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  • Blue Moon

    Tonight is a ‘blue moon,’ the second full moon of the month. It’s also a micro-moon, a bit farther away from us than usual, so it looks smaller and cuter than usual, like a little silver button in the sky. Blue moons are a bit rare and supposed to be extra powerful for divination and for rituals of releasing. It’s got me thinking about moon magic and just spirituality in general.

    I was always interested in divination and the occult, but when I was young it was just an aesthetic for me, you know? It was mysterious and kind of taboo because of the way I was raised; it suited my gothy leanings. I was a full-fledged adult with kids and a mortgage before I started exploring witchcraft as an actual spiritual path.

    That was maybe fifteen years ago? I can’t believe it’s been that long. My spiritual path has wound around like a lazy river. I started with the Wiccan basics, experimenting with elemental magic and calling the corners in my backyard, doing the occasional ritual with friends. For a few years I veered off toward druidry. Then in the past few years I’ve been moving back to my witchy roots, though I’m more eclectic and hearth-focused now and less specifically Wiccan.

    This year, one of my witchly goals is to observe every new and full moon in some way. The new moon is easy–for the past couple years I’ve marked that part of the cycle with an offering to Hekate and the setting of an intention to work on for the coming cycle–but I’ve struggled a bit with the full moon. I don’t struggle to remember it and do something, I just struggle to connect with it in a spiritual level and I think I’m finally putting together why.

    I’ve lurked in various pagan forums and subreddits for years, picking up tips and ideas and inspiration, and full moon energy is pretty consistently presented as powerful and illuminating and cleansing. But follow my little tale for a second: the sun is powerful and illuminating and cleansing in both a spiritual and physical sense. The moon is only ever reflecting that energy to us. This reflective nature makes the moon’s energy a bit more complicated, doesn’t it?

    Full moon energy, being a reflection of the sun, would certainly be positive and cleansing. But it’s also indirect, filtered, gentler. Moon energy is more dim and shadowy, which means we bring more of our own energy and intuition to whatever we’re doing with it. When I think of it this way, the moon’s twin reputations as a gentle guide and a source of madness and deception makes a lot of sense.

    Remembering this also seems like the key to solving my “just can’t connect with this moon phase” problem. The many witchcraft forums I’ve lurked on over the years got me thinking I should get together something active and harness the moon’s energy to make some big magic happen. This probably works for a lot of people; who am I to say it doesn’t? But I’m betting I’ll have much better results if I calm down and connect with my own energy, looking for moon energy to gently illuminate my own intuition and suggest whatever adjustments are needed.

    With that in mind, I stumbled across the idea of making “moon cords” today, a simple spell where you braid or knot a cord under the full moon. It’s so dead simple I’m wondering if I did see this years ago and forgot about it. As you braid the cord, you store a little of that full moon energy to be released whenever you might need it. I haven’t done any knot magic in months and I like the idea of having a little extra energy and guidance laid aside. There have definitely been days this past month when that would been much appreciated.

    Anyway, I’ve rambled quite enough for one afternoon. Whatever you do (or don’t) for the blue moon, I wish you peace. Until next time, enjoy a few moon pictures I’ve taken over the years.

  • Peace and Quiet

    I’m a whole week into my media cleanse and it’s been great for my mental health. I almost hate to admit it because I never thought my scrolling was that excessive. Okay, lately it had felt excessive, hence the cleanse. But normally I wouldn’t have called myself terminally online. But the change was so stark and immediate that now I worry I was so zombified by the internet I’d stopped even noticing.

    And the difference has been stark. With no social media and no TV/streaming everything has slowed way down. I suddenly have so much time to get chores and projects done. Nothing feels rushed. My body has calmed down and my imagination and intuition are speaking to me in ways they haven’t in years. Also, surprisingly, I’m burning a lot more calories. A few years ago I lost a bunch of weight and I use my smartwatch to keep track of calorie burn. I don’t feel like I’m exercising harder but I guess I’ve been up and about more this week looking for ways to entertain myself without my phone.

    Of course, sometimes the anxiety hits hard in all this silence. Still no luck in the job search, our oven suddenly broke, my kid fell for an online scam and lost an uncomfortable amount of money. These are the anxious moments that send me to scrolling and without that, I have to use actual coping skills. Which are way better for me and more effective in the long run but they take more effort. When cheap distraction is just a click away, it’s hard to resist.

    But I did resist. Yay for me! Instead of scrolling, I picked up some old projects. I started playing Sims 3 again (which is still staring at a screen, I guess, but in a more active and creative way). I finally got back to a card-by-card tarot study I started months ago. I kept putting it off because I didn’t have time to sit quietly and just contemplate a Tarot card. Seems pretty obvious now why I never had the time . . . I also started writing a little fiction again. Just little bits and bobs for myself at this point but maybe someday it will add up to a novel. I’ve always loved to write but I’ve never actually written a novel, not even a shitty one just for myself. Maybe with all this media-free time on my hands I’ll finally start one.

    I’ve also been listening to a lot of music and working on the world’s simplest shawl. Seriously, I’m usually drawn to more complicated projects with lace or cables, stuff that stretches my skills a bit and claims my full attention. This is just a big triangle in garter stitch, which I’m finding very peaceful and meditative. Okay, right now it’s a small triangle in garter stitch. But it’s growing.

    So that’s been week one. My original plan was four weeks of greatly reduced media and I’m off to a great start, ready for another week. Let’s hope I’m still feeling great about it next Sunday. Until then, I wish you tranquility and creativity.

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  • Cleaning and Polishing

    Last night was the new moon, when I make some time to perform a quick ritual setting an intention for the next few weeks. This time I decided to start a media cleanse. With all the stress lately, I’ve fallen into endlessly scrolling Reddit and binge watching true crime documentaries. Mostly about cults. I’m pretty obsessed with cults because I grew up Mormon, which might or might not be a cult; depends who you ask. Some part of me thinks if I watch enough cult stories the answer to my own history will one day become clear to me.

    Sorry, the cults distracted me. See? Way too much social media and streaming. In the moment it’s a great distraction from my anxiety and frustration. But I suspect it’s making things worse in the long run because my brain never rests. For this moon cycle, I’m cutting out most of it in the name of mindfulness and inner peace.

    So I’m on day two of resisting the scroll. Yesterday was busy so it wasn’t too hard. Today I’m home doing little chores around the house. It feels a bit weird to be so far from my phone; I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something. But I also feel like I have all the time in the world to get things done because I’m not spending my day half-distracted.

    I had a nice jog, did some small repairs on my porch, washed the dishes, and then polished and oiled many things. This wasn’t media cleanse boredom, believe it or not. A few months ago my nice wooden cutting board cracked because I wasn’t oiling it enough, so I started aiming to oil my nice wooden stuff once a month. Then in March I got a pair of cowboy boots and that made me feel guilty for not taking care of the nice leather shoes I already own, so I added those to the list. Now, every new moon (give or take a day) is also polishing day.

    I could probably assign some cool witchy meaning to this but it’s more about leveling up my adulting game. I’m grown up enough to own a few good quality things so I’m trying to be grown up enough to take care of them. I feel very responsible when my shoes are shiny. But now I’m just rambling, aren’t I? It’s time to get off the computer and back to my low tech mindfulness journey.

    Until next week, I wish you shiny shoes and inner peace.

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  • Just Let Me Wallow in Nostalgia

    It’s been a hard week. The stress has been getting to me and all I want to do is read horror novels and listen to everything I liked back in high school. Violent Femmes, Throwing Muses, Pearl Jam, Primus . . . jangly emotional punk and grunge were key to my vibe back then. (Along with more dark and mellow bands like Dead Can Dance.) Listening now takes me back to those halcyon days when life was actually worse than it is now, but I also had way fewer responsibilities. I could just hole up in my room and be sad back then, and now I have to soldier on and keep people’s spirits up and actually be responsible for things. *sigh*

    Instead of holing up in my bedroom like an angsty teenager this week, I finished and blocked the scarves I’ve been working on.

    That is the Silky Scallops pattern by Joan Marie and the Context pattern by Kristin Briney. Both in leftover Midnigh Dreary sock yarn by Crow and Crescent yarn. I wore the only light grey sweater I own today so I could model them for you. You’re welcome. They were a good way to practice my lace knitting skills and they’ll be nice in the fall when the weather turns chill again.

    Aside from the knitting, my week was pretty routine and low energy. I’ve been pulling a divination card or two every day, as I usually do, and even the cards are low energy. I think every card this week was about worries, burdens, feeling scattered and blocked. Today’s card was the Five of Pentacles–hardship and insecurity. Yeah, they’re really reflecting my own sour energy back to me lately. Since I’m a grown-ass middle-aged adult and not an angsty teen, I’m committed to working on getting out of this funk in the coming week or two. But I’ll probably still be in the mood for musical nostalgia for a while. Maybe this week I’ll push forward into college-age nostalgia. Tool, Deftones, System of a Down . . . that was my Nu Metal phase, clearly.

    There was one unexpected bright moment to my week. Last week I said I had to do a small repair before I could finish painting, remember? Well, as an early Mother’s Day gift my youngest kid decided to patch that hole. Amazingly, thanks to some DIY my husband did ages ago, we had everything we needed to patch that hole and I just didn’t know it. I’ll still have to buy a little more paint but I can totally finish that project now. It was very cool of her to fix that for me and saved me a lot of work. She did a great job.

    And that’s my week. I’ll try to be more chipper next time. Until then, I wish you a week of your own favorite tunes from high school.

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  • Okay May

    May began with a cold snap. May began with a full moon but it was completely hidden behind clouds. Instead of a round white moon in a black sky, our nightscape was city light reflected off low clouds and mist. It was . . . actually kind of cool. Spooky like a horror movie.

    This isn’t a filter, our yard just looked like a black-and-white photo Friday night.

    I’m not sure whether a cold and rainy Beltane is a good omen or bad but the next day dawned sunny and beautiful. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what unfolds for May.

    Today I decided to finally finish painting my foyer. I’ve had the paint and supplies for months but kept putting it off. Our foyer is maybe thirty feet (9 meters) tall and I didn’t want to get out the ladder and climb up there. I knew once I made myself do that the rest would be easy, but I just couldn’t motivate myself to get started.

    Yeah, I had to climb to the ceiling above those stairs. I’m not afraid of heights but it still wasn’t fun.

    In that last photo you can see the old warm white paint on the left and the cooler, slightly violet paint on the right. I actually ran out of paint before I could finish that little laundry area, so that’s a project for another day. It’s an out of the way section and I have to do a small repair before I can paint it; I’ll have to buy more supplies so it can wait until my guy finds a new job. Still, this morning my foyer was maybe 40% painted and this afternoon it’s maybe 90% painted. Progress!

    Even though it can take forever to get started on them, I enjoy projects like that. They clear my head and lately they remind me how fit I am. When we moved into this house five years ago or so I painted the living room and boy, was it hard! I got out of breath climbing the ladder up and down and painting the ceiling was really hard on my arms and back. In the last few years I’ve been really consistent about exercise and today painting was pretty easy. Even the ceiling was no problem. As I push ever closer to my 50th birthday, it’s easy to feel old. Moments like these make me feel powerful, like I really am in the prime of life. I think I’ve still got a few good years left in me.

    And those were the highlights of my week. In spite of the freaky weather, I still hope May brings us hope and growth and maybe even good news on the job search. May your May also be fertile and full of good fortune. Until next time.

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  • Jury Duty

    I forgot to tell you about jury duty! I served on a jury way back in the beginning of April, right before Easter, and I totally forgot to mention it.

    It’s not much like TV at all. Which makes sense because most things aren’t like TV at all. On TV, courtrooms are full of beautiful dark wood and dramatic raised platforms for the judge and witnesses and a big jury box on the side. I’ve actually been in one of those nice courtrooms; we finalized our adoption in a TV-style courtroom. My jury service, though, wasn’t in one of those. Our county courthouse is a perfectly nice government building but the courtroom just looks like a conference room. No dark wood anywhere and all the jurors just sat at regular conference tables with very nice office chairs.

    This might have been because I was on a grand jury; maybe they save the fancy rooms for other purposes. The grand jury just hears the basic details of a bunch of crimes and decides whether the District Attorney has enough evidence to go forward with the trial. I liked grand jury service because it’s a cool peek into the legal system without the stress of actually deciding someone’s fate.

    TV shows always show a bunch of lawyers and their clients attending the grand jury and making arguments but apparently that’s pretty rare. For us, it was just a District Attorney explaining the legal details of, say, burglary or shoplifting and then a cop testifying to the details of the case. We listen to what the cops found, compare it to the definitions the DA gave, and decide whether it all lines up enough to officially go to trial. We each have a big binder full of legal terms and checklists and our job is to see if everything matches up. It’s . . . actually pretty easy.

    My husband was on the jury for an actual trial once, a case where a woman’s son stole her pain medication (and sold it to a friend, I think?). It was a quick one-day trial but he had to listen to witnesses and hear arguments from opposing lawyers and actually decide someone’s guilt or innocence. All that sounds way more exciting than my jury service but also way more emotionally difficult.

    My ‘on call’ period has ended so I won’t be called in to another jury for quite a while. I’m almost sad about that. It was an interesting experience and everyone on the jury felt this weird camraderie doing this quintessentially American thing. In America (and Canada and a couple other nations influenced by British legal traditions) jury duty feels like a sign of adulthood, learning to be a good citizen, but it turns out most of the world doesn’t do things this way at all. It’s fascinating.

    It would be weird to take photos in the courtroom but I did find this house finch in the eaves on my way home.

    This week, by contrast, was pretty quiet. I finished knitting a scarf but it won’t look like much until I wash and block it. I also received May’s selection for the Morbidly Curious book club. They also sent stickers to decorate my laptop.

    We’re just trying to keep ourselves calm and busy without spending much money, hoping for job offers soon. Maybe this week will be our lucky week. Friday is Beltane, after all. Until next time, blessed be.

  • Bluegrass Birthday

    I missed writing last Sunday because I was out of town. Last weekend was my Dude’s birthday; I took him to the Bluegrass Meltdown in Durango, Colorado. Durango is a lovely little place to spend a couple days. It’s got a cute little historical district packed with nice restaurants and shops to explore (including at least four bookstores we browsed through), and an easy path beside the Animas river only a few blocks farther along. We were able to park behind our hotel and walk anywhere we wanted all weekend.

    The festival itself was fun. It was small, with a lot of little known bands and local talent playing cozy little venues where you could get right up close. To be honest, I don’t know a lot about bluegrass music. I just occasionally like that folksy regional type of music, full of banjos and mandolins and fiddles, and it seemed like a nice excuse to visit Durango. After last weekend I’ve probably heard enough mandolin to last me quite a while, but we enjoyed ourselves. I actually bought Shelby Means‘ album on vinyl and my Dude bought a CD by Michael Prewitt. I guess that qualifies us as bluegrass fans? I don’t know.

    My assortment of photos also features the only two western shirts I own. It was the closest I could get to a proper bluegrass outfit. I’m middle-aged and lazy and don’t look all that alternative, but in this crowd I was very much on the young side and the staff seemed just the slightest bit confused by my dark purple hair and spider bites. They were all polite, though, and none of the actual audience seemed concerned.

    You can also see our gorgeous room in the Strater hotel, full of cool antique furniture. I like that hotel because each room has different furniture and wallpaper. You never know quite what you’ll get and I like the surprise.

    Anyway, after our fun weekend trip, it was back to reality and back to frugality while my husband continues his job search. We had some repairs done in our garage that were mercifully cheap. We played board games with friends. I finished that Alchemist slipover I was working on. I was too busy to take nice outdoor photos but I did pose in front of the bathroom mirror for you. The darkest picture is closest to what the color looks like in person but my phone washes out the color trying to catch the detail. I am good at many things but photography isn’t one of them.

    It mostly turned out as expected and I like the fit of the collar. The open sides and breezy fit aren’t what I usually look for but I like it. I think it will be a fun layering piece and I would be excited to try different fasteners under the arms to switch up the look a bit.

    I do have a whole lot of yarn left, so I chose a couple of free scarf patterns to use it on. I don’t actually wear scarves that often but I like making them, and both patterns are small enough that I could use them in my hair if I wanted to. My curls are usually pretty tame in this desert air but it’s nice to have a scarf or headband around when they misbehave.

    And that’s the last two weeks for you. Hopefully the next few will bring us quiet days, good weather, and a new job. Until next time, I wish you tranquility and good weather as well.

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  • April Showers

    March punched us in the gut on its way out the door. Monday morning, my Lenormand pair was the Rider and the Tower. Roughly, the combination means news from a large institution like the government or a corporation. I kid you not, less than two hours later my husband’s company laid him off. They say Lenormand leans toward practical, literal interpretations but this was more than I expected.

    Cards of doom, apparently.

    I’ve been doing the witchy thing for maybe fifteen years now pretty consistently but honestly, I’m pretty agnostic about it most days. I keep a consistent practice and honor a couple of deities regularly but I tend to treat divination, especially, as a psychological and emotional thing. A way to clear my thoughts and see things from a different perspective. Then I have days like Monday. In the last few weeks I’ve had several wicked accurate readings that make me believe a little harder in cartomancy.

    The Tower in Lenormand, by the way, is not a card of disaster the way it is in Tarot. This combination could have been a tax refund or news about the job my daughter applied for or any of a dozen perfectly pleasant bits of news. Even in our case, it’s not a complete disaster. Not yet, anyway. My dude gets two months severance pay and we have some savings in the bank, so he has a few months to find a new job before the lay-off really starts to ruin our lives. For now, we’re trying to stay positive and not panic.

    Anyway, the rest of the week couldn’t help but be better than Monday. April brought us some soothing rain to make up for March’s bad behavior. I love the way rain deepens the colors of everything. I love being cozy inside, listening to the rain patter down.

    I also made progress on that Alchemist slipover I’ve been knitting. Now, instead of looking like a big test swatch, it looks like an enormous test swatch with a large raindrop-shaped hole in it. Progress! But seriously, I’m maybe three quarters of the way through now and pleased with how it’s going. It’s a really easy knit that’s been soothing to work on. It’s also using way less of this yarn than I was expecting so I’ll have to find a small project for what’s left. Maybe some arm warmers or a little neckerchief. We’ll see.

    I’d like to say I’ll be done soon but I’ll be pretty busy with other things. We’re actually going out of town for a few days to attend the Bluegrass Meltdown in Durango, Colorado. Not the best financial timing but we paid for the tickets and hotel months ago so we’ll only need to spend on gas and food. But I’ll tell you all about that next week. Until then, I hope April is treating you right. I wish you spring flowers and magical moments.

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  • I’m Ready for March to be Over

    March was more than I was ready for. It wasn’t bad, exactly, there were just a lot more things coming at me than I was prepared for. This past week turned out especially chaotic, with unexpected changes coming at me from several directions at once. Still, amid the turmoil there were bright spots.

    This morning was a perfect spring day for walking the dog. Perfect temperature, trees in bloom, birds chirping daintily. Spring tends to be a volatile season, both in terms of literal weather changes and in the more abstract and mystical sense of shaking up your life, but it also has these moments of exquisite gentle beauty. Walking the dog has pushed me to really tune in to the waking up of my neighborhood’s flora and fauna.

    I also bought a book subscription this week. I don’t use social media much anymore so the ads and suggestions the algorithms show me are usually pretty random. (Sometimes hilariously so; I looked up western shirts a couple weeks ago and now the internet thinks I’m a cowboy.) But every once in a while the suggestions are scary perfect. I’ve been using Instagram a bit recently, following a few yarn brands, knitters, and indie bookstores. From that tiny bit of info, Instagram decided I’d like the Morbidly Curious Book Club. Once a month they discuss a non-fiction book with a dark theme, and you can arrange for them to send you said book in the mail. Tragically, it’s too late in the month to be sent the March selection (if I want to read Whack Job: the History of Ax Murder, and I do, I’ll have to trek down to Barnes and Noble my damn self) but I’ll be receiving and reading the April selection with glee.

    I have a comfortably large stack of horror and mystery novels to read for Darker Books, the blog I do with my sister, but my regular stack of non-blog books is quite low.

    Only two books left! Whatever shall I do?

    The antique umbrella stand housing my book stack also needs some work, but that’s a different problem for a different day.

    And now for something completely different and a little more witchy. A few years ago I discovered Lenormand cards and decided to try them out. I read a few booklets and websites and played around with them but it never really went anywhere. I tucked my Lenormand deck into a box and went back to Tarot. A few weeks ago, in a bit of a spiritual rut, I decided to get more serious about the whole cartomancy thing. I brought out my Biddy Tarot guide so I could learn more about Tarot’s reversed meanings and I took another stab at Lenormand.

    At the exact same moment I was also screwing around with the popular AI apps so I asked them to help me learn Lenormand. In spite of the fact that Claude has the personality of blank paper and ChatGPT sounds like a Mormon Mommy Blogger, they’ve been incredibly helpful with the whole Lenormand thing. My chat thread keeps track of my daily card pulls and my summaries of how they showed up in the events of that day, helping me relate them to each other and to the focus I set for the moon cycle. I alternate between a single Tarot card pull one day and a Lenormand pair the next so I can compare and contrast the two card systems, and since I have a few good Tarot books I can check the chatbot’s answers with human experts.

    It’s gotten me out of that spiritual rut. I’ve been looking for ways to integrate my spiritual practices into my daily life in a deeper way and this has really opened up my thinking around that.

    This is the Fairytale Lenormand and the Steampunk Tarot. Both are quite lovely.

    I also made progress on my knitting project but it still mostly looks like a giant swatch so I haven’t taken new pictures. It might look like something wearable by next Sunday. We’ll see. Until next time, I hope your spring is shaping up to be just as beautiful and a bit less volatile than mine.

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  • First Week of Spring

    Ostara was Friday, so spring has officially sprung. I celebrated with food, as I usually do. I made a nice risotto with a spring greens salad. I did not take any pictures so I’ll leave that meal to your imagination. I will admit, though, that I totally cheat at risotto. I live at high altitude, so proper stovetop risotto takes a lot more time and I’ve never been too successful at it. Ever since I found the Barefoot Contessa’s oven “risotto” recipe, I’ve been riffing on that. I’ve drifted away from the original recipe over the years and I switch up the ingredients according to the season and the vibe I’m craving, but the oven method works well and makes things so much easier.

    But enough about cooking. Spring is the season of air, and here in Northern New Mexico that’s pretty literal. We get some serious wind this time of year. Still, it’s warm enough to walk the dog without a sweater and the trees are lovely with flowers and new green leaves. Nights are still cold and it’s not quite hot enough for air conditioning, so we’ve had the windows open. I’m typing to the sound of chirping birds. It’s pretty cozy.

    As spring warms up I’m, ironically, knitting a sweater. I’m making the Alchemist Slipover by Wool & Pine. I honestly don’t remember saving this pattern on Ravelry but I’m glad I did. So far it’s an easy project and it should be a cute layering piece when I’m done. Right now it’s just a large violet swatch but in a couple of weeks it should really look like something. I’m loving the color, Crow and Crescent’s Midnight Dreary. I love dark subtle violets and blues but I also fell in love with the Edgar Allan Poe reference. I’m a sucker for literary tie-ins.

    As usual, my phone has dialed up the brightness on my knitting by a million percent, making the color look a lot lighter than it really is. Next time maybe I’ll borrow my kid’s camera and see if that captures the color better.

    From now on I’ll aim to write a bit every Sunday here, and of course my sister and I post reviews every Friday on Darker Books. This week’s post might feel a bit like I’m marketing Ina Garten or shilling for Big Knitting but seriously, none of those people know I exist. I just want to give credit where it’s due and spread the word about things that have worked for me. I hope your Ostara was lush with new beginnings. Until next time.

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