Thurs. Dec. 21, 2023: Blessed Solstice!
image courtesy of Linda Roisum via pixabay.comThursday, December 21, 2023
Waxing Moon
Chiron, Uranus, Jupiter, Mercury Retrograde
Cloudy and cold
Winter Solstice
There’s a Winter Solstice wish over on Gratitude and Growth. And Happy Summer Solstice to my friends in the Southern Hemisphere!
Today’s serial episode is from Legerdemain:
Episode 148: A Misplaced Dandy
An unexpected guest, diverted in his dimension jumping, lands at Shelley’s feet.
I got a little bit of work done yesterday morning, along with trying and failing to find the Cornelia True/Roman Gray notes on ANY of my flash drives. So, I guess I’m starting over. Which is fine, but annoying. I found “Lake Justice” which is one of my favorite novelettes, and did well, and should get an additional life; I’d planned, once Amber Quill closed, and I got the rights back, to do two more novelettes with these characters (one a paranormal skiing mystery) and release them together. We’ll see when that can go back on the schedule.
Went to the bank, the post office, the library, Big Y. Made a stop in a store I regularly pop in on in my travels. Found a gorgeous small hanging Christmas quilt at an astonishingly low price by a local artist from Williamstown. The upside of Mercury Retrograde. Grabbed it. Found a post office and a small house to add to the holiday village. And a very pretty figure of a garden with an intriguing maker’s mark that I have to research. AND a large trivet shaped like a butterfly. You know me and my trivets. The whole haul was under $10. Again, gotta love that aspect of Mercury Retrograde.
Moved the large bell wreath on the living room door to my office, giving the wreath out of bronze bay leaves a rest. I have to give it a good clean anyway, and I’ll rehang it after the holidays. That meant we could hang the new quilt on the living room door, where it looks beautiful.
The post office and the little house fit in well with the village. I’m picking up pieces from various makers/collections, but they all go together without being too matchy-matchy, so it all works out. I haven’t posted any photos of the village, because I’m still figuring out its cohesion and story. This year, it’s mostly how it fits onto the big worktable in my office! I’ve taken pictures for myself, but there’s nothing postable.
I had an idea rolling around my brain and the characters would not shut up, so I sat down and wrote 9 script pages. The concept is very commercial and marketable. I am not the writer to do it as a screenplay. I might be able to pull it off as a novel. But probably not until at least 2025. At least I’ve written enough to quiet down the characters, have a temporary end point, and can put it in stasis. Yes, I really do use the techniques I teach in THE GRAVEYARD OF ABANDONED PROJECTS.
Got dressed a little festively and made up (thank goodness for Ipsy). Packed my bag and headed over to tarot. We had a large group, and it was fun. I was glad I had plenty of little rune ornaments to hand around.
That’s what the Solstice project I’ve been working on was – I made rune ornaments out of clay, painted them gold (once they were baked), chose six different runes to paint on them (not all on one ornament, there are six styles of ornament), put the name/meaning of the rune on the back, put a matte finishing spray on them, corded them with red velvet ribbon, and put them in little organza gift bags. Some of them went into the packages for friends. I’d also made some other clay ornaments for friends, including gold bells (on gold cords), and a couple of specialty items, like a cat for a friend with cats and a dog bone for a friend with a dog.
Anyway, I’m glad I made a lot of the runes, because it was a big group, there were enough for everyone (including those new to the group or who hadn’t been there often), and I got to give one to an acquaintance-becoming-a-friend who runs the local bookstore and happened to stop by. So it all worked.
Guess what also worked? I nabbed the last set of bayberry candles at Wild Oats. They hadn’t had them last week, but must have gotten more this week and nearly sold through. I popped in the front, where they have all the cool gifty things and where the candles would usually be. Nothing. On impulse, I went inside, to have a wander around and see if I could figure out an alternative. There, sitting in a batch of other candles, was ONE BOX of the bayberry.
I grabbed them so fast I nearly knocked over the display. So happy about it. I’d almost given up having bayberry candles this year, and it’s such a big part of Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve for us.
Home, dinner, reading on the couch.
Today is the Winter Solstice. I said, to a friend at tarot, how I was almost sad it was already here – I would have liked another couple of weeks to hibernate in the dark! But I’m also very grateful that the light is returning.
My Solstice gift is The Cozy Witch Tarot, which is quite different from traditional tarot decks. The art is lovely. There are different major arcana cards: The Wheel of Fortune is the Good Luck Charm, The Hanged Man is the Patient Witch, Death is the Broom, The Devil is Toxic Witches, I think there’s a fine line between denying that scary, bad things can happen and reframing them (and should we reframe everything? When does that become toxic positivity?), so I’m going to have to work with the deck for a bit to see how that speaks to me. I do love a lot of the artwork. I’m going to have fun with it.
Today I have to do mundane things like take the garbage out. But Winter Solstice IS the day we change over the sheets from flannel to fleece, so my little penguin fleece sheets go on the bed and we get even cozier.
I have some writing to do today, and getting 4 episodes of Legerdemain uploaded/scheduled. Because I have two hours of yoga tonight, I’m putting our Cornish hen Solstice dinner in the crockpot. I have a couple of quick score sheets to turn around, and a whole lot of puttering. I don’t have to actually leave the house (except to take the garbage out) until I leave for yoga this evening.
No meditation this morning. We’re on break until Jan. 18. I think it will be longer. But it was a lovely three years as a group. I continue my daily, sometimes twice daily practice on my own.
I fully realize that the only reason I was able to get ahead on the holiday stuff and truly enjoy these weeks is because I didn’t do Nano this year. Which is something to ponder moving forward.
I’ll be home at sunset, before yoga, so we can do the traditional Winter Solstice ritual of watching the house get dusky, then turning on the lights one by one. Tonight, after yoga and dinner, I will take the large cauldron out on the back balcony and burn the saved greens from last year’s wreath, and then do the rest of my ritual. Looking forward to it.
I hope you have a lovely, beautiful Solstice! Here’s to the return of the light!
