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!

Jane Austen, the Goddess Pages & the weekend!

Well, another busy week. Took my pre-salon final and have now moved on to the next level at school. I even have two customers booked for next week!

Too busy to stitch, but I did manage to finish Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters and move on to Pride & Prejudice & Zombies which is even more of a hoot! Really enjoying it. And if you think that should be enough Jane Austen for me, you would be wrong! Thanks to Netflix, tonight I watched Northanger Abbey, Masterpiece 2007 version, which was just great. Looking forward to Becoming Jane as well as Miss Austen regrets.

Now, that should have been enough excitement for a week, but there was more! I will have an article in the winter issue of Goddess Pages. This is both a paper and on line magazine. My article is an account of my Nine Nights of the Winter Solstice Hallowing in 2007 which includes the ritual and some magical work. I am honored and pleased. You can find out more info at http://www.goddess-pages.co.uk/

I am off to the Inner Mysteries Intensive workshop with Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone in Miami this weekend. I attended last year in May and enjoyed meeting them both so I'm looking forward to this year's event.

Blessings nine!

October Blessings

"Delicious autumn!   My very soul is wedded to it, 
  and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth 
  seeking the successive autumns." 
- George Elliot -   

  "The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on." 


-   Emily Dickinson,  Nature 27 - Autumn -

Happy October! I love Autumn most of all and wouldn't mind a bit if I lived in a perpetual Autumn. I have strong memories of Octobers in New York - the scent of the apple orchard, burning leaves, the earthy scent of the season's decay. There was a flurry of apple pie making in my childhood home, filling the freezer with pies ready to be baked. Bushels of apples sat in the basement and that scent lingers in my memory too. I can remember sitting in the backyard under one of our big willows, the air chilly and crisp, thinking how much I loved that season.
Well, I am in a place now that has perpetual summer and while I certainly appreciate the lovely weather, I miss and long for autumn. I have to create it inside of Toadstool Condo and I do that with great gusto! This includes making apple butter, baking apple pies, decorating for the season and anything else that will satisfy that longing.
Usually I trek to North Carolina for a week or so in October each year, however, this year I will have to remain home due to school commitments. I am a little sad, but will somehow make it up to myself and enjoy my October here at home.
And now... a cup of tea!
Blessings nine!