitments to make, books to read...and on and on it goes. And I find great pleasure in figuring out the best way for me to live a happy, authentic existence. It's a job we've all been assigned -- to make ourselves real.

I've begun stitching a little, on paper instead of cloth -- this image was part of a promotional postcard and the frame is just a cardboard box decoupaged with bits of book pages. She's very Brigid-like to me with her fiery hair.

When I looked for signs of life in the snowy garden the other day, I found a few new motherwort leaves that were perfect on my avocado toast. Motherwort isn't exactly a culinary herb but fresh anything has value. Only a month ago, there were still dandelions in the grass, but they've all disappeared now. This coming fall I vow to pot up and shelter a few dandelion and chive plants for winter use. 

Blanket stitching on another old postcard-turned-button-card.

I am intrigued by the Fire Goddess Brigid, forerunner of St. Brigid. Every year on her name-day, also known as Candlemas or Imbolc, I begin setting up a little tabletop Brigid altar. This year I included a Brigid image -- a little corn husk doll -- and instead of using plant material for my Brigid's cross, I wove a torn calendar page and inscribed it with various meditations (idea from here). The blue altar cloths were dyed with home-grown Japanese indigo. I still want to place a few more items on this altar -- some beeswax or a teeny-tiny jar of honey to represent all the activity about to resume in Nature, a little sun image for warmer days, and a lamb figurine for birth/rebirth. I am only touching on the surface of the Imbolc season here -- if you are so inclined to delve into the meaning or to explore the old ways and practices of Imbolc, there is still plenty of time. In the Celtic tradition Imbolc is three months long -- it begins now in late winter, goes through Spring Equinox and ends in late spring.

Homemade elderberry syrup poured over a waffle is possibly the best way I've found to take an immunity-boosting herbal medicine. 

As Imbolc is also the time to bless and potentize our seeds for spring planting, the basket of seeds serves as a symbol of good crops to come.

Pillows taken from other parts of the house over the holidays ended up all together on this bed -- a nice show of homemade and store bought. I have pretty good memories of the song You Are My Sunshine -- my mom sang it to us kids and my dad whistled it as he drove. It may or may not have been "their" song. As I always saw myself as being "the sunshine," the part about being taken away was concerning though -- please don't take my sunshine away. In my mind it was please don't take my Peggy away.

Nothing simpler or more wintry than glass cylinder candle holders slip-covered with white sweater sleeves.

Green.

 

The last of the Echinacea angustifolia tincture has been decanted and more must be made.

Little propagation vases filled with slips of plants brighten up dark spaces around the house -- sweet bay leaf, Laurus nobilis, and pink nerve plant, Fittonia albivenis here. I seem to have lost my knitting mojo, I knit the little candle mat over a year ago just as it was slipping away. I don't know where it has gone.

I'm enjoying walking our dog Talula on snowy days because we usually have the park to ourselves. Looking down, concentrating on being sure-footed on multi-layers of ice and snow -- my entire field of vision is such that I can imagine for just a moment that I live in another time and place. Maybe Finland or Sweden or even a mountaintop.

You need only to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality.  ~Florida Scott-Maxwell
                                                                                                                       
Wishing you sunny days and blue snow blessings. xo

winter solstice season

I have been enchanted by the idea of a 'winter solstice season' rather than a one-day or 12-day event. By expanding the December 21st date a few weeks before and after, I have been given the gift of time, relaxation, rest and greater enjoyment than ever before. The entire space and pace of Yule seems to have changed for the better.

"shine light into the darkness" is my contribution to India Flint's Gardens of the Heart poetry and cloth exhibit to be held at the Woollen Mill Artspace in Lobethal, South Australia in February. When I volunteered for the project, I was given the assignment of a few hand-stitched words (of my own choosing) for the second line of a three-line poem, to be stitched together and hung by India and her volunteers. An amazing sight it will be. Details here.

Shining light into the darkness is something to aspire to.

Fermented elderberry honey that I started in the fall and brewed until recently -- I'm not sure that it tastes any different than unfermented honey but hopefully it teems with invisible probiotic helpers.

The assembling of mostly home-made gift packages, each with a small peppermint essential oil soy candle, a bit of peppermint bark and a little poinsettia plant.

It had been many years since I'd gone into full production like this for Yule gifts. I think we scared some of the neighbors when we came to their doors bearing gifts in the dark.

Autumn altar gradually morphing into winter altar.

Roots to nourish and deepen my ancestral roots -- I imagine my people nodding in approval as I cook with them.

A lovely, solitary, winter tea time.

Plants are Magic by Rebecca Desnos is a magical publication, indeed. I recently ordered the first three volumes -- to date I've only read the first article in the first volume...but I've read it three times. I've been savoring Rebecca's beautiful writing about unusual, traditional dye methods beginning with making healing cloth by dyeing the cloth in medicinal (anti-bacterial) dye-baths -or- projecting pure intention into the dye-bath for well-being and healing. Another unusual practice (in our culture) is to continually dye and re-dye clothing to refresh both color and healing qualities. I see a whole wide vista opening up before me now.
 

Einkorn is a cookbook/guide for the ancient variety of wheat known as Einkorn. I am excited about this because it could serve as yet another connection to the foods of my ancestors.

At the beginning of a new year I look forward to having something new to focus on and use as a guide of some sort. Before deciding on a new focus though, I decided to enter the season of winter solstice by simply reflecting on light in the darkness.

I wrote myself A Litany of Light for the Winter Solstice Season in the manner of old-time church litanies, inspired by John Matthews in The Winter Solstice: The Sacred Traditions of Christmas. The response for each line of my litany is a little different than most -- rather than a phrase of words, it is to simply reflect in silence for a few seconds.

A photograph album with a good number of black pages intact once belonged to my parents and probably grandparents before them. It feels pretty old. I love it so much and plan to use it to take me through the new year. Who knows what will happen. 

To all who read this, I wish you many wonders and miracles in the new year. xo

magick with a k

I loved every minute of November.

Under the November full moon, I set out a jar of water and an amethyst cluster to be charged and blessed by the moon.

Moon water is to be used in meditation, ritual or as a wash for sacred objects.

One perfect night in November, five projects were laid out on the sewing table. 

I don't know why I do this kind of stuff. I even blocked the leaf.

In November, Lucia and Aggie's quilt (my grandmother and her sister) grew 16 blue moons. The moons are various fabrics from silk to cotton chenille and everything in between.

A piece of a paper wasp nest alongside honeycomb -- so beautiful -- from our colony of honeybees and some wasps that adopted us again this past year. They love it here.

Altar-making for spell-work: a journal covered with paper from Flow magazine (I think), a new moon candle on my mom's old mirror (see camera in hand) and an intention collage.

Intentions are thoughts and words coalesced and are especially well-done at the time of the new moon -- as the moon grows into fullness, so too will our intentions. On yesterday's new moon I documented my focus a little differently. I began by writing intentions down on an old card and immediately covered everything over with a coat of gesso. Then associated images and more words were collaged around my photo glued in the center. The overflow went on the back. Since it was a recycled card, it stands on its own. Making this was magick with a k.

I wasn't intending to overwinter the patchouli plant this year again but something made me change my mind at the last minute. Being the plant had already lost most of its leaves from the cold, I wasn't expecting much. But look -- she's blooming...and new leaves are sprouting every few inches. So happy.

A skeleton key attached to ribbon, threads, yarn, lace and one big tassel a bookmark makes.

On Thanksgiving we always Yule-craft and visit while we make, we listen to Friendsgiving on Pandora, we cook and some watch football, and there might even be time for games between dinner and dessert. This year we backed metal cookie cutters with card stock and went to town, some creations will be ornaments and others magnets. The youngest maker was four-almost-five years old.

The dogs and I still go outside every night before bedtime. I have to wear shoes now. We make sure the trees haven't changed positions, the yard is free of all rabbits and the moon and the stars still shine. It is dark, cold and magickal with a k.

Be well, be happy. xo

look, honey

I haven't held needle and thread in my hands once since I wrote here last...although I have held and sunk cloth into a mordant bath and then wondered why on earth it turned brown -- from a mordant? And I have picked and brewed one zinnia dye-bath. And I held the camera at just the right time to photograph a chickadee in action and then some plants that seem to think there is still time to grow and blossom even though it nearly froze last night. Maybe they know something we don't.

I have been lucky to hold the hands of some dear friends. And there is the sprite whose whole four-year-old body I held and squeezed and kissed the top of her head. And I acquired some new crystals and gems to get acquainted with by sensing their energy in my hands. Dogs to pet, writing, cleaning. That is mostly what I've been doing with my hands.

In October the veil between the worlds thins. Sometimes, on an inner level, we can hear and feel our loved ones beyond the veil. And maybe they can hear and feel us too. Experiencing something that was meaningful to a loved one when they were still here is thought to be an opening through which to reach out to them. For instance, if they loved butterflies and we see a beautiful image of a butterfly, that would be an opening to share and connect with them.

Today I looked across the back yard to the wooden play structure we had built for our kids when they were little. The two swings have been replaced with a porch swing while the rest of the structure is covered with vines but it still holds strong. And I silently asked our little boy, Corty, who passed at age seven, to look at the swing set now, it is still here. Where he once climbed up the ladder to get to the platform to pretend to be He-Man, wisteria and grapevines climb now. But it is still here -- look, Honey!

My personal October ritual is to find openings for loved ones in the Great Beyond...I believe we all can. xx