Storing Yarn

Last spring I started what has become a very long project, making Clint Eastwood's serape from Fist Full of Dollars (the greatest Western ever filmed). In order to stay with a fair amount of authenticity, I have been weaving it with yarn instead of just making a lookalike from some cheap cotton fabric. One thing that had never occurred to me was the danger the project would be in when I got busy and left it alone for several months.

I am well aware of the havoc that moths can wreak on sweaters, but I had never even thought about what they might do plain yarn itself. I was therefore quite dismayed when I picked the project back up this week and discovered a slew of moth larvae had infested one of my balls of yarn and munched holes all throughout it like a block of Swiss cheese. (I was fortunate enough to find that they had not yet begun to chew apart all the hard work I'd invested in the Serape itself.) I quickly realized something needed to be done.

While the little cedar blocks they make for sweaters are a good way to discourage moths, I decided to try something else that would allow me to kill two bird with one stone. Those little plastic zipper containers that sets of sheets come in are just perfect size for storing two or three balls of yarn. Their tight zipper closures keeps out the unwanted moths, and they provide a neat, convenient way to store yarn. Now on to finishing the serape!

Happy Celtic New Year

Ah, astrological Halloween, I love it. Today was the day the sun reached 15 degrees Scorpio, the day the ancient Celts used as Samhain, the Halloween precursor. And boy, the Celts sure knew what they were doing having Samhain as their new year festival. I agree with their way of thinking because it's as much a new year for me as it was for the Celts (considering we both share the same farming calender, I suppose that makes sense).

Everything is finished for the year. I'm done with the market, I'm done with craft shows, the last harvests have been gotten in, and even work at my office job is slowing down. I guess these all bring mixed feelings. Since I'm burned out with exhaustion from the hustle and bustle of summer, the much needed winter rest is welcome, but I have to admit the extra summer money is nice to have. But either way, it's now time to move on to a fresh year. It's time for fall cleaning and cozy flannel sheets, time to remove the summer wind chimes from my woodland walking path, and time to tackle all the projects I've been putting off over the summer.

With my Celtic New Year fresh start, I'm going to concentrate more effort on web designing this year. I've dabbled in it a little bit with overhauling a large portion of a relative's website, and earlier this year doing from scratch the website for the farm market which I rather like (http://canandaiguafarmersmarket.com/). The first site on my list for this winter, however, will be my own. The Woodland Elf site is looking fairly shabby, but considering that I originally slapped it together several years ago in about 10 minutes without a template and without having previously known a scrap of java script, I think its simple appearance is understandable.

I've been trying to get at it and spice it for the last two years, but there seems to have always been other more important things that kept pushing it further down my to-do list. This year, however, I'm bound and determined to take the time to fix it just how I want it. Especially since I'm doing so much more than just candles and soaps now, it's definitely time for an update. I plan to start re-coding it tonight, but sadly enough I'm usually much better at doing other people's sites than taking the time to do my own, so we'll see how this turns out.

Coincidences

It's interesting how coincidences happen sometimes. I was dropping off a wreath order at the The Dalai Java this morning (if you're a coffee drinker it's next to Byrne Dairy on Main Street in Canandaigua) and about 3 seconds after I walked in, someone who frequented the farm market this summer walked in behind me. He saw me and said I might just the person who could help him, asking if I could repair an item for him. Now that is what I call a happy coincidence; being in the right place at just the right time.

I also finished the St. Mary's show this weekend. The turnout wasn't as big as we'd been hoping, but this was only the first year, and next year they're planning on more advertising. It was certainly a lot of fun though, going around and seeing all the things everyone else had made and talking with the other vendors. Turns out the woman sitting next to me was even related to someone my mother used to landscape for. Two coincidences in one day; what are the odds.

Craft Show This Weekend

Hey, this weekend I'll be at St. Mary's in Canandaigua doing a craft show both Saturday and Sunday. Stop by and check it out. I'm working on a bunch of new things that I don't generally take to market, new wreaths, Christmas ornaments and the like. I'll try to have the how-to's for a few of the projects posted over the next couple of weeks, but for now it's "balls to the wall" getting ready. I'm very excited about this weekend, but I gotta admit, I'm glad it's the last one of the year. The exhaustion has finally hit. Celtic New Year is starting to look pretty good right now!!

Pumpkin Carving

When it comes to carving pumpkins, my brother, sister and I are maniacs. We spend the entire year collecting silhouettes that will make good new patterns, and carve dozens of the fruits come Halloween. This year was a little different, however. Due to time constraints we carved relatively few. I've only carved 5 pumpkins (a huge drop from the 200+ my siblings and I used to carve in a week), and only created one new pattern this year. Even so, I rather enjoyed the new pattern so I'd thought I'd share it.

Legend of the Seeker is the only television show I watch, but I'm basically obsessed with it, so I decided to do a Legend of the Seeker pumpkin. I took the poster silhouette of the confessor, the seeker, the mord sith, and the wizard all standing together and carved the space out around them to make a suitable pumpkin pattern. I thought it was appropriate considering I'm going as the confessor for Halloween. Here's the finished product; I'm going as the one on the left. 

Kahlan, Richard, Cara, & Zedd

This was the poster I used as the pattern; it's one of the Save Our Seeker campaign posters (somebody please pick up this awesome show). I nixed the rest of the poster and just used the silhouettes of the main four characters as the pattern for the pumpkin. To carve it, just draw a circle around the people and carve out around the figures, leaving them standing in the pumpkin.   

 

The Real Halloween

Everyone instantly recognizes the familiar signs: witches on broomsticks, black cats, spiders. We wait for the costumed trick-or-treaters to come knocking at our doors requesting sweets (well, out here in the country, we wait, but they never actually come). Carved jack o' lanterns adorn every doorstep. This is Halloween, one of the most beloved Holidays in America.

For many people it is a day to step into costume and become someone else entirely. For others it is an excuse to show off their artistic talents carving squashes. And for still other it is an opportunity to perform mischievous pranks in effort to scare the living daylights out of another person. For most it is a holiday to celebrate the spirit of fun, though there are a few people here and there who condemn it as an evil holiday due to its emphasis on magic. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, as many of the more "evil" symbols associated with the holiday came centuries after the original celebrations.

Hundreds of years before Christ, the Celts ruled Europe. Like many of the ancient cultures, the Celts had holidays celebrating the changing of the seasons. Of all those holidays, the most import was the end of the year festival.

The ancient Celts recognized only two actual seasons, summer and winter. They also felt that the start of the day was at sunset rather than sunrise and consequently that the start of the new year should be during the darker months of the year. In the Celtic calendar, the end of summer, and thus the end of their year, occurred when the sun reached 15 degrees Scorpio. The festival was called Samhain, which was Gaelic for "summer's end." This date is roughly around October 31.

Samhain night was a time of remembrance of the dead, as the Celts believed that on the last day of the year, doors were opened into the Otherworld. This could also be a very scary time as the Celts feared that evil demon spirits might be able to pass freely through the open gates as well. In effort to keep evil spirits away, the Celts would dress themselves as demons and lead huge parades out into the hinterlands in hopes that any evil spirits would follow them and stay out of the villages, while the good spirits would easily be able to remember the way to their former homes. This custom eventually became the trick-or-treating we have today.

As the Celtic new year, Samhain was one of only two days that people could extinguish their hearth fires (the other day was Gamhain, now often known as May Day, which meant "winter's end.") It was considered unlucky to let the fire go out any other time of year. The druids (Celtic priests) would build huge bonfire on top of hills to give thanks for the bountiful harvests of the light half of the year and to encourage the sun to return after the dark half of the year. It was considered very good luck for people to restart their hearth fires with coals taken from the druids' bonfires. The Celts would carry the coals home in hollowed out turnips. To keep any evil spirits at bay, they would carve scary faces in the turnips, a practice which eventually evolved into our current tradition of carving pumpkins.

With the coming of Christianity, the holiday began to change. The Christians originally planed to convert everyone and leave the old ways behind, but they soon found that some of the Celtic customs could not be so easily washed out. Knowing that the Celts would never embrace the Christian faith as long as they still held so closely to their own traditions, the Christians decided to meld the Celtic beliefs with their own in a sort of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" effort to ensure that the Celts would be converted. The two most notable examples of this were the greatly revered Irish goddess Brigid, who the Christians turned into their St. Brigit, and Samhain, which the Christians turned into All Hallow's Eve.

Keeping with Celtic tradition, the Christian holiday of All Hallow's Eve was the one night of the year when the spirits of the dead could walk the earth. However, they gave this holiday the set day of October 31 to remove the pagan astrological associations. They also labeled the druids as devil worshipers to prevent them from restoring the original holiday traditions. (There is no devil in Celtic belief) In time the new holiday's name was shortened to Hallow'een (this spelling is often seen on vintage Halloween postcards), and eventually the apostrophe was removed altogether giving us the Halloween spelling we have now.

As time progressed, different generations and cultures have added their own traditions to the holiday giving us the familiar celebrations we have now. Perhaps this year as we carve our pumpkins and don our costumes, we should take time to reflect on those people so long ago who did the very same things. In doing so, we will be remembering those who have gone before us, and thus we will be celebrating the day just as they did so long ago, albeit without the fear of evil spirits.

Vintage Postcards

There is something absolutely irresistible about vintage Halloween decorations. They have a charm that no other vintage holiday trimmings can match. The best example of these delightful vintage Halloween items are not even decorations, but postcards of a lost time when people used to send as many Halloween (or Hallowe'en as it was spelled at the turn of the century) cards as Christmas cards. They represent the true era of Halloween, when the holiday was about parties, and trick or treating in costumes, and just fun games of the season. There's no frightful demons, evil monsters, or psychopathic murderers, just good clean Halloween fun. Witches and black cats are often shown in a mischievous manner, but never in the evil ways horror films of today portray. The most well known Halloween postcard artist was Ellen Clapsaddle. She's also one of the most popularly collected artists today, no doubt due to the absolutely adorable images of children, jack 'o lanterns, and friendly witches. While I don't collect original cards (I would rather send the money to Heifer Project), I do love the images scanned onto the internet. Here are a few of my favorites that bring back a sense of good old fashioned Halloween, the way it should be.

Dried Flower Wreath

So when someone gave me the simple request of making a dried flower wreath for them I had no idea these would be so popular, but within 10 minutes of her picking up the finished product, I already had four more wreath orders, just from people seeing her carry it around. Amazing considering that when I first started this wreath, I though it was pretty ugly. The flowers on the partially finished wreath looked like they’d been haphazardly stuck on there. But by the time I’d completed the entire circle, the wreath had come together beautifully. I guess it just needed to be fully flowered to make a show.  

You will need:

A straw wreath hoop

15-20 dried straw flowers (Helichrysum)

Several bunches of dried statice in at least three colors

6 stems of dried baby's breath

6-7 pieces of dried coxcomb flower

6-7 pieces of dried yarrow

A ball of yarn

A roll of 22-gauge wreath wire

Most of the flowers in this wreath dry pretty well using the air-drying method.

Start the project by tying one end of the yarn to the wreath. Gather a bunch of statice about 2 inches wide (all the same color) and place it on the wreath wrapping the yarn around it to secure it. Take a few straw flowers and put them next to the statice wrapping the yarn around them. Grab another bunch of statice (different colored than the first bunch) and yarn wrap that to secure it to the wreath. Repeat with another row, staggering the straw flowers and the statice so they’re not right in line with the first ones. Next add a piece of yarrow or a piece of coxcomb.

Repeat the steps above making another two rows of flowers then adding a piece of yarrow or coxcomb (whichever one you didn’t add the first time). Continue on in this manner, adding flowers and alternating the yarrow and coxcomb combinations. Also change the position of the flowers around: if one piece of coxcomb was on the top of the wreath, put the next piece towards the interior of the wreath and so on.

Every 4-5 inches, add in a stem of baby’s breath, allowing it to flail out from the wreath in an unruly manner. It adds charm to the finished wreath.

When the hoop is entirely covered by flowers, tie off the yarn. To make a hanger, take an eight inch piece of wreath wire and slip an inch of each end under several pieces of yarn on the back side. Bend the inch back towards the long part and wrap it around itself to secure it. You can also use u-shaped wreath pins to attach the wreath wire to the wreath as an alternative to slipping it under the yarn.

This wreath will last for years if it is kept out of harsh weather. It can also be sprayed with dried flower preserver to make the flowers less fragile.

Today was definitely what I consider a good day in my world. It was my day off so I let myself sleep in, and when I woke up, it wasn't even raining. That's a welcome change, because the last several weeks it's been nothing but gloom on my days off. The sun even came of the clouds for a minute or two.

So I got my entire field of pumpkins harvested. Usually I have my brother to help me, but he's working the night shift now, so he sleeps in the daytime. This year I did all the planting, hoeing (till the rain stopped me), and harvesting myself. The perks of that, however, include getting first pick of the pumpkins. I chose three perfectly shaped ones to save for my Halloween carving.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were way more pumpkins in that tangled mess of weeds than I had expected. And as added bonus, there were a bunch of gourds I hadn't even planned on because somebody (could've been me) mislabeled the jars when we were saving seeds last year. Ever notice how the stuff you don't mean to plant always grows better than the stuff you do? Got some really cool ones cause they crossed with the pumpkins having grown in such close proximity.

After harvesting I got to spend the rest of the day cleaning my room (a long awaited project!) while listening to Guess Who records (yes vinyl) on the $5 record player my brother very kindly got for me a couple weeks ago at the Rushville community garage sale. One of the speakers doesn't work and there's a bit of a whining hum in the one that does, but hey, it's a record player, enough said.

Ok, ok, so I'll admit to be one of the typical kids who thinks that the scratching, hissing, crackling, and generally inferior quality of a record sounds warmer than digitalized media, but let's face it, some artists really do sound better on vinyl. A prime example is The Animals. They already have that echoish sound we love and records just enhance it. It sounds like they're in some deep, echoing chamber. (Oh wait, that was John Bonham in the stairwell during When the Levee Breaks)

Hmm...this post started out as farming, but what can I say, I've always been passionate about my music and sometimes things just head that direction. And when I say "my music" I of course mean the great music that would actually be considered parents' music, but which I love just as much if not more than they do (and in the case of Robert Johnson, that'd probably be considered my Grandparents or even Great-Grandparents music, but I love it anyway!)