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Finally I’m back in Marburg! I missed my fairytale town dearly during the winter solstice though I enjoyed to be at my mother’s house, too, of course.

But now I’ve got all my art and craft supplies around me again to finally make all the Hogswatch* gifts for my friends! We don’t see each other during the holidays nowadays, so I can give out the presents only after the 25th anyway. Sure, I’d loved to be on time, but the circumstances… you know.

So, at the moment I’m sewing my small gift for the Scoundrel who will arrive here in the afternoon again after he spent the festivities at his grandmother’s house.

Also, I’m eager to clean and scrub the whole flat until it shines before the turn of the year – out with the old! It’s some kind of ritual I inherited from my mother, and – only by the way – I’m in charge, too.

I still don’t know how we’ll spend our new year’s eve as the blowing up of the architecture models won’t happen this year as the Imp is engaged elsewhere.

Oh, I love to be back here!

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* Hogswatch is the “Discword christmas” and new years eve at the same time, centered around the legend of the Hogfather (some kind of Father Christmas). As it marks the year’s end, it is obviously set on December 31st, hence the “legal” delay of presents.

More Taggings

Today I wrote my first exam for this summer – old Irish. I think even if it’s not too well, I should pass.
Here we go with even more questions. I wasn’t really tagged but took the liberty to answer (and translate) questions that I found interesting.

The first eight questions are from Miss Daisy.

1. Which memory from your childhood was/ is especially formative to you? Watching animals at the sandy place on the way through the heathland around the hill and heating stones on small fires to roast beechnuts.
2. If you could switch a day with anybody, who’d it be? A medieval Irish princess. I’d finally get a grip on the real pronunciation of old Irish and the clothes look great, too. ^^
3. Imagine you’d had to change your life completely from one day to the other. What would you do and where’d you go? To Wales, breeding sheep and illustrate fantasy books in a little cottage or restoring old furniture.
4. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind with “red”? Blood and silk.
5. Are you a car driver? If yes, what kind of? Nope.
6. What was your favourite subject at school? That’s a quite popular question, isn’t it? Free Arts, this time.
7. Do you remember your first concert? T’was Wild Silk, a now broken Celtic Folk band when I was eight or nine, my mother took me along. It’s not as I had any objections, then. ^^
8. How does your perfect day look like? Stuffed with books, Paisley linen, dupion silk and marble cake upon mossy beds and lace nests with the taste of autumnal rays of sun between oak leaves on my tongue.

The second eight questions are from LaForcenée who was so kind to answer mine…

1. What’s your favourite tree? Hard to tell, mostly those I can climb on. Probably oaks due to their structure, their meaning in celtic cultures and literature and their fruit. I like acorns. ^^
2. What would you like to be able to even though it’s impossible? Either I’d like to shrink at will (and grow again, sure) to the size of a borrower or to be a real witch – not with a broom but an oversize riding hog or weasel or something like that which actually is a small toy or statuette that comes alive by a spell.
3. What’s the thing you’re most looking forward to when you come home from university? That depends, but most of the time it’s food. ^^
   
4. Which things that you get looked at awkwardly sometimes by others do you do? Spinning in the tube, singing show tunes on railway platforms and giving lectures on children’s literature in a very fast tongue.
5. In which piece of clothing would you be quite uncomfortable? Nearly everything made from unnatural fabrics. Probably a very tight and very short latex mini skirt.
6. Where or in which situations do you feel most at home? While sitting on one of the trees at the riverbanks beneath the weir, reading, letting the sunbeams tremble on my feet that dangle in the water. Or being curled up in my old armchair, reading Jane Austen novels or embroidering, sipping tea that’s constantly being warmed on the stoveling (I couldn’t find the exact word so I made one up) and watching the raindrops outside the window from time to time.
   
7. Three things you always carry around though you don’t really need them? A small piece of copper, a mini wind-up flashlight and a smoky icosahedron die with white numbers.
8. Three attributes you’re often described through by others? Skilful, especially with my hands, stubborn, otter.

Kittens and Catkins

I’ve been absent again, due to my assignment (which is finished, I’ve got my life back, eventually) and the fact that I’ve got no aethernet at my mother’s castle in the marshlands and in the time between the hand-in and my departure I was way too busy with celebrating the end of the term, cooking with and for friends and looking into blue eyes with golden coronas in them.

When I came home at my mother’s on Friday she told me that our neighbor’s cat had kittens, one black and one like a wildcat. They’re absolutely cute and fluffy. The black one has got a new home already when he will be parted from his mother in about two weeks, and the wildcat – well, I don’t want to talk about it too much, but Bambi wanted a cat anyway…

I also took a long walk though the glens with my mother and got some plants for the garden and – maybe the most important thing of all – had a long, hot bath while watching Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Green Gables – The Sequel (the DVDs arrived just in time shortly before the hand-in).

Spring is really coming now and spring fever is likely to break out as I’m definitely not  getting that big, glad, radiant smile off my face. :)

The First Sprouts

The sugar peas on the window sill are doing quite good as you may see from the title.

I’ll plant them into earth this week as I’m going to visit my family during the Easter holidays and therefore am not able to water the cotton. Putting them into the tub with wet newspaper wouldn’t work either as we don’t have windows in the bathroom and the boys aren’t here, either.

Some minutes ago Bambi dispatched the order for some DVDs and I went along and ordered my beloved Anne of Green Gables and its first sequel. :)

I’m not too chatty at the moment, as you may have noticed, due to my academic assingment that is growing quite pleasantly, by now I’ve got about a quarter of the demanded continuous text.

Along the way I am pondering about a new LARP character. No, not Steampunk this time but purest fantasy as it will be an elf. The biggest obstacle to a good character development is her name, at the moment, but I think I’ll ask IRis for help there… ;)

Well, I’ve got to increase my word count to 2000 minimum now, so

Good-bye.

10 Pleasures in February

1. Nuts-and-honey corn flakes. Well, I like them. What should I say more?
   
2. Sam & Max: Season One (Save the World). The most whimsical detective agency ever, with colour-changing weirdos, gangster mice, Abe Lincoln and a major culture shock. I love point and click adventures, the weirder the better.
   
3. Billiard. I should indeed play billiard way more often. It’s fun and kind of retro and a good thing to do before hitting the road to a rockabilly concert. Plus, you’ve got to think about angles and moments of torque, as well. It’s like math, but funny.
   
4. The Ivory Towers of my university. They are not very pretty, indeed, rather the contrary, but an ivory tower isn’t that positive at all, is it? I don’t like my grammar tutor too much, but this analogy was rather brilliant, and it sounds so dreamy. I like to sit in the second highest tower at Tuesday and Thursday mornings and watch the fog rise until one can’t see the town anymore from the eighth floor.
5. National Costumes or at least elements of them. I’m especially drawn to Silesian, Frisian and a hint of Bavarian mixed up with a little bit of Lolita, classical western gothic and mori girl, which seems to be in my closet anyway. Currently, I’m working on an inspired summer’s outfit featuring shorts, a heart shaped bag, my Danish duck feet shoes and Hessian embroidery.
   
6. Carl Larsson. A Swedish artist mostly picturing everyday scenes from a 19th century Sweden. I’ve got a calendar featuring his pieces hanging over my sewing machine.
   
7. Extracurricular Lectures. I joined only two of them during the last semester, once about Heinrich Becker, a folklorist focused on Ireland and the Herxheim excavations. Both were pretty interesting, Herxheim a little bit more, and I finally saw another part of our university than the Social Studies building.
   
8. The Dresden Dolls. This Brechtian punk-cabaret (a lovely name for their kind of music) duo has been kind of a favourite of mine for a couple of years now. Even though Amanda Palmer’s eyebrows are still a little scary to me… The whole dark cabaret movement is quite interesting, but another style I needed clothes for…? I don’t know.
   
9. Fruit Tea. When I was a child I called it jelly baby tea for it tasted like the ones from the whole-food shop that my mother used to bring home now and then (oh how I miss those!). The Satyr doesn’t like this deep red coloured potion, but Bambi drinks it, too.
   
10. Online Greeting Cards from Bluntcard.com. Definitely not ladylike, but hilarious. I just sent a couple of those to my best friends, and as long as they understand this kind of humor – as they do, indeed,- everything is fine. Like in a 50s family portrait.
    

Beating Loneliness

Picture from weheartit.com.

There are moments in life when you feel completely left alone and worthless to others. This especially happens when you are sad or angry or, all in all, not in a good mood and doing badly. These are the moments in which you feel mistreated because the only person to comfort you wouldn’t even leave their momentarily doing-what-ever if they heard you crying and sniffing two open doors away. Or when in a discussion with people you normally consider your friends won’t accept your opinion and instead hit you on the back of your head just out of the blue just for having your own mind!

Every time when it seems to you that no one loves you, nobody cares for your feelings and thoughts, remember that you are indeed a precious person. Just be good to yourself. I’d…

• Have a tea. Nothing too exquisite or expensive, a simple herbal or fruit tea will do. Warming from the inside is really helpful in situations that feel like a lump of ice in your stomach.
• Take a bath. It’s the same thing, but from the outside. In such moments I prefer oils and salts instead of bubbles which can be quite cold when you touch them accidentally.
• Read something that makes you feel comfortable. Like Eloise or Brambly Hedge or your favourite Flower Fairy or even a Shakespeare sonnet, something small that makes you smile.
• Watch a feel-good movie. Tinkerbell for instance is about accepting oneself even if others do not so.
• Cuddle up. Take a nice big blanket (I’ve got a patchwork one from IKEA that’s huge) and your favourite teddy bear and just feel that you’re save and warm.
• Talk. I just had a telephone conversation with my mother who is quite objective when I’ve got quarrels but knows me and my quirks very well. Call your parents, your best friend or your sister, someone you know to always love you, and get everything off your chest.

My mother always says “Care for yourself and be your own best friend”.

She’s right.