Spirit of Yule by Ann Stokes

I don’t know about you all but I am very excited..   I positively love this time of year..the middle of winter, the longest night, lovely cold weather with lights and candles and booze and food and presents and holidays and, and, and, and… Breath…

That’s better..

It has been a lovely week of socialising and getting everything sorted food wise and present wise.  I finished work yesterday and do not go back for two weeks.  When I do I will be starting an extra day a week which is a real bonus. I will just about be paying our rent and that make things a bit less tight.

Last night we spent at our friends having a little Solstice eve get together, with the weather so mild we were able to sit outside around a fire.

It does not look like we have a chance of snow for Christmas but as we had a small taste of it last weekend I am not dissapointed.  Neither are the shop keepers as everyone is able to get out and about to buy provisions and treats without nasty icy paths to manoeuvre.

It was market day today in Hay and I tried to get there a bit earlier as I thought it might be busy, and I was right.  I couldn’t get the bread I wanted and Lucretia Wood-Cole who makes and sells wonderful cakes in aid of the Women’s Institute had nearly sold out.  But I did manage to get everything else, including the most luscious runny cheese that you can only get at this time of year.  It was lovely that they had fine weather for it and everyone was in very good spirits.  Toastie had a great time taking every chance she had to snuffle at people’s market bags which must have been emitting wonderful smells.  Particularly if they had visited the  stall that sells many types of fish, fowl or beast.

As an aside – we were accosted by a visiting lady in Hay the other day who wanted to know if Toastie was a Norfolk Terrier as she had one and Toastie looked exactly like her.  We said that as The Toastilator is a rescue dog we had no idea and then rushed home to Google Image it.  Sure enough- apart from having slightly longer legs Toastie has found her tribe!

On with the story..

We trundled ourselves home with our parcels and then I set out again to have lunch with my boss/friend Sandra, and two of our trustees – Betty (our Chairwoman) and Karl (vice Chairman).  I love these people and feel very lucky to be working with them. I have to say that I never thought I would feel that way about employers!  Karl (the first Quaker I have ever met) looked completely appropriate for the occasion as he is in his eighties and has a long white beard which he topped off today with a Santa hat.

Sandra did her usual of trying to confiscate the sugar lumps so that Karl cannot put fifty million of them in his hot orange drink while Karl (who does not have diabetes) did his usual of remonstrating with Sandra for taking the Lords name in vain.  I did my usual of surreptitiously nicking the sugar lumps so that Karl can have his fill, and Sandra did her bit again by telling me off

We drunk stupendously good mulled wine and I chomped my way through a frittata which included bits of turkey, bacon, little sausages and brussels sprout – I know that sounds mad but it was nom.

We ate at Booth’s Books cafe, which if you are ever passing our way you must stop and visit.  Booth’s used to belong to the King of Hay, Richard Booth, and by the time I started coming to Hay  the bookshop was a bit of a mess- damp, cold and smelling of mould.  Now it has new owners who have transformed it into the most magnificent, light, airy, warm utterly inviting space.  Spread over three floors with loads of pozzies to sit and read, it is a place you can spend hours in.  They added the cafe and are also building a small cinema which should be finished in the new year.  The food in the cafe is tasty, interesting and the menu varied every week  - it also has the  bonus of  being relatively cheap.  And the chips with aioli, and the real hot chocolate are to die for..

If you think I sound like I am happy you would be right.. Certainly compared with December last year when I had lost my job and was still incredibly home sick.  I still struggle with depression and the terrible tiredness that comes with it but I am keeping my head well up and am helping myself with the simple things – seeing friends as much as possible, walking this beautiful countryside, sharing our home with a bonkers Terrier, reading good books, immersing myself in crochet and craft, and making myself go to work – of course I’m lucky to have a job that I like.

I am deeply grateful for all that I have.. Thankful for the hard bits of life that make me appreciate all the good. Thankful for all of you..

So – the winter solstice, celebrating the return of the light, new beginnings – new challenges.  Hope you are all ok out there.

Have a Toastie time!

Have a good one - from Mr T and Miss T

Have a great day

So please watch it and tell me what you think and remember..

“The economist says more for you, is less for me. The lover knows more for you, is more for me too.”

Love you people

First some old news..

Happy Birthday to me..

Way back on the 1st of October a rather disheveled looking me was celebrating my 49th birthday.  I do look pretty happy. I am sitting in my favourite spot with my crochet nook in the corner.  I had finally finished my Japanese Flower shawl the day before which you can see on the back of the sofa, I had a pile of presents beside me and I was about to cut into my favourite orange cake that I had bought from the market (home-made with free range eggs).

We had been out for brunch with lovely friends at Booth’s Books Cafe and were going out for dinner to Red Indigo our local curry house with more friends.  The next day we were heading off for a week to Pennard on the beautiful Gower Peninsula to do nothing but relax and walk the dog on the cliffs.   Lovely stuff.

We had just had a week of Indian Summer weather and our holiday week turned out to be the exact opposite but it didn’t matter – we both love storms, nasty cold and blowing a gale weather so it was fine.  Toastie had a wonderful time as she was allowed off her lead to run free every day.

Looking down to Three Cliffs Bay - spectacular sea mist coming on

Toastie prints

Three Cliffs has wonderful rock pools - this one had a large crab in it and a minnow both of which had become camera-shy.

Wet and blurry

 Ta Daa!

It was a relief to finally finish my shawl.  It has been one of those projects that lurk at the back of your mind and irritate.  To be honest it was quite an effort to sew them together and I have vowed to always attach them at the time of making.  Anyway I am very happy with the way it turned out, I love the colours.

It is a real mixture of yarns that I used, lots of different stuff from my stash, wool, acrylics and cottons, will be interesting to wash – very carefully.  I am going to make another but in a somewhat calmer colour palate.

Finished Japanese Flower Shawl

And happy Beltane to those on the other side of the world..

Our clocks changed at the weekend and this evening while out walking Toastie and admiring the neighbourhood pumpkins I realised that if I didn’t move my ass I would be walking in the dark.  Sure enough it was full dark shortly after we got home at 5.20.

Although we have been having some gloomy days we have been blessed by incredible autumn colours.  Everywhere there are fiery glowing trees.  I walk in wonder..

Tonight is All Hallows Eve/ Halloween/Samhain.  A night to remember the dead and to light fire.

Lighting our Samhain fire

Lighting candles for the dead - among them my Father, I miss you Dad..

And the wheel turns..

Image by the wonderful Jane Brideson

Happy Autumn Equinox to you all!  And a happy Spring Equinox to you all on the other side of the world.

This is a time of reaping the harvest of experience from the past year, of weighing up of both gains and losses.  We can sort out the wheat from the chaff – chucking out the rubbish in other words.  I wonder if that is why I and others I know get the urge to ‘spring clean’ the house and garden at this time of year.

Balance is a strong theme , day and night are equal on this day, but after this we move on into the dark.  Light is balanced by the dark, life is balanced by death – symbolised by the double spiral.  As we wind in toward the still point of the winter solstice we are reminded that we will inevitably move out again into the light.

Which brings me to another strong theme of Mabon, the Autumn Equinox – thanksgiving.  It is time to give thanks for our harvest.

Seeing this is a harvest festival I will be heading out shortly to sup a little wine with friends (I give thanks for my friends and the good grapes) at Kilverts – an excellent excuse.  Not that I need one..

Hope you all have a good one

Two days till Mabon, or if you like – the Autumn Equinox and you would need to be blind not to be able to tell that the year is into wain.  I presume that even if you were blind you would be able to tell the special smells that go with this season. One of the few smells I really don’t care for is that of coal burning and I have had a whiff or two of that in the last couple of weeks.  We have already had one load of wood delivered and another arriving next week, it will feel nice knowing that if all outside power sources go we will still be able to keep warm, cook food and have hot water and light.

Fire, my favourite element?  Mmmm..  Certainly will be for these next couple of seasons..

I have a little shrine on my lounge windowsill and  on it I have  one of the cards from the Goddess Sabbat Cards set designed by Wendy Andrew that grace every seasonal celebration.  At the moment it is still showing the harvest card for Lammas on the 1st of August.

I have been unwell again, as you might have noticed by the dearth of blog posts, none for September so far.  Feeling ok today however and more inclined to reach out to you lovely people again.

We were supposed to be going to London for a week at the beginning of October to celebrate my birthday but have called that off as I cannot be sure that I will have the energy to do all the things that one does in London.  Instead we have taken a caravan at a place called Pennard Cliffs on the South Wales coast and will relax and walk the dog ragged (some hope with a terrier).  I am looking forward to it, instead of being anxious about it when London was still the plan.. I have been assured that London will still be there when I am more able.

I am working on far too many crochet projects,  I broke my own rule and now have seven items which need finishing, including my Japanese Flower Shawl which I should have finished months ago.  I have this idea that if I sewed all the motifs together and blocked it I could wear it on my birthday!  Just a week and a half to go, we will see..

wot i is woking on

Flowers from Mr T to brighten my day..

a laptop and a lapdog

I would have posted a video of one of the  lectures  from the t.v. version off You Tube but it won’t let me embed for some reason, so you will have to check them out for yourself.

Today we tuned in to listen to Chain Reaction on BBC Radio Four and were pleased to discover that Mark Steel was being interviewed by the equally brilliant Kevin Eldon – if you are in need of a laugh you can find it here for the next 6 days.

Oh and a photo of me wearing my latest creation

My neighbour who obligingly took the photo had just said "Nice tits"

Chandeliers baby..

My friend Simon owns a shop called Goosey Gander’s and if you are in Hay you just have to go along and check it out.  It is an experience for sure.

Simon knows all about glass and everything there is to know about chandeliers.  Including how to put them together, he buys wrecks and restores them into the most beautiful, magical things.

His shop is tiny, but crammed full of light.

And I do love them all – but they would look really crap in my house.

Simon’s house is filled with the ones that he just can’t part with – including a few of the rare, giant, man sized lava lamps in existence.

Toastie, Simon and I sit on the front step of the shop and watch the world go by.  We discuss the appalling state of parking in Hay and genrally set the world to rights, then we visit Kilverts’s across the road for liquid sustenance and continue.

Such is life in a small town..

Simon and Toast