Can’t believe it’s March already - and we even had an extra day in February this year! How fast time flies when you’re knitting like a vampire and never see the light of day…

They say that March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb… but it’s coming in this year pretty lamblike, what with no snow on the ground and only the slightest (30% - scoff scoff!) chance of snow over the rest of the week, and temperatures starting in the 40s!!! Incredible. We had a very mind February - hell, a mild winter overall, once again.

So, February’s theme was, of course, devoted to crafting, and I think I did quite well! I made a pair of socks for A. - Embossed Leaves socks, in STR Lightweight, Blarney Stone colorway:

and am nearly finished with some Dashing mitts for Dad (birthday in less than two weeks!)

and am halfway through the first of a pair of socks for me, the Serendipity socks that came with my January 2008 Socks that Rock ‘Rockin Sock Club’ - yarn color is Dragon Dance,

made up a mini raglan sweater ornament out of leftover Blarney Stone yarn (still need to get some wire to make a hanger, though!), (sorry, picture not of the finished sweater!)

and knitted some more on the chevron scarf (no picture of updated progress. sorry.). Also, in a non-knitting arena, I’ve done some cleaning, reorganizing, dyed my valance a reddish orange (wouldn’t go redder, darn it!) and bought more lighting for my sewing area, since it… well, had none whatsoever.

And oh! I had a stitch n bitch! *beam* Much fun, that. First ever real-life person I’ve met who’s got the same yarn fetish I do. Everyone else is just like: “Oh, that’s nice… you psycho…” So Dobarah & I got together Thursday night and knitted. And fondled yarn. And complimented each other’s projects as we showed off our own. *lol* It was good.

Goals for March?

So what’s up? Long time, no see. I haven’t been feeling well - sinus infection seriously doing me in - and a lack of sleep certainly hasn’t helped. I guess I just haven’t felt like popping on to say so… or much of anything.

It isn’t that I haven’t been busy - sinusitis and all. I’ve (finally!) finished up my peppermint socks. Check this out:

They were finished up on February Eve. Er. January 31st. At about 7 a.m. I had a deadline to finish those that day - and through a miracle bestowed upon me by the knit-like-fucking-hell gods, I managed. They fit great, despite my gut-wrenching fear vague worry that they would be too small on the size 0 needles I’d decided on, and I do not (thank heaven) have to rip them all out and start anew. The only thing I could’ve done differently in the end was make them a bit shorter in the foot. Due to the change in gauge due to the needle size change, I miscalculated the number of rows I’d need for the toe and knit the foot a bit long. But they still fit!

(Before you ask… yes, that is my yule tree still standing, a month and several odd days past yule… I sucked it up and tore it down about a half hour after taking this photo, and barely beat that “have it down before the 1st, or A. will mock you forever and ever” deadline.)

So now what am I doing? Knitting more socks, of course - this time for A., with the most gorgeous and softest and most luscious sock yarn ever - Blue Moon’s Socks That Rock, in the color Blarney Stone. (Pics when I get the first one done in a day or so, I swears!)

And… I’ve been amusing myself with a new game for my Nintendo DS - Harvest Moon DS. This is such a stupidly addicting game I’m almost embarrassed to admit it. The point is this - you’re a farm boy, and the Witch Priestess has accidentally cast a spell on her rival, the Harvest Goddess, making her disappear. Now you, the farm boy, must work real hard to get her back. No, you’re not doing any special “retrieve the goddess” work, you just have to be a farmer, and miraculously, if you do really well at it, all the harvest sprites will return, and then so will the goddess. Or, uh, something. Okay, the plot really really sucks. But the gameplay is damned cute. You grow things. You mine for ore and gems and minerals. You raise animals. And of course, you romance the cute town girls. It’s not, admittedly, really supposed to be a linear plot-driven game. It’s supposed to be a game about farming, and gosh darnit, it is.

The only thing that could make this better (besides, er, plot… was that really the best they could come up with?) is a little more choice in el farmboy. Can’t I be a farmgirl? Or better yet, can’t my farmboy romance the local dudes as well as (or instead of?!) the girls? C’mon, yaoi makes everything better…

But anyway. I’ve been playing for a few days now, and I’m… er… hooked. Like a crack addict. The worst part? It’s one of those games where you’re playing happily, and then you think: “Gosh, I should totally be doing this in real fucking life instead of pretending to do it on this little game…”

Tonight is the February new moon. (Also, for those who care, it’s Ash Wednesday today.) I realize that I didn’t put up January’s New Moon Tarot Card - why? I had it done… - so belatedly, I’ll just say that it was the reversed Five of Pentacles, and it was a very good reading.

Tonight, with luck, I’ll actually put up February’s reading. And tomorrow, ladies and gents, we officially enter the Year of the Rat. Four or five days ago, depending on which calendar you use, was Imbolc, a winterly pagan festival to call spring forth. Usually, it’s set on February 2nd - groundhog day - or February 1st. You may also know it as Candlemas; way back in time, the Irish people worshiped a goddess named Brigid, a goddess of healing, and hearth, and smithing - healing, home, and craftsmanship, she did it all. When the good Christians of the Europe came to show them the way, they convinced the Irish people well enough to convert to Catholicism, but convincing them to stop worshiping Brigid was such a lost attempt that they canonized her as a Saint, downsized the fire festival to candles, and called it Candlemas. Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em…

So anyway. The festival typically marks the very beginnings of spring - deep in the earth, under all that winter snow, things are stirring to life again. The days are gradually lengthening. In another six weeks (the spring equinox), signs of life should be everywhere. Many pagans pay homage to Brigid this day, and I did with a candle in her honor and a bit of a tarot reading (that, unsurprisingly, considering the origins of the festival, focused very much on craftsmanship.)

Merry Imbolc to all, belated as it may be.

It’s that time of year again. Winter solstice. Yule. The birth of a new spiritual year. Many (most?) Wiccans and eclectic-style pagans feel Samhain is the spiritual new year, and in Celtic tradition, it is. But it’s just never felt right to me. I feel much more spiritually connected and grounded on the solstice, where at last, darkness will once again turn toward light. It’s a time of light and renewal, and what better way to begin a new year?

Bucking my own tradition, I did not have a huge ritual this year, but instead, kept things simple. A sunrise. A cup of cinnamon apple rooibos tea. A fuzzy blanket and some cats. And Tarot.

It was nice. Comfortable. Warming. Not too stressing. I found a new tarot spread for Yule, called the Sacred Days of Yule Spread. It’s meant to be performed over 12 days, one card drawn each day. I’m a day late, so I drew two today. This sort of thing stresses me out - being ‘behind’, that is - so I’m trying to take it in stride.

Tsuki has been laying under the tree there for hours and hours and hours. She likes it. A lot. Silly kitty thinks she’s a present! Speaking of presents, I opened a gift from TJ, who sent wonderful things from Washington - like smoked salmon and MarketSpice Tea (cinnamon-orange flavor!) along with some other goodies. All my other gifts will, of course, be opened on Christmas Eve with the family. I don’t think they’d buy the whole “But my holiday comes two days early!” bit. Heh.

I also opened the kitties’ Secret Paw packages, because they’re Yulecats. Felony was quite excited. For her, anyway. They recieved some fun toys - like feathers and pompoms (okay, I stole these for my tree, but only momentarily… honest…) and catnip and a feather boa, which Felony likes very much… and this cute little birdie with a bell on a stick. At first, they were freaked out by it, and Sebastian actually meowed and ran away. But I got him and Felony to play with it eventually. Tsuki just wanted to curl up in the now-vacant spot under the tree to sleep. She even refused the treats their Secret Paw sent!

“Hey, gimme more treats! Those cheese ones were great!”

So, I never did get around to blogging about Samhain. Bad! *swat* But, I did do a little something for the evening. Not much, granted, like I told A. I lit candles. About a half million of them or so. I spared a thought for those passed on - my grandfathers, but mostly Ed, and little Salem, of course. I put out milk and bread for the land spirits. And I laid out some tarot cards.

I wasn’t really in the mood, to be honest. It crept up on me, the 31st of October, with me decorating like, three days before, and cursing time for moving so bloody fast, and then whoosh. Gone. The wheel turns fast, children, and if you blink, you’ll miss something. Like, entire holidays, perhaps, like the autumn equinox, or that silly one on the first of August (Lammas) that means about as much to me as any other day in August, or even a night like Halloween.

Blink.

We’re five days into November, and it feels like it should still be September 1st or something, except for the chill and the first dusting of snow we had tonight. Time just seems to be sweeping along at a breakneck pace, kind of like Nascar, if you ask me - a circular race to nowhere, just go go go, as fast as you can.

I need to slow down. If there’s anything this year has taught me, it’s that I need to spend more time living in the real world, appreciating the little things in life. No, not just the little things - the real things. Things outside of my own head, outside of my own thoughts. I need to step into this world, the real one, and take a breather from the worlds in my head, and the time I spend on them.

Fresh air. Sunrise. Sunset. A cup of tea. The chickens running around the yard. Yarn and bread dough in my hands. The scent of warming cider and muffins and fresh laundry. Spending time with people - real people, in the flesh. And spending time alone - really alone, not hovering around online chatting with faraway friends.

Tarot did me little good that night - my mind was on other things. But that’s okay - I didn’t need the cards to tell me what I needed to know. I just needed Father Time to come kick my ass into November, to wake me up and say: “Hey, pay attention, girl. Life’s passing you by. Come enjoy it while you can.”

So today was Columbus Day. A rather uninspired holiday, if you ask me. Columbus tries to sail around the world, or at least, to India, and fails, and ‘discovers’ a continent that a great many groups of native peoples have known and lived on for probably at least a thousand years or some shit. We actually close our banks and our stores for this guy?

Hoi.

Anyway, as far as holidays go, Columbus Day is rather pathetic. Nobody gets together for Columbus Day Feasts, or gives little columbi-gifts, or even acknowledges that the man existed, except maybe in gradeschool. What do we do on Columbus Day? Close shop, and throw up a flag. Because, uh… yeah, I really don’t know why. Most of the time, we everyday joes here in the States ask each other, “So, what holiday is it supposed to be today? President’s Day? No, can’t be. Memorial Day? Veteran’s Day? Ohh. Right. Columbus Day. Haha.”

Aside from the fact that the dick didn’t deserve a holiday to begin with (bless my blasphemous soul), what is it that makes a holiday a holiday? What makes Columbus Day and President’s Day so different from the other holidays of the year, like Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or even the 4th of July?

Connections. Personalization. Nobody knows Columbus, and in this day of modern feats, where you can jump from New York to Australia in a matter of hours, nobody really cares what he did. President’s Day? Nobody knows any presidents - at least, not any decent ones, and nobody really cares about those dead and gone. What do we care about? Family. Religion. And fun. We celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter for religious or familial reasons. We celebrate New Year’s and Halloween simply because it’s a blast to dress up or go out and party. We celebrate the 4th of July because it’s got fireworks, and it’s in the middle of the summer, when everyone wants a vacation anyway. Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day aren’t big in my family, but if you’ve got a vet in the family who needs honoring, or you’ve lost those close to you, they become more important.

As a pagan, I’ve found celebrating the pagan holidays damned difficult. Yule is easy - it’s right next to Christmas. But I don’t know any pagans in real life - not close to me, anyway - and it’s not like I throw a Yule party. Nor do I get so much as an acknowledgment from anyone I know that it /is/ a holiday. I don’t send out Yule cards - I send out Christmas cards. Everyone I know celebrates Christmas. I follow their customs. I don’t have a nice family dinner that day. I don’t do /anything/ except small personal rituals.

And that’s the easy one of the year - well, perhaps next to Samhain. Halloween is pagan from the get-go and that can’t be denied.

The others? Much harder. Holidays are difficult without family. I’ve got a religious reason, but it’s difficult without the support backing of family - of friends. What makes a celebration, except people? People - in the plural. One person makes for a difficult celebration. More of an acknowledgment. A reverence, perhaps. You can have a good reason for a holiday - religious, thanks, fun, etc. - but a holiday still isn’t much without a celebration of sorts behind it.

If I wasn’t surrounded by people who celebrated Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving, I don’t know that I’d do that either. Throw up some deco, maybe. But (to me, at least) holidays are about getting together with the people you love.

I don’t have a pagan support group in real life. I may never have a Beltane feast. But at least these holidays have a place in my heart that Columbus’s ‘discovery’ ever will.

Just when the weather warms and short sleeves sound nicer than a sweater, and the air is still cool but refreshing, and the sun eases the winter’s chill from your bones, and the grass begins to sprout green, and you start to think that maybe, just maybe, the end of winter is here… you look out the window one morning at the end of march and say:

Light overturns darkness today, and I’m glad for it. We now have twelve hours of darkness, twelve hours of daylight, and it’s growning lighter every day. I’m feeling it in my bones, feel life returning to the earth with every passing day. I’ve been growing restless, wanting to do something, wanting to create, wanting to grow, wanting ot change, wanting to live and laugh and breathe fresh air and see the sunshine again.

Spring is here, though where I’m at, it’s still in its early stages - freezing hard at night, but drifting slowly into warmer days. This time next month, I’ll have a brood of chickens and will be planting potatos and lettuce and chives, and a month later, all my seeds will be in the garden, hopefully beginning to sprout.

A month after that, and I’ll be regretting it all as I struggle through hot days and the drone of the air conditioner and a scant few hours of good sleep every day as I try to keep the house cool enough that my body doesn’t mind sleeping through the sunshine.

But until then, I’m soaking it up.

Did a tarot reading. Celtic cross, the new deck A gave me for Christmas. I gifted oats and milk (okay, okay, half and half… even better!) to the garden plot, and dug up a bit of dirt for the altar. It’s still pretty frozen, so I’ve gotta let it thaw before I can do anything with it.

The sun’s just coming up, and I’ve gotta go to bed now, get a few hours of sleep, and drive to the big city to keep my mother company. Grandma goes into surgery today, and I’m gonna be there for a night to keep her company. Must remember to bring my knitting - and lots of it.

Thirteen Things About Ostara

1. Ostara is a pagan celebration of spring, normally celebrated on March 20th or 21st, at the spring equinox. The equinox is a time when night and day are equal on Earth. The Spring equinox marks the beginning of the light half of the year, where day gradually grows longer than the night.
2. The name Ostara is thought to have come from the goddess Eostre. All this probably sounds familiar - as Easter is yet another name supposedly stemming from the same.
3. At its heart, Ostara is a fertility rite, celebrating the return of life in the spring.
4. Eggs and rabbits - two ancient fertility symbols - are its main themes. Both remind us of new beginnings, new life, and growth. These are present in modern day Easter, as well, in case you ever wondered what the heck bunnies and colored eggs have to do with it.
5. In certain pagan lore (mostly Wiccan), the young God at the Goddess choose this time to mate. A child is concieved: the young sun god that will be born nine months later, at Yule.
6. Modern day Easter is always set according to the spring equinox, as well - it set each year on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox, which is why the date varies so much.
7. Rumor has it that at the exact equinox (down to the minute), the world spins just right, and you can balance an egg on its tip. Curious. I’ve never had the opportunity to try it.
8. Pagans often choose this time to plant magical or herb gardens, or at least prepare for them, to concescrate their tools, and to bring balance to their lives and their spiritual workings.
9. Traditional Ostara colors: pastel green, yellow, and pink.
10. Some Ostara gods and goddesses: all love, fertility, and virginal gods and goddesses.
11. Traditional foods: Eggs (especially hardboiled), fruit, leafy green vegetables, dairy foods, apples, nuts, sprouts, hot cross buns, honey cakes.
12. Plants and herbs associated with Ostara: Acorn, celandine, cinquefoil, crocus, daffodil, dogwood, Easter lily, gorse, honeysuckle, iris, jasmine, jonquils, narcissus, olive, peony, rose, tansy, violets, woodruff and all spring flowers.
13. Decorate for Ostara with spring flowers, bunnies, eggs, and garden motifs.

1. Candy Minx 2. Christine 3. Uisce

4. Janet 5. Laughing Muse 6. Games,Video 7. You're next!

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To work graveyard shifts day in and day out is a difficult task, and one I relish being done with once it has passed me by, though only the goddess knows when that will be. While I am - and have always been - a night-owl of sorts, it’s become increasingly difficult for me to reconcile my inner cicardian rhythm to the earth’s cycles to the shifts I work. Everything changes when you begin sleeping through the day and working through the night, from sleep to meals to socialization to shopping. It’s almost like living in another world, or at least on another plane of reality.

I work from midnight until eight in the morning. I typically sleep anywhere from 8:30-10am until 5-6pm. Today, when I woke up at 5:30pm, it was just growing dark. A month ago, it would have already been dark for almost a half an hour. Today, when I woke, it was February 19th. By the time I settled down with my tea at work, it was February 20th. I live every day split in half and straddling the line. Every day is two days, and sometimes, it feels like it, too. My ‘last night’ was really your ‘today’, and somtimes my ‘tonight’ was your last night, and my ‘tomorrow’ is actually your ‘day after tomorrow’, or, depending on the time, it could very well be your ‘today’. See how confusing this is? It confuses me, too. Today is now Thursday, February 20th, and at eight am, “tomorrow” will still be February 20th. That’s because I might still be thinking it’s “today, February 19th”, but it’s not, not anymore. And “tomorrow” on February 20th, at, say, eleven pm, I might look at the calender and think to myself: “Gosh, it’s Friday already [because it almost IS Friday, if Friday actually starts at midnight, which, according to my work schedule, it does], and tomorrow [meaning Saturday], I have to clean house!” But then people are confused, because ‘tomorrow’ is actually Friday to them, not Saturday… because in fact, it’s still Thursday.

See, it makes no sense, and that is why I never know what day it is, and sometimes, today can be yesterday, today, and tomorrow all at once.

Then there’s sleeping. It’s hard to sleep in the daylight. Even with black curtains, light still seeps in through the adjoining bathroom window, and around the tops of the curtains, and through the doorway leading to the living room. And it’s warmer in the daylight. A person’s body temperature drops slightly when we prepare to sleep, and the cooler night air aids one in this task. I’ve learned something in the last two years - I cannot sleep if the room temperature is over 70 degrees F. I wake up, I sleep restlessly, I wake and sleep and wake and thrash and toss and turn and struggle. It is difficult, even with air conditioning in the summer, to keep a south facing bedroom below 70 degrees. In the winter, it’s easier on both conditions. Unfortunately, that means I suffer a bit from SAD, since I…. never ever see the sunlight.

Last December, I walked home at eight in the morning and could watch the sun finally poke over the horizon from my living room window before I went to bed. And when I woke, it had been dark already for over an hour. Sunlight was a bit foreign to me, and I grow a bit… homey and lazy and a little depressed because of it. Believe it or not, darkness makes me want to sleep! *laugh*

Other oddities - I eat ‘breakfast’ every day… but my ‘breakfast’ food turns out to be more like… dinner. Because everyone eats dinner at exactly the time of day I’m waking up. So for ‘breakfast’ I’ll often have, say, tacos, or roast beef, or spaghetti. And for ‘dinner’ I’ll have hashbrowns after I get off work, or cereal, or eggs. Breakfast food at normal breakfast time, but definitely not ‘breakfast’ for me. And for lunch, of course, it’s leftover ‘breakfast’ or something nukable since I have no lunch hour at work and must just be content with whatever I have at the office. Not like there’s any stores open at 3am!

More, I deal with being social, spending time with family and friends, right after I wake up. In fact, A often calls me within 2-3 minutes after I climb out of bed. Yes, this is deliberate. Sometimes, she calls many times in a row hoping I’ll be semi-awake while I’m in bed and hear the phone, and get up to answer it. Because hey, it’s social hour for her. For me, it’s like… wtf, can’t I shower, man? So often, I’m up and out of bed and having company before I’ve even eaten ‘breakfast’. Which is a little odd. I actually would love to be able to, say, get up and have some me-time before I greet the day. Doing yoga right after I wake as the sun rises or whatever sounds lovely… but it’s just not practical. For one, the sun is going down, and for two… people don’t like to start calling on friends after like, eight o’clock. I mean, they have lives, too, and sometimes they actually sleep during the night…

So some of the daily rituals I’d like to do just aren’t very feasible. I’d love to live a more natural, in tune with nature daily cycle, but I just can’t do it with the shift I work.

Oh well. Bigger and badder things to worry about, I suppose. But it’s something that’s been vaguely pricking at me for… like… a year.

January has been a month of reading. To be honest, I haven’t done a lot else. Knit 1/3 of a scarf. Finished up a sewing project I should’ve finished in November (the advent calendar - which, by the way, is totally super adorable), no baking, no intriging projects, nothing but cozying up and reading.

January’s a good time for that - unpredictable weather, harsh winds, chilly snow, so very little daylight, so very little warmth and energy. The rush of the holidays and the excitement of autumn long gone, I just sort of… curled up and rested all month long. I suppose I might have went into a bit of a hibernation like the bears. Is that so bad? All this month, I’ve been berating myself for it. Lazy! I’d write in my planner for the day’s events. Sometimes I wouldn’t write anything at all. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

But then I think of the animals that curl up and rest in the winter, and I think of all the furious knitting I did throughout autumn, and I think of the sewing and the crafts and the moving and the baking and the rush, and I think that perhaps a month-long resting period wasn’t so bad at all. Maybe it’s just what I needed.

I’m starting to feel the fires of creativity burn again. I want to sew, I want to knit, I want to /do/. I wanted to knit tonight, but it’s been a couple weeks since I worked on the scarf, and I’ve forgotten the pattern, so I’ll have to dig it up. Perhaps tomorrow.

But I read! Tonight I finished a book I would recommend to anyone who loves an enchanting story: The Thirteenth Tale, which is lovely and haunting and mesmerizing and too many other words to put down. If you have a love of books, read it! I also read On the Banks of Plum Creek - one of the Little House series books tonight, and those books always make me feel so warm and cozy and wanting to have a little house and a little family somewhere out in the middle of nowhere like that.

I read 14 books in January, and you can see which ones, and short, semi-coherent thoughts on each, on the 101 Things Booklist, linked to the right. Not bad. Approximately one book every 2 days or so. Not too shabby at all! A good way to kickstart my imagination.

Soon, it will be Imbolc, and then, I will pay homage to Brigid/Brigit, Irish goddess of creative inspiration, among many other things, and perhaps then, I will rise from this hibernation to return to life again with the growing light.