Nemeton Erithan

Pagan Pride went well. It was a beau­ti­ful, if not slightly chilly day and though attend­ance was not massive it was still healthy. In the end it made for a main ritual that every­one could feel they were a part of, and that was not too unruly. Ritual did go very well — it was put on by my grove. We enjoyed doing it and it seemed that the guests of Pagan Pride day enjoyed par­ti­cip­at­ing! I sold some of my wares, which made me happy, and I thank those that bought from me for their patronage :).

Set­ting up a web store has been put on hold for a short while, but should hap­pen soon. Some inter­est­ing changes are afoot for me. I will be mov­ing from one side of the city to the other as I return to school to fur­ther my edu­ca­tion. This par­tic­u­lar round of post sec­ond­ary adven­tur­ing will be at Durham Col­lege with the hopes that I shall emerge edu­cated in a some­what more employ­able field than Celtic Stud­ies (Com­puter Sys­tems Tech­no­logy). The whole applic­a­tion and finding-a-place-to-live pro­cess has taken pre­ced­ence over the past month or so as my pro­gram begins in the new year.

I am how­ever always avail­able to do cus­tom work, and will get items up and lis­ted for sale online as time allows. I cer­tainly do appre­ci­ate any orders that come my way as they assist in fund­ing my edu­ca­tional endeav­ours. I am not opposed to barter or trade if you have some­thing I am inter­ested in and can use.

As the late fall chill begins to set in (as I type this it’s barely 7c out­side and the wind is blow­ing strong), I’m look­ing for­ward to more spin­ning and knit­ting. I have a whole bag of alpaca that needs to be spun, some undyed blue face leicester from Fleece Artist than needs to be spiced up with col­our and then turned into an inter­est­ing yarn and a bunch of heav­ier stuff to knit up into warm and cozy items to stave off the winter cold.

With the fall comes a busy birth­day sea­son around here, and Yule approaches quickly after. As I am now on a very lim­ited budget it is my goal to be extremely con­scious about gift-giving this year. I will be attempt­ing to ensure that as many of the gifts I give as pos­sible are hand­made (prefer­ably by myself), and that they are in some way use­ful to those that receive them. Per­haps you wish to con­sider doing some­thing sim­ilar as well?

As a final note, for those of you in Ontario, and sim­ilar cli­mate zones, many of the out­door farmer’s mar­kets wrap up this week­end. Take this final oppor­tun­ity to enjoy the fresh local pro­duce we are lucky to have avail­able to us. After this, it’s a few hardy crops able to sur­vive in cold stor­age (mainly root veget­ables and apples), and pro­duce impor­ted from dis­tant lands. Enjoy the har­vest and sup­port your local farm­ers! Next year, con­sider tak­ing part in a Com­munity Sup­por­ted Agri­cul­ture pro­gram (CSA). Oh, and once again I’ll be par­ti­cip­at­ing in NaNoWriMo. Wish me luck (bet­ter yet, join me!) Until next post, have a happy Hal­loween, and a won­der­ful Samhain!

I’m start­ing to get things ready this week for Durham Region’s annual Pagan Pride Day. This year my Grove, Dan­cing Lights Grove, ADF is spon­sor­ing the day and will be per­form­ing the main ritual. Along with ritual there will be work­shops, inform­a­tion tables, a potluck feast (ours are always the best!), and vendors. Along with my reg­u­lar ritual and grove duties I will be  vend­ing at PPD. This is the last fest­ival this sea­son that I will be vend­ing at. After this, aside from our annual Grove auc­tion in Novem­ber, there will not be an oppor­tun­ity to per­use my wares in per­son until fest­ival sea­son starts up again next year. Not to worry though! Through­out the dark half of the year my goods will be avail­able for pur­chase online, and I am avail­able for cus­tom order work. This year I have selec­tion of hand made chain­mail jew­elry and accessor­ies, prayer beads, book­marks, ritual tools, herbs, bath salts, and hand knit items.

Get­ting ready for PPD: hand made lav­ender smudge sticks.

I encour­age those of you in the area to con­sider com­ing out to DPPD. It should be a bunch of fun. If you will be join­ing us, stop by my table and say hello!

In other news, I have begun to try my hand at embroid­ery, and I have my good friend and Sr. Druid to thank for inspir­a­tion in this regard. I cer­tainly am enjoy­ing it and can see great poten­tial for its use on ritual and other magical/spiritual items. The fol­low­ing is a small sample of bor­der that I did inspired by a 16th cen­tury black­work design. It fea­tures hawthorn and lav­ender; plants that fea­ture not only sig­ni­fic­ant magical and heal­ing prop­er­ties, but that also fea­ture prom­in­ently in myth­o­logy and/or folk­lore as well as being import­ant to me per­son­ally. There’s cer­tainly room for improve­ment, but I also see great poten­tial in this medium.

Hawthorn and lav­ender bor­der sample

I will post fur­ther embroid­ery works in the near future — I have some inter­est­ing plans, along with some other pro­jects that should be com­pleted shortly.

I’ve star­ted to do some work with soap­stone. I’ve had a chunk of it sit­ting around for years now wait­ing to get turned into some­thing inter­est­ing. I’m thor­oughly sat­is­fied with my drop spindle from Cauldron Farm, which has a soap­stone whorl, so I decided I would try my hand at mak­ing a spindle of this style. Stone whorls were com­mon in Vik­ing age and pre-Christian Celtic drop spindles. Stone was not the only mater­ial used, but it was the one with the best stay­ing power. Other mater­i­als used for the whorl included wood, bone, and earth­en­ware. The whorl I’ve cre­ated is a large whorl, ideal for spin­ning thick fab­ric. I’ve tested it with a bit of alpaca which is what is vis­ible on the spindle.

Triskel soap­stone spindle with test-spun alpaca.

I’ve also carved a small pendant out of the soap­stone that I’ve titled “Manannán’s Gift”. Man­an­nán is the god of the sea and guard­ian of the gates to the Oth­er­world. This pendant is a rep­res­ent­a­tion of a droplet of water and is carved with a wave-like swirl.

“Manannán’s Gift”: Hand carved soap­stone pendant.

“Manannán’s Gift”: Hand carved soap­stone pendant.

I am cur­rently in the pro­cess of carving more items from soap­stone (mainly jew­elry). I find it sat­is­fy­ing to work with. I am also work­ing on some pieces made from maple along with replen­ish­ing my chain­maille stocks after Three Rivers and some private sales. I plan to be present as a vendor for Durham Pagan Pride Day this year.

I spent the May long week­end at my family’s cot­tage in North­ern Ontario. It was great to get out of the city, the weather was won­der­ful, and it was the per­fect oppor­tun­ity to poke around the wooded parts of the prop­erty while the under­growth was still man­age­able. What at first glance appears to be just a car­pet of indis­tin­guish­able leafy greens is actu­ally a highly diverse com­munity of plants. Some are food sources for the local wild­life (and treats for us if we can get there in time!), oth­ers have his­tor­ic­ally been used to treat a vari­ety of ail­ments, some just look pretty, and a few of them are poten­tially quite dan­ger­ous to us and are best left alone.

Herb Robert (Geranium rober­tianum), a wild geranium thought to have medi­cinal properties.

Thank­fully the bugs were not bad at all. Nor­mally it would be death by bug bites to go wan­der­ing into the woods at this time of year, but a dry winter and spring so far have meant the mos­quito and black fly pop­u­la­tions are low. I only got a couple mos­qui­toes try­ing to nibble at my hands, noth­ing I couldn’t deal with.

White Tril­lium (Tril­lium gran­di­florum), The pro­vin­cial flower of Ontario.

I’ll head back north later in the sum­mer when even more has grown. There’s plenty more to pho­to­graph, from mul­lein to yar­row, to milk­weed, and more. For more images of the inter­est­ing flora from the woods and shoreline of our place in cot­tage coun­try, please check out the gal­lery of images.

Last year I came across a fab­ric on Etsy that I fell in love with. I did not pur­chase it at the time as the fin­ances did not allow for it. It’s a beau­ti­ful Japan­ese cot­ton print, and this past week I finally searched for it again; this time with the intent of actu­ally get­ting some of it. Thank­fully, some was still avail­able and today it arrived and was there wait­ing for me upon my return from work this afternoon.

For those of you that know me, you know that there are a few anim­als which I hold par­tic­u­larly dear that play par­tic­u­larly spe­cial roles in my life. Amongst them are turtles and tor­toises (which both look par­tic­u­larly awe­some while eat­ing things). Under­stand­ing this, it makes sense that I would have to have a piece of the cutest turtle fab­ric on Etsy (and argu­ably anywhere).

Japan­ese cot­ton turtle print.

I’ve already got some plans for this won­der­ful fab­ric. I will be start­ing with a pil­low­case and then prob­ably go on to make some accessor­ies. I may, depend­ing on the amount of fab­ric left over after I make my pil­low­case, even make some small items to share with oth­ers in addi­tion to those I make to enjoy myself. I most likely will not begin work­ing with my turtle fab­ric until I return from Three Rivers in June, but once I do I will post any inter­est­ing pro­gress notes and fin­ished items here on the site.

Finally some more pic­tures of what I’ve been work­ing on!

Alu­minum byz­antine weave necklaces.

More neck­laces in more colours!

Black stain­less (far left) and alu­minum byz­antine weave bracelets.

The black stain­less fades to a won­der­ful dark sheen with con­stant use. The alu­minum are nice and light­weight, and match many of the neck­laces I have avail­able. These brace­lets have no clasp and are instead rolled over the hand to get them on the wrist. Their siz­ing can be eas­ily adjus­ted for a cus­tom fit.

Euro 4-in-1 and Half Per­sian 3-in-1 bracelets.

A nickle sil­ver micro­maille euro 4-in-1 clasped brace­let, gal­van­ized steel hp 3-in-1 clasped brace­let, and titanium euro 4-in-1 clasp­less brace­let. The titanium brace­let fea­tures rings that have been heat col­oured by hand.

Black stain­less steel hair sticks.

This match­ing pair of hair sticks fea­tures black stain­less byz­antine weave and scales. They are topped with hem­at­ite beads.

Alu­minum stitch mark­ers for knitting.

This set of col­our­ful flor­ette mark­ers is great for keep­ing track of key stitches in your knit­ting pro­jects. The mark­ers com­fort­ably fit a US10.5 (6.5mm) needle and will prob­ably work on a US11 just fine.

Wrist prayer beads.

This small string of prayer beads is per­fect for when you don’t want to carry a lar­ger set around with you. It has a clasp so that it may be worn about the wrist when not in use, and allows for it to either be used as a strand or in a loop for prayer/meditation pur­poses. It fea­tures white, blue, and green semi-precious stone beads with metal spacers and is fin­ished with a simple steel flor­ette on one end and a large hem­at­ite bead on the other.

Byz­antine book­mark with purple scale.

This is one of a few book­marks that I have cre­ated. They all vary in design but gen­er­ally fea­ture micro­maille chains with dec­or­at­ive embel­lish­ments of either chain/scalemaille or bead work. A great way to per­son­al­ize either your books, journ­als, or path-related notebooks.

A tree full of earrings!

I’ve also made a num­ber of pairs of ear­rings in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent metals. Pic­tured here are ster­ling sil­ver (left), gal­van­ized steel (front), nickle sil­ver (right), and bronze (back).

I’ve made a gal­lery page for the site where you can eas­ily browse all of the images I have put on the site. It also includes a num­ber of works that are either sold or that are a part of my per­sonal col­lec­tion and there­fore not for sale. I will per­haps put a post up with details on these par­tic­u­lar items in a bit.

I have cur­rently shif­ted my focus away from the chain­maille for the moment and I am work­ing on cre­at­ing some herb scen­ted bath salts, incense and tisane blends. It is my hope to have these ready for Three Rivers Fest­ival as well.

Part II of my pre­view, fea­tur­ing works other than chainmaille.

Bot­tom whorl drop spindles: green & white and black & white decorations.

Hand made and painted with my sig­na­ture line­work. These are great for someone just get­ting star­ted with spinning.

drop spindle spun nat­ural cor­riedale and hand dyed merino.

The cor­riedale will be plied later on with some other rov­ing I’m work­ing on. The green merino was from Fleece Artist.

Earth & nature inspired prayer bead set.

A simple yet strik­ing set of prayer beads with an earthen theme. Fea­tures hem­at­ite, tur­quoise, moss agate, and tiger’s eye.

There’s still more to come: brace­lets, book­marks, more neck­laces and hair sticks. Rechar­ging the cam­era batteries…

The fol­low­ing are some of the fin­ished works that I will have avail­able for sale this sum­mer. More pho­tos to come soon!

16″ Bronze byz­antine chain­maille necklace.

A more tra­di­tional metal with a rich col­our and decent heft. I con­sider it a unique altern­at­ive to a torc.

16″ Blackened stain­less steel and ster­ling sil­ver byz­antine necklace.

The blackened stain­less steel on this changes with time and wear. It goes from its matte black fin­ish to a gor­geous dark shine that com­pli­ments the sil­ver beautifully.

16″ anod­ized alu­minum byz­antine necklaces.

These are avail­able in a num­ber of col­ours. They are nice and light weight.

Wooden hair sticks with chain & scale­maille embellishments.

These two hair sticks, capped with hem­at­ite beads, fea­ture light weight alu­minum byz­antine chain­maille and anod­ized alu­minum scales.

Part II of the pre­view will be up shortly. It will fea­ture some more chain­maille, some bead work, some spin­ning, and a few other things.

Once again I’ve begun to over­haul the web­site. My intent this time around is to use the site to dis­play and dis­cuss the chain­maille, weav­ing, spin­ning, knit­ting, and other art that I am cre­at­ing as well as show­cas­ing com­pleted works that I am mak­ing avail­able for purchase.

I will be selling my cre­ations this sum­mer at Three Rivers Fest­ival , a week­end camp­ing fest­ival for the ADF Canada East region but open to all who are inter­ested. I may also have some items avail­able through the ADF Regalia store at Well­spring, which I will also be attend­ing,  but I have not yet final­ised my decision on that yet. After I’m back from the fests I will begin to make my cre­ations avail­able for pur­chase online for those who are interested.