Riverstones and Sunroots

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These photos were taken when Carou stayed here in January, down at the riverbanks.
Everytime I stand and see and feel the sunlight on these weather-softened roots and branches, the one-of-a-kind pebbles, the grass bowing to the wind, the clear water of my river, I feel something very much alike to awe. It’s a silent, almost serene feeling that I tend to get in museums and similar places, too, but it’s strongest when I stand ashore, or in a glade, or on a field, and just feel the beauty of it where other see another grey place in winter, or another spot to have their barbecue at, or just some boring place where a girl stands and just stares at the stones, and the grass, and the sand, and the roots and mushrooms.

I’ve Got A New Notebook

Every time I buy a new notebook it’s not just a monetary transaction for a bound stack of paper. It’s a promise.

The promise to start writing in it one day.

This one is supposed to become a fashion journal (not my first try, anyway). To store my ideas and inspirations.

Writing my name into a new notebook has some magical quality to it. It takes time. It has to take time, it’s nearly like a ritual. Which name to choose, with which ink to write, which quill to use. Sure, I could do it with the next pen as well, but I don’t want to. A new notebook is a contract with myself and a stack of paper that isn’t only that, and when I seal it, I want to do it right.

Porcelain Sunday – Happy Easter!

Originally I wanted to post my re-written Porcelain Sunday themed of Sucker Punch from last week today, but I completely forgot that this Sunday was Easter Sunday! Well, this might have made a great preparations post, too, but it’s to late now.

It’s a little difficult to write a Porcelain Sunday about Easter, so I’ll just list some things that might be inspiring for you. So, what I love about Easter:

• Egg hunting. One of my favourite traditions ever! I even wanted to hunt for my Christmas presents, it was just so much more fun! My grandmother used to hide several smaller and one larger nest in the garden, the latter one not only with hard-boiled eggs or sweets but a little gift of some sort. I remember one time when I was still in primary school when I spent the Easter holidays in Italy with my father and some friends of his together with their children. We had an egg hunt and one of my teeth was loose and I lost it in a half-melted chocolate egg…
• Ēostre. We don’t know if there ever was a goddess named Ēostre (Ostara in German) or not, but I personally like the thought. Laugh at me, but the thought of a spring deity as a symbol for the rebirth of nature, accompanied by hares, comforts me. Besides, I like her name, made up or not.
• Egg decorating. We always did thins a week before the actual holidays, most of the time my cousins, my grandmother and I. My grandmother also has a quite large collection of easter eggs, painted by herself, the women of her family, her best friend or me, decopatched on with silk paper by my mother (quite Waldorf), adorned with ribbons, batiked, bought on crafting bazaars, everything. If I knew not that I’ll most probably some times in the next ten years, I’d start my collection right away. There’s a method to boil an egg in vegetable or tree dyes while a flower or leaf is fixed on the shell that I really want to try next year.
  Also, think of Fabergé eggs, which are the most Loli-able (and sometimes Steampunk) kind of easter eggs ever, come to think of it.
  
• Cake. Another thing that belonged to my family’s Easter celebration was cake in the shape of a little lamb, mostly simple pound cake. I prefer dry ones on Easter, like marble cake, they’re easier to take outside with you for a picnic.
  
• Discworld Tradition: Soul Cake Day. The Soul Cake Duck the Discworld version of our Easter Bunny and I even bought a duck-shaped cookie-cutter yesterday.
• Bonfires. I love bonfires. Being raised by a very spiritual, nature-bound mother may have caused this, but maybe it’s only the urge to feel alive just like my ancestors did when they sat at the whispering flames, telling tales of great deeds and feasting on the prey of the last hunt. You see, archeology soaked it’s way deep into my mind. It’s also a good way to get rid of bad thoughts or dreams or set your wishes free into the night sky, just like on Yultide or New Year’s Eve. Write down what bothers you on a piece of paper and burn it.
  
• Greeting the awakening of the new-born nature. Easter is a great opportunity to celebrate every new leaf and every flower you meet. In many families it’s traditional to take a biking tour on Easter Sunday (in my family it’s rather on the 1st of May), but a stroll in the park or countryside will do as well. A picnic might be perfect, even if you go all on your own!
  
• Hares and Lambs. I love both as symbols and animals alike. Hares stand for fertility, joy of life and even some kind of aggression (ever saw a hare fight?). Lambs are something worth of protecting, sweet but curious (leaving out the religious part). They both make adorable motifs for dresses or skirts or t-shirts as well.

That’s what I love most about Eastertide. What’s your favourite part of the holidays, if you celebrate them, anyway?

Fervent Fermenters

Two days ago, after a visit at home, the Scoundrel brought me a preserving jar with something that looks like a pickled pancake in vinegar.

Actually, it was a Kombucha culture.

Kombucha – for those of you that don’t know – is a kind of yeast fungus that “feeds” on tea with sugar while fermenting the brew into a healthy and refreshing drink. The Scoundrel predicts that someday it will jump out of its jar and eat us all, but I don’t think so. ^^

For this first time I made brews of

• Black tea with Tigerente (that’s a “character” from German children’s books) herbal tea
• Black tea with peppermint tea
• Black tea with raspberry and strawberry tea
• Flavoured green tea by the name “Chinese Love Dream” (that tastes really good, by the way)
• Flavoured green tea that’s called “The Eight Treasures of Shaolin”

I’m really curious about the results!

There’s my witches’ brew for the moment, five jars, about three litres of tea and not even half the original mushroom I got from the Scoundrel’s mother. That’s another great thing about Kombucha: you don’t need much of it as it will always grow on and on, producing new layers that you can “harvest” for new fluids. The first harvest will presumably be in a week or so – I’ll surely keep you up to date.

Book Shelves and Witch Corners

I recently started to get my room more uncluttered. Which is pretty difficult as I’m a real pack rat and – even worse – a crafter. But I begin to succeed, at least a little bit! My two main achivements are the following two, and I hope there are some more to come, soon.

At first, there’s my new, small book shelf that has its place at the wall over my arm-chair. It once was an old drawer in which my grandparents used to keep some of the tools, but my grandmother kindly gave it to me that I could bring it to new glory while holding some of my favourite books and tea cups. The green bottle by the way is something that I found when I still lived at my father’s flat while the attic was made into another dwelling place. They had to open my room’s wall and there I found this bottle which stood there for over fifty years – I could identify the date with a small scrap of newspaper that I found in the wall too, presumably, like the bottle, left there during the last construction works in the house – that is pretty old – after the war.

I call the second “new” space in my chamber the “witches brew corner” for lack of a better name. It contains my dried herbs, rose leaves and other tea ingredients, some teacups, Koboldfeuer (that’s a wild rose wine sold at Renaissance fairs), self-made peppermint mead, the wild rose rock sugar Madmoiselle Merveille made for me in the tea swap at Natron & Soda and several mortar and pestle sets.

The Secret of Kells

Once in a fortnight, on Wednesday, I visit an extracurricular study group called Celt’s Reception. The term used by the students is mostly Trash Movies concerning Celts, which is quite as true, but they wouldn’t have get a room for the group with that name.

The tower of Kells Abbey

By now, we’ve had:

1. Vercingetorix aka. Druids. Christopher Lambert with the most ridiculous hair and mustache ever and Teutons with hair colours ranging from bright red to pink.
2. King Arthur. I didn’t like Keira Knightley before and the film didn’t make it any better. Goth, the picture was a shame, you could even see the modern screws that held the swords together. And by the way, there weren’t any Romans in Britain at this time, anymore. Good laughs, anyway.
3. The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nóg. Celtic Power Rangers. Do I need to say more?
4. Roar. Heath Ledger mayherestinpeace as a celtic prince with a dead-at-the-end-of-the-pilot-episode girlfriend with modern-day gowan nightgowns. Well, at least the protagonist looked quite good.
5. Hellboy – The Golden Army. Old Irish-speaking half-undead 1000 year old elf nobility with the greatest spear fighting skills I’ve ever seen, steampunky battlefields, Abe Sapien, books, great costumes, Hellboy’s girlfriend being way less annoying than in part one and toothfairies. Oh, and did I mention that the elves spoke quite good Old Irish? No trash at all, just great entertainment.
6. Excalibur. Did you ever want to see Patrick Stewart in tights again (after Men in Tights)? Or a glowing-like-it-had-been-thrown-into-radioactive-waste sword? Then you could like this film. Well, it’s finest 80s trash. And very funny.

It may seem that those films except of Hellboy 2 were pretty horrible, and indeed, they were, but watching them is quite fun and some of us were rolling on the floor, especially during the episodes of Mystic Knights.

Yesterday we had the most beautifully made 2D animation film EVER. Brendan and the Secret of Kells is a story of freedom of mind, imagination, good books and white cats. The design, with more than a hint of the illustrations of the Book of Kells and medieval painting in general (lancet arches in the trees!), reminded me somewhat of the art of Rima from The Hermitage. The picture language in general is stunning and I think I’ve never seen something comparably expressive before in an animated picture! The lines are indeed quite simple and so are the figures, too, but this just means that the illustrators could focus more on the backgrounds and the colours that are stunning. And the details! There are even snowflakes in the shape of Celtic crosses and knots!

Aisling and Pangur

The white cat comes from an Old Irish poem of which the first lines are as following:

Meisse ocus Pangur Bán
cechtar nathar fria saindán
bíth a menma-som fri seilgg
mu menmae céin im saincheirdd

[I by myself and Pangur the White
Each of us with his own art concerned
His spirit usually aimed on hunting
My own one on my own special craft.]
(This translation might be a little bit free and it doesn’t rhyme, sadly.)

As I mentioned before, the artwork is lovely, the soundtrack catchy and touching and the story cute and heartwarming. I can just recommend this film to everyone who is interested in the Book of Kells, Celtic design, good stories, the wee folk, monasteries and scriptoriums, the art of writing and illustration and those who just love white cats.

This is the official website of the film where you can also hear one of the songs from the soundtrack as background music.

So, if you get the chance to watch it (it didn’t air in Germany at all, for instance), do so! It’s great, beautiful, delightful, a little bit scary when it comes to the Vikings, cute, dreamy and in every point a good movie.

Preparing for… New Year’s Eve

Picture from weheartit.com

Fast away the old year passes,
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses!
Sing we joyous, all together,
Heedless of the wind and weather!

I left the falalalala thing out as it looks rather ridiculous when written.

The 31st of December is New Year’s Eve!

Or Silvester, as we call it in Germany. Or Hogmanay in Scotland.
The last remaining hours of the year passed always had something enchanted in my eyes. Just imagine – one single day to hold a whole year full of adventures, emotions and events!

Here are some of my New Year’s Eve traditions:

• When I was younger, my mother and I used to light a bonfire on the hill behind our castle to burn the conifer boughs and the advent wreath from our Christmas decorations and little sheets of paper with those things that we liked and didn’t like in the passed-by year written on them.
• If you don’t like firecrackers, you may like the idea of using sparklers instead. They are quite save in use and look great!
• Speaking of firecrackers: I’m not really fond of the large, loud ones without any visual effects than smoulder. The tiny ones that fizz into the air to act like little fairies are way more interesting to watch, just like the small volcanos or spirals. That these are way more save that the large ones is something that I won’t even need to mention, I guess.
• Our traditional New Year’s Eve dinner is raclette, normally with white mushrooms, ham, salami, pepperoni and other cold meat and potatoes, combined with bell pepper, cucumber and other vegetables when out of the oven.
• Dinner for One is the usual sketch for New Year’s Eve in Germany. It’s often aired a couple of times before midnight so that everyone can watch it, even the children that should be in bed early (as if…). They are often showing older films from the 30s to 60s during the day, something that I highly appreciate as I love the way they are speaking!

But no matter how you celebrate this last day of the year 2009,

I wish all of you a Happy New Year 2010!

After All Souls’ Night

I hope you all had a really nice Halloween, All Hallows’ Eve or Samhain.

Mine was pretty funny and neat although I got newly nicknamed “Mother Hulda” (it’s Frau Holle in German, which sounds somewhat nicer) by the Satyr as I covered our whole castle in snowy white fluff from sewing my costume and we didn’t play GRIMM at all (we were too busy with eating up the sweets that were left over as Halloween is not very popular amongst the German children any more  and our sushi when it came to Jules and me or Thai Food for Satyr and Bambi). Well, we re-made the date to happen next Saturday. ^^

I love how my pumpkin turned out. Typically, I carved it last-minute, when my costume was ready and the Satyr was already sitting in our castle’s kitchen. To be fair, I’ve got to say that he helped me very much with the basic carving when he could have sipped his tea and watched me making a more or less pumpkin-covered fool of myself.

Oh, the one you can see in front of the château at the mosaic (second row, right) is Jules who wore a magnificent blue glacé frock he made, with false fur trimmings and beautiful reddish-golden lace. I hope he’ll post some pictures at his own blog soon.

As for my costume: I got the idea from the wonderful Victoria Suzanne of Lolita Charm who posted a set of 50 very cute and extraordinary costume suggestions lately. I decided to dress up as a kind of older female Max from Where the Wild Things are by the genius Maurice Sendak. I really love the book and the illustrations, I just had to think of a way to get the costume within two days. It came out as an open-front hooded jacket of white microfiber from a pattern of my own and matching gaiters together with black basics and a huge cardboard crown. I sadly had no chance to try the great vampire make-up I showed you some posts before, but applied some brown eye-shadow and  some dark lipstick. Well, nobody tried to convince me to disguise myself as a deadly attractive Snow White :P , so… maybe one fine other day.

Did I forget something?

Yes, the burying of an apple for the dead. Sadly. I think those (neo-)pagan rites are quite earthing and let one think of the things that wait for us in the otherworldly shadows…

Happy Frankenstein Friday!

It is the Friday before Halloween, thus it’s Frankenstein Friday. Another weird holiday! It is indeed the perfect day to read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus or watch the first adaption of the novel from 1910 or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein starring the wonderful Kenneth Branagh as Victor Frankenstein, Robert De Niro as The Creature and Helena Bonham-Carter as Frankenstein’s Bride.

I finally chose a costume for tomorrow. It’s pretty simple, but anyway, I’ll get you some photos!

All Hallows Even’s drawing near…

I just couldn't leave the post without a picture... even if this was taken in June

It’s October now which means that I’m off to university. A fact that surely will not detain me in my plans for Halloween.

I love dressing up. Last year I disguised as one of the walking dead which lead to some very special situations at school and at home.

I am indeed not going to a party this year, instead we will play our first adventure of GRIMM. I’ll be carving the pumpkins on Friday and make a nice soup or pie out of the flesh on Saturday. Maybe we will go to town for an hour or two, just to show off in our costumes and prance around a bit (at least, Halloween is the only day of the year that you won’t get silly comments for dressing in black and lace ^^). I just don’t know what to wear (or better: I can’t decide)!

The options are (with short descriptions):

1. Twisted Snow White: Light skeleton make-up, white dress, red bodice, dyed hair (sort of).
2. Twisted Red Riding Hood: Red dress or shirt/ bodice and skirt, cloak and bonnet, wolf teeth, basket.
3. Marionette: Strings attached to limbs, or Puppet: with clockwork and windup key.
4. Titania: A little arrogant, but challenging in white lace, a kind of creepy fairy queen.
5. Something different. But I’d really like to try this make-up this year (I think it is going quite well with the themes above if altered a little bit)!

I’d really love to hear your suggestions and/ or opinions, so please tell me!