Last week
It was a busy week!
Thursday: My last day of work for nearly two weeks (I am back in the office January 2nd). I have a lot of plans to do things at home, some witchy and some pragmatic. (And some both. I am a happier human with a well organised life, so I am tackling a bunch of projects that take a couple of hours.)
Friday: My first day off! I did errands in the morning, and then spent a chunk of the afternoon hanging out a local yarn store buying roving (for spinning) and yarn (for knitting). The former has some specific ritual purposes in mind, the latter is a little less direct. Both are going well so far, and there will be photos when I make a bit more progress.
I spent the evening at the Cornucopia Collective public ritual – I don’t make it there nearly enough. (My health and stamina are a lot better than they were this time last year, never mind previous years, but I’m still usually only up for one substantial outing a weekend, and my own group ritual work obviously gets priority for my time.) It was a lovely ritual, I had a really good conversation with a couple of people there.
You can see more about all of this (with a photo of my shrine for the solstice) here.
Saturday was the Up All Night event for solstice vigil on The Cauldron, now in the twelfth year or so. I slept badly on Friday night, and ended up napping for a chunk of the afternoon, but even with that, I only made it to about 2am.
Some of the things I did to set up the vigil, in case they’re useful to people in future years:
- At sunset, did a Tarot reading for the coming cycle.
- Made mulled wine, using some talismanic mulling spices from Sphere and Sundry (whose stuff I highly recommend.) It made my apartment smell amazing. I drank some of it, and poured the rest of the wine into a bottle for future offerings.
- Made a roast chicken with roast carrots and potatoes for dinner. (Very tasty, also makes the house smell great.)
- Did a bit of the things I want in the coming year – some writing, some knitting, some spinning.
- Chatted online, listened to music, and so on.
- Had a candle going the entire time I was awake.
- Avoided using any overhead lights (I did use the one on the oven fan hood when I was working with the chicken, because I didn’t want to risk hurting myself.)
The knitting and spinning are partly in honour of Frau Holle, a deity strongly associated with the fiber arts, who I am exploring doing a bit more work with this year, so I decided to dedicate time to doing a bit of both every day between solstice and New Year’s Day. (It’s also a great excuse to get myself back into knitting, which I have been mostly out of the habit of for a while.)
I did not, however, make it to dawn. This turned out to be a good thing, because…
Sunday, I slept in as late as I could, but there were people doing work in the yard at 9:30 that woke me up. I did some of my usual Sunday reading and witchy learning, and in the evening ended up walking up to meet friends at the gaming pub near my apartment. (It was great, also it meant I got some exercise.)
This week
I deliberately do not have much scheduled. (This is a good thing, since I’m currently coming down with a cold.)
Wednesday: I plan to spend most of the 25th doing what I usually do on the 25th, namely reading fanfic written for the yearly Yuletide exchange, which is a fic exchange for smaller fandoms, and which always gets some great stories. (I’m excited to see what I get, and what the person I wrote for thinks of the story. Authors are anonymous until January 1st.) Basically, I open up a lot of tabs and read through things, pausing periodically to make food and do other things at home. It’s great.
(A lot of classic childhood books get some love in Yuletide, and there are usually some interesting mythology and ballad stories, so even if you’re not usually fannish or fanfic reading, there may be some interesting things for you. Here’s the list of fandoms that have works this year, and the collection will be open for reading at midnight GMT on the 25th.
Friday: Probably meeting up with my mother at a museum. (Depending on the cold.)
Generally:
I’m working my way through the dense but fascinating book about a historical Tarot deck, and I’m also starting to set up the scaffolding for my main focus for learning things this year, astrology. I expect to do a lot more of both this week.
Also more knitting and spinning. And organising all my books properly.
Other projects: I have a bunch of fiction words I really want to get written before the end of the calendar year, but I also have some posts for this blog in mind. They include:
- Thoughts about my regular offering practice
- An article on ritual tech in terms of actual technology that’s helpful. (My latest addition are USB rechargeable portable lamps, which are great when I don’t want the overheads on.)
- Figuring out how to talk about some witchy books I’ve been reading in a way that’s sustainable and useful for me, and useful for other people.
- Work on some longer projects (turning some of the Seeking articles into a book-structured object, writing about hosting coven events, and a few other things like that.)
