"in keeping with the season"

Gifts from Ruth

In an attempt to try and beat this rotten cold, a nap was in order. Before I fell asleep, I'd been thinking of this time of year back through the decades and some of the things my family and friends did to celebrate in those weeks leading up to Christmas day. Some things were consistent, traditions, I guess you would call them, and other things were new, but sometimes became tradition - or not. It reminded me of an NFB film called "Keepers of the Fire", about Aboriginal women, who are the keepers of the cultural heart and soul of their community - their music, language, arts, food, and of course, traditions.

At the Heart of the Hammer cafe our little "community centre", the key keeper of our communal heart and soul, Rebecca, has asked those who have a creative inclination, to make something for our sparkly Christmas tree.

I hadn't given it any thought about what to make for our festive tree until now. A traditonal craft we made as a family when I was a kid were dough decorations. I found a similar recipe and directions online (@planetgreen.com) and pasted it below. You can use cookie cutters or just use your imagination and form whatever you want with the dough, just as you would with plasticine. This and making those fabulous milk carton candles were good fun for all of us and we could be proud of our creations on display throughout the Christmas season.

Dough Christmas tree ornaments

circles and cycles

Helga at the beach

Circle hands, circle hips - bellydancing is all about sensuous circles and serpentine movements. The dance is beautiful and fluid. Circles are at the heart of life, symbols of the infinite cycle of birth, life and death - we all know this stuff.  Like mice, we run our lives in circles - we don't always stick to the baseboards, but we have our routines which lead us in circles, which lead us home. Circles of friends and family surround us with affection and inspiration (mostly? sometimes?). The cycle of the year - seasons, the days, weeks and months. Everything is generally a round ticket, (until we don't come back). What if for a week, we resisted the circle? What would happen to your brain? Would it loosen things up, increase creativity, or would you just go crazy? And I am not sure how to do this? Linear thought - goes from A to B to C and where does it go from there - does it come back to A? Intersecting lines, parallel lines all stretching into infinity, but wait isn't the symbol for infinity a figure 8 on its side? Are we all stuck in a giant bubble?

All Souls' Day

Annie with a hat

As humans, we come from multiple ancestral origins contributing to the genetic cocktail that helps shape our characteristics, likes, dislikes, interests, etc. In our recent history, my family knows of a particularly strong Scottish influence named Sarah. Sarah was my great-grandmother and when her husband abandoned the family in the early 1900's, she raised five boys on her own, financially supporting her brood by doing domestic work - cleaning houses, doing laundry and mending. From what my grandfather said about his mother, Sarah was frugal, stubborn and determined. Well I guess she had to be. Poor woman, like many other families at the time, after all that work raising those sons, two of them died overseas in the First World War.

Today being "All Souls' Day",  I am thinking of Sarah and others who have gone before me and feeling lucky I know a bit about these people. I try to forgive myself when I am not the person (yet) that I want to be. The biggest thing to remember is unlike my paintings which can be completed, I will ALWAYS be a work in progress, or just "a piece of work" some days.