It must be our legendary January thaw in December. We've been having highs right around the freezing mark for the past several days, up from the brutal -10 to 10(F) range we've been living in for weeks. It actually feels warm outside!
Aside from the streets cleared of snow and ice, and the relief from cold so intense it burns exposed skin, this trend has given us rare sky colors. Christmas Eve day we were treated to a muted winter lavendar sky, and with the color reflected on the snow and bouncing back up to the heavens, it was like living gently in the third eye. Mesmerizing.
Today, it's fog, the color of an ash-filled smoke. Not thick enough to put us in that rare, between-the-worlds environment, where everything familiar is hidden in the fog. Thick enough, though, to draw the eye and spirit and adventurous body out to the gentleness of 100% humidity manifested as fog.
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By 9pm tonight, I'll be 52. Looking at that, I realize it's a numerological 7. I can work with that.
This afternoon, the south wall of the Cat Temple arrives -- modular shelving from
Lundia.
This evening, a
Dremel. Timely. Yesterday we inaugurated the crafting area of the Cat Temple — beading will be happening over the holidays!
Tonight, home-made carrot cake with Italian Cream Icing. Yum. Don't know who's making it, but I've requested it and between my beloved and my beloved friend
Sarah, I believe it will happen.
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It started last January. It hasn't taken over my life. It has occasionally taken over the living room.
I've been seen crocheting at choir rehearsal, in the car, at witch school, and at parties.
Let me count the ways: 4 afghans, 20-30 hats, 4 Tarot pouches, a belt, a scarf, a blanket (in the works), a wand muff, a music-stand carrier, a beaded crochet bracelet. My goals for 2006: one or more items for
afghans for Afghans, more baby caps, learning more patterns and stitches, two blankets for our bedroom, and perfecting my witch hat design (see grainy photo #3). Everyone who's tried one on has looked awesome in it, and everyone seems to want one!
A Graphic Recap of My Crochet Year
Baby Beanie
Coral Cap for Friend's Mom
Witch Hat #1
The crocheted Witch Hat came out of my imagination. The first one wasn't too bad, I think, considering I made it in my third month of crochet, without a pattern. I learned a lot with the first three hats, and by hat #4 I was ready to call it good enough and gifted it to a friend who says, with tongue in cheek, "Won't my teenagers be proud," and "I'll just tell them that if I ever have to come to school because they've been in trouble, I'll wear my witch hat." Witch hats #5 and #6 are gifts (in progress) for my Spiral Door teachers. After I've done a few more to work through a few more bugs, I'll make a pattern to satisfy the millions who will want one.
I'm crazy for crochet. I don't know how I lived 50 years without it.
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Last night we had our fifth snow of the season. The earlier ones have been sugar snows, the first like powdered sugar -- very light, the third like granulated sugar -- a little more substantial, but just a dusting nonetheless.
This fifth snow rates. It brought down several inches of soft white beauty, blanketed trees, gardens, and bird feeders, and called snow plows out of the barns and onto the streets for their first round of winter service. It's been several years since we had November snows. The
NOAA 2005-2006 Winter Outlook forecasts a warmer than usual winter, and that usually means more snow around here.
In the last few weeks, the cats have been out on the porch, and then confined inside, over and and over again, as our temperatures have ranged from the low 20s to the mid 40s or higher. Right now, the porch-thermometer's needle points directly to the 20 degree marker and the cats are in. Our work on the Cat Temple continues, and soon they'll have a permanent indoor space where we can visit, do devotions, and craft as long as we let them play with the occasional bead or string of yarn. Next spring, a screened pen wrapping around the northwest corner of the house, with access from both windows in the Cat Temple, will provide the outdoor experience they love -- an experience that protects them and their would-be prey, too. The illness and behavioral problems that have necessitated the Cat Temple are bringing blessings to all of us; the illness is healed; the behavioral problems can be managed in the Temple and with the blessings of the cat goddesses they may be overcome. So mote it be!
The early snows and the roller-coaster thermometer have been outer indicators of season change, but my inner landscape has not been in sync. This year's Hallows didn't feel like year end/new year, as it usually does, and I'm just beginning to believe that the slower pace and more quiet days of winter will give me a much-needed shift, seasonal and psychological.
I've been unusually busy this fall with a new web site birthed for a friend's
midwifery practice; talking, strategizing, and visioning with Z Budapest about her site and how my ministry can support it and be supported by it; a fabulous Gathering at Equinox with a keynote speech by
Wendy Griffin on the origins of "our religion" that started with this phrase, repeated several times: "All religions mythologize their origins"; a few moves forward in the slow development of the Goddess Scholars group and site; exciting new growth for
MatriFocus developing on several fronts, and new web work forthcoming with the Black Earth Institute.
On the home front, two dramatic developments:
- a major tree thinning/pruning and underbrush clearing of the thicket between us and the lake, taken on to replace the lake views at the front of our house which we lost when new neighbors built a garage that obstructed not just our view of the beachfront-side of the lake but more dramatically the incredible light the lake reflects; necessity (theirs) and grief (ours) that ended in a win-win-win.
- the afore-mentioned Cat Temple project with hiring helpers and electricians and carpenters/installers and all the upheaval involved in re-arranging major spaces and belongings (most impressive change: 2500 books, 120 linear feet of book shelving, and a library table moved into the living room with great effect)
And thrown into the mix: my beloved's many days of overtime spent on a major project, the farewell concert of the feminist choir she's sung in for 12 years and I for 5, and our mutual graduation from the four-year Spiral Door program, with the many preparations for the graduation including gift-making activities, in the midst of chaos.
For this high-energy woman living in a low-energy body with a soul still on the mend, all this activity has been exhausting. I'm still recovering physically from the triple crown weekend (November 19/20): two-day Spiral Door session, including a seven-hour graduation ritual, Womonsong's Farewell Concert with warm-up beforehand and party after, and joining the crowd Sunday evening for the long-awaited Harry Potter
Goblet of Fire big-screen event.
And Thanksgiving? We were blessed with company on three of the four days of the long weekend. Good food, good fun, and more hands and other body parts to help us move things around the house. A wonderful set of days, yet exhausting in the ways lots of food and friends and family can be.
So the seasonal shift I've been longing for has been delayed. I've felt overwhelmed and out of sorts and have been hanging on through each event, drawing on energy reserves to make it through this seeming gauntlet of activities. I had thought to declare December 1st my own personal end-of-the-old-year / beginning-of-the-new, but I'm not quite there yet. When I talked about my out-of-sync feelings in my writer's group meeting this morning, my writing partners said I was not alone. They had talked about this very thing last night, noticing that the veils which thinned early this year because of Katrina were closing much later than usual. For some reason I take great comfort in having my experience affirmed.
I'm ready for the sixth snow, though, and the seventh and eighth and ninth and beyond. The end of Spiral Door was the end of 15 years of formal education in Women's Mysteries and Goddess Religion. I have another 6 ahead of me as I work with a mastery metaphor from Irish piping lore. Plans for the next 3 years have been made, but first I need some time to rest, re-center, and balance the life of the student with the life of the practitioner. In the midst of household upheaval, I claimed a new space for my altar and constructed it yesterday. The smell of incense filled the morning, and now the lentils simmering on the stove fill the closed house with smells of the winter hearth. The end of the busy season is in sight as the land adjusts to its first blanket of snow and stillness.
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Warming Trend
