That’s my kitty Cherry, in whole-hog freak out mode!
Happy Friday th 13th, dear reader. We have I think 3 Friday the 13ths this year– lucky indeed!
To celebrate I’m having a sale in the shop today. 13% off everything. Use coupon code FRIDAY13 at checkout!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/feralstrumpet
My first live selling gig has been a huge success, thanks to the highly organized volunteers of the British Science Fiction Association convention, Olympus 2012. I saw many old friends and made countless new ones. What struck me about the event was how friendly the whole vibe was. Everyone could fly their freak flag proudly! I think I’ve never been around so many people who actually got my jokes. I laughed for three days, and did a did a bang up business, besides! My stock is seriously depleted. I need to get busy making things– especially because selling at Whitby Gothic Weekend is right around the corner.
Of all the pagan feast days, Imbolc is close to my heart. Spring is coming– and Brigid presides over the new sun, the quickening sap in the trees, the buds preparing to flower.
Brigid’s presence is felt all over this island, with many places being named after her. Brid(e) is Brigid; t is thought that her blessing was sought by brides. She is also the goddess of blackberries and swans, poets and blacksmiths– a perfect correspondence! I feel her over my shoulder as I work.
I have quoted Emily Dickinson’s poem 365 here before, but it is perfect here:
Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?
Then crouch within the door –
Red — is the Fire’s common tint –
But when the vivid Ore
Has vanquished Flame’s conditions,
It quivers from the Forge
Without a color, but the light
Of unanointed Blaze.
Least Village has its Blacksmith
Whose Anvil’s even ring
Stands symbol for the finer Forge
That soundless tugs — within –
Refining these impatient Ores
With hammer, and with Blaze
Until the Designated Light
Repudiate the Forge –
To celebrate today, I’ve experimented with making some incense from dried herbs and flowers– basil, bay, camomile flowers, cinnamon, dill, nettle and rosemary. All ground up with my mortar and pestle and burned over a charcoal disc.
Blessed Imbolc, dear reader!
Imbolc Bride, Necklace by Feral Strumpet on Etsy
Nevermore illustration from AntiqueGraphique on Etsy
Happy Birthday, Edgar Allen Poe.
Thank you to everyone who has stopped by the blog and has helped promote my shop over the last few days of this Poe-party. The winner of the Poe Grimoire bookmark has been chosen by the whims of fate (out of a hat), and she is the inimitable Jo Taylor– fantastic dancer and member of the wonderful 400 Roses Morris side.
Beautiful Jo is in the back row, far left!
Another manifestation of the Nevermoore bookmark is, of course, still available in my Etsy shop!
Poe Nevermore Grimoire Bookmark by Feral Strumpet on Etsy
This is the second post of three in honor of Poe’s Birthday on Thursday. I’m celebrating by having a giveaway in my Etsy shop! Read on for details.
I can’t remember my first encounter with Poe. I know I had to read The Tell Tale Heart when I was about 9 and it seared itself in my consciousness– one of those moments where you feel the initial betrayal of the universe, the dispelling of childhood. Yes, the world is a dark place! But I also have a visceral memory of the Vincent Price hour-long dramatic interpretation– reproduced in the above Youtube video. Though, I must have seen it as a re-run. Watching this I remember Price’s profound effect on me– the camp in his performance– the perfect last facet of his persona– was lost on me as a child. You could call it a crush, that feeling he gave me, but I told no one, of course! Others were cutting out pictures of Shaun Cassidy from Tiger Beat. Yeah, it explains a lot– I also had a thing for Dan Haggerty/Grizzly Adams.
In Angela Carter’s meditation on Poe, “The Cabinet of Edgar Allen Poe” she imagines him as a child. His infancy is invented with her charateristic cynical compassion and narrative shifts, like facets in the void-world of the story. (She no doubt learned a trick or two from Poe–taking his unreliable narrators one step further). His mother, a vaudevillian actor, is rendered vividly– to this day I can’t think of Poe without seeing the grease-painted ghost of his mother close behind. Such is the power of Carter’s writing.
“Edgar would lie in prop-baskets on heaps of artificial finery and watch her while she painted her face. The candles made a profane altar of the mirror in which her vague face swam like a magic fish….”
The Nevermore Grimoire Bookmark by Feral Strumpet on Etsy
And, perhaps the only thing that would make my Poe Nevermore bookmark more lovely is if it were between the covers of The Trials of Edgar Allen Poe, a collection of poems by one of my favourite poets and essayists, Ned Balbo.
Today is the last day to enter the Nevermore bookmark giveaway! Blog, Tweet or click the “like” button on your favourite item in my Etsy shop to be entered to win. Be sure to comment here so I know to enter you. Winner will be chosen tomorrow by a highly random, Discordian approved process that may involve kittens.
It is too dark to work. The sky is stark and without depth, like the inside of an egg. Everything will have to wait for the light. All the holiday shipments have been sent, and the post office is peaceful again. I have run out of many supplies– it has been an amazing first holiday season for the new business. I’m tired, but in a very good way.
Here’s a wonderful musing on Yule from a fellow blogger: http://www.siomonnpulla.com/2011/12/04/the-return-of-the-light-seasonal-reflections-on-christmas-and-new-year/
One day I will make it Stonehenge for the solstice, but not this year. I will be making tamales this weekend and trimming the little black tinsel tree with potential earring designs and origami.
In the meantime I have made a mixed tape of all my favourite holiday songs: Spotify playlist for Yule. (There is a high dork quotient on this list…you have been warned!)
I wish all my readers bright blessings this Yule!
The Mistletoe Bride set by Feral Strumpet on Etsy
The Secret Metamorphosis Necklace
The Secret Metamorphosis has been featured in this garden-themed treasury on Etsy. For the first time in over ten years I actually have a garden of my own. It’s a little brick corner, but it’s mine. Of course, I missed planting season and it is a bit bare. There are no butterflies flitting about the clothesline, but maybe next year. I have read that they are disappearing, which, like the sad news about the bees, makes me despair. I will be researching and planning a garden with butterfly-friendly plants.
I do have a wormery, which is a weird mediation on death and the cycle of life every couple of weeks when I go to tend to it! Right now I keep it in the old outhouse which will act as a shed.
Just think, I have all late summer and winter to dream about the perfect potted garden.
The Garden Goodies Treasury on Etsy
Lately I’ve been thinking about Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire, that mediation on angelic compassion. It has Rilke at its heart, insisting on sensual witness, on human delights that one imagines angels can only envy. Rilke wrote “Every angels is terrifying”.
This conviction is missing from the fluffy New Age vision of guardian angels– something I reject. It’s not that I don’t believe, it’s that I’m convinced seeing one would destroy you. With that said, what about hearing angels? What about that little voice that seems to come from within and without? That is real– it has a name in Hebrew: Bat Kol, or small voice– the voice of the divine.
This is my concession to the sentimentalized angel– a little Victorian wing suspended from a vintage rosary fragment– Mary’s profile worn to a glossy ghost by years of prayer, combined with the carnival glitter of Swarovski crystals and vintage mardi gras beads. I would hope Wim Wenders’ angel Damiel would approve.
The Bat Kol Rosary Necklace on Etsy
Mardi Gras, French for “Fat Tuesday,” is the last all-out party day before Lent. The tradition of “throws” or beads tossed from floats dates from the 1920s. Originally the necklaces were made of Czech glass up until the 1960s when plastic was introduced.
For many years I combed the flea markets and junk shops of New Orleans collecting these vintage strands of beads, lovingly restringing them and imagining the street parties and music infused with their history.
I was particularly fascinated by these strands that had survived the throws and their original destiny as a kind of disposable favor. There’s a chaotic beauty in their random patterns, and now that they have new clasps they seem to be just waiting for the joyful noise of the next Fat Tuesday.
More vintage Mardi Gras beads can be found in my Etsy shop.
London really does get under your skin!
