Stash Enhancement!

Yesterday, my buddy Lucky and I spent the whole day and evening together - 12 full hours!!! We began with a trip to our local needlework shop, Cross Stitch Cupboard in Fort Lauderdale - the cupboard had called me the night before to let me know that all the Nashville Needlework show goodies were ready for viewing. Naturally, I called her and we high-tailed it over there. We spent two hours browsing about, chatting with everyone, oohing and ahhing over all the goods and selecting our purchases - here's a photo of the goods.

As you can see, I made off with some charts, including a beehive house to be traced on fabric and embroidered in stem stitch, french knots and satin stitch. A stitching sampler on 40 count gauze with a tiny frame, Cackle & The World Cackles With You - for the witch wall, The Queen Bee (I JUST had to) and ANOTHER pair of scissors - I could not resist these, copper handles, antique style, oh well! A little box for my scissors & needles and a little zippered bag in a cute country pattern just because. Blackbird Design's Bird In Hand Reward of Merit Pincushion chart - another just had to and a little wooden box with a chart - Button Box from Olde Colonial Designs finished my stash.

After those two grueling hours of shopping we were in need of sustenance so off to Friday's for a nice lunch with a sweet waitress who took very good care of us. Then... on to Bead and Art in Lighthouse Point. We had been there a couple of weeks ago to take a class - we learned rosary wrap with wire. Below is the combined stash from both visits. The bracelet is pretty neat - you unscrew one of the balls and slid on a selection of beads, bingo! Instant bracelet - which you can change whenever you like. Carnelian, wood, bone, dragonscale agate in teal and orange red, fire agate, aquamarine, snakeskin agate as well as a sample of my rosary wraps.
After the beading shop, naturally we required coffee, so we stopped for that, then headed home. Of course we had to look through all our stuff, but then we finally got down to some stitching. We were interrupted by Mike, if you can believe it, because he was hungry for dinner! The utter nerve, LOL! Off he goes to pick up barbecue takeout, which, after all that stitching, we appreciated since, once again, we required sustenance to keep us going - which we did - stitched until Lucky decided we should read tarot cards. Well, I'm always up for that so we spent a good while at that mystical endeavor. Finally, after eleven, twelve hours after we began, we called it a night.

I can't leave these goodies out.... on Friday I received a shipment from The Scarlet Letter with something I have been wanting for a while - a chart and kit to stitch a reproduction of Jane Rees 1869, A Bristol House Orphan Sampler! Beautiful. I also received the book, Stitched in Adversity, Samplers of the Poor by Whitney Antiques - of course I am already reading this and the photos are wonderful - lots of detail - of this beautiful collection of samplers. Lastly, my first kit of four from Country Sampler's Stacy Nash 2010 Primitive Handwork Club, a heart shaped needlebook to go along with all those scissors.
And so, with the the full moon to celebrate, music to play and a little cooking to be done along with all this stitching (never mind all the freebie patterns I've found online!) I had best get to it!!!

Blessings Nine!

The A-muse-ing Test

Your result for The A-Muse-ing Test...

Your muse is Terpsichore!

30% Terpsichore, 20% Calliope, 0% Thalia, 10% Urania, 0% Clio, 10% Erato, 10% Euterpe, 10% Melpomene, and 10% Polyhymnia!

Terpsichore is the muse of choral song and dance. She is known as the "one who delights in dance." She is the one that rules over dance and chorus. She will give you the inspiration for grace of movement and the ability to stay on tempo.

Call upon Terpsichore when you are in need of a little grace and elegance.

Go somewhere that lets you truly shake your legs out and get rid of the blues. Take someone by the hand and just cut loose. Let the music fill you and don't think about anything. Allow yourself to just move and feel and experience the sound as it moves through you. Just be yourself as you cut loose. The freedom that Terpsichore offers through the grace of dance can fill the soul and free the spirit.

Take The A-Muse-ing Test at HelloQuizzy

Making Music - A New Instrument

But the wise daughters of the Mousa

bring too their healing balm,

the soft embrace of song

Pindar, Nemean Ode

Will you just look at this beautiful girl - she is my new mountain dulcimer, Little Bessie. Her name is taken from a song by the same name, which I love. She arrived this afternoon and tonight I was playing - not wonderfully, I've only owned her for a few hours, but playing and delighted all the same. I love the sound of the mountain dulcimer and this one sings a very sweet song.

Little Bessie has four pretty hearts with vine-like scrolls carved into her and she is made of black walnut, red cedar and has a rosewood inlay. The headstock and fingerboard are maple overlay with rosewood over that. Just gorgeous and we seem to like each other very well. Many will understand this, that there can be an energetic connection between a person and a tool of art. As soon as I picked her up, I felt that connection, strong and alive.

Tomorrow I shall make appropriate offering to Hekate, for She brings creative energy to those who honor Her, for this wonderful gift. In addition, offerings to the Muses, especially Kalliope (Beautiful voice), Melpomene (Celebrating with song) and Polyhymnia (Many hymns) also seem quite appropriate. Perhaps even a dedication of this instrument to all of Them!

I just love these sweet hearts and vine-like scrolls!

My friend Susan and I are working at guitars and the dulcimer. She teaches music in her own little music school and is very talented. I go back and forth with music, but I seem to have found my perfect instrument with Little Bessie. Perhaps you'll hear us singing some night in a coffee shop or bar! Sirens strumming and singing their magical songs!

Trusting in it and in the Mousai of the crimson headdress,

I, for my part, display this gift of songs.

Bacchylides, Fragment 13

And on the immortals' hearts,

Your shafts, poetry & song

Instill a charmed spell...

Pindar, Pythian Ode

Blessings nine!

Books Read in 2010 - So Far! Hekate's Deipnon

What was it, a week or two ago I spoke about listing the books I've read so far in 2010? So, here it is, the good, the bad and the ugly - fluff as well as the good stuff.

I am not a snob where reading is concerned. Sometimes one just needs light reading, especially when one is working one's way through more intellectual reading. I'll be listing everything to make it to one hundred books read in a year - although honestly, I don't think I will have any problem accomplishing this! Just looking at the stack next to my comfy chair - and that stack doesn't include novels - I'm well on the way.

Now, you may think that all this reading cuts into my stitching time. It doesn't, I give each whatever time I can and no stress about it. I read many blogs where people are apologizing for not writing more often, not stitching much, etc. etc. - by the gods, give yourselves a break! There is something really wrong with our society when people feel they must apologize for not writing enough on blogs. Relax already! Enjoy life. Write, read, stitch, play, nap, cook or DON'T - whatever - as much as makes you happy and do it for yourself!

Now for my books. This is no hardship or stressful undertaking for me - I LOVE to read. There's nothing like settling into a book, novel or otherwise. Off I go into another world for a while - how delightful. I recommend it highly.

1. The Ghost & The Haunted Mansion - Alice Kimberly

2. Blood Sins - Kay Hooper

3. Crewel Yule - Monica Ferris

4. Fear No Evil - Allison Brennan

5. Execution Dock - Anne Perry

6. Homo Necans, The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual & Myth - Walter Burkert

7. Nightwalker - Heather Graham

8. Mansfield Park & Mummies - Jane Austen & Vera Nazarian

9. Jane Bites Back - Michael Thomas Ford

10. Mountain Talk - Peggy Poe Stern

I am currently reading three books - one of which is a novel - the other two a bit heavier. I will not list any book until finished.

Also on tonight's agenda - Hekate's Deipnon. I celebrate this just before the new moon, making a libation and leaving offerings at the hedge circle after invocations, prayers and some candle work. Tonight it is damp and very windy, full of the Land's energy. As I sit here writing, the wind is whistling and whooshing outside. A perfect night for a bit of magic!

Blessings nine!

Seed Thoughts

From December to March,

there are for many of us three gardens -

the garden outdoors,

the garden of pots and bowls in the house,

and the garden of the mind's eye.

Katherine S. White

Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle

... a seed waiting to sprout,

a bulb opening to the light,

a bud straining to unfurl.

And the anticipation nurtures our dream.

Barbara Winkler

On for the rook, One for the crow,

One to die, One to grow.

Traditional

Blessings nine!

James Ray indicted

James Arthur Ray has been indicted on three counts of manslaughter for the deaths in the sweat lodge at his retreat in Sedona. Here is an article from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/us/04sweat.html?hp

I can only hope that the truth is revealed, but with lawsuits pending in addition to the manslaughter charges, this may just come down to money.

Blessings nine!

100 Books

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do my reading habits stack up?An X marks each book I've read over many years.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -x
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - x
6 The Bible -x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman- x
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x

Sub-total: 10

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - x
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare-x
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien -x
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - x
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot-x

Sub-total: 8

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens X
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy x
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams-
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh x
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x

Sub-total: 8

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - x
34 Emma-Jane Austen- x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen- X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis -x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - x

Sub-total: 7

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins x
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy x
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood x
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Sub-total: 7

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert- x
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen- x
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - x
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - x
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Sub-total: 4

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - x
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt-
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy-
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x

Sub-total: 5

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker- x
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - x
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce- x
76 The Inferno – Dante-x
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackery x

Sub-total: 6

80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens- x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Sub-total: 4

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad-
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl -
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo x

Sub-total: 4

Total: 63

Well, there you are! So much for the BBC! However, this inspires me to keep a list of everything I read this year. I've been busy stitching through January so it was not as busy reading as usual and... no text books from school. I'll post my January list tomorrow.

Blessings nine!