Happy Samhain

I love autumn!

Mists are on the moors like a thick wool blanket.

 Pumpkins sit atop fence posts along the drive.

Their toothy smiles on rakish tilt.

 

Heaps of leaves below the trees.

Perfect for foot dragging and scuffling.

 

I have been making paper with cedar bark, cattail stems,

and repurposed sumi-e practice sheets in the company of good friends.

 

With the winds threatening to scatter the leaves

it was a scurry to eco-print.

Soft tones for some,

Good color on others.

Time to play with collage and sumi-e too.

Yes, this is how the days were recently spent.

Retirement is lovely.

 

 

 

Maybe there's still time today to put a dye bath on the stove

and cook up some mushrooms?

Boil and bubble,

spoon and cudgel.

Maybe the dye would finally stick

to paper and cloth

like it does under my fingernails?

 

Maybe if I add this little spell:

 

"Within this happy circle

may no evil come,

but love and peace and happiness

make up our daily sum."

 

The Pendulum Swung

Yes, that's right, the pendulum swung so far into the happy zone it shouldn't be surprising that it has taken 2 weeks to recover from the greatest month we have had in YEARS! Oh, my gosh. We can hardly express how wonderful our trip to Scotland and Ireland was because we are smiling so hard, laughing over the funny escapades and then ahhhing and grabbing our waist (or where it used to be) over the food we experienced. Only took 10,000 photos. No, I am not joking. I am a bit overwhelmed thinking about how to make them into something meaningful. I don't need to worry about the kids coming over to see a slide show of them as they refused to do that after seeing photos from our last trip. Hurrump. I would like to create something with them for memory sake tho... so I am cogitating.

In the meantime, sitting by my new little stove (heater with the fake flames) I made a linoleum block from one of the Ireland photos. I thought I would print a mono print background and then print the linoleum block. Ha! Will I ever "get it" - that flipping the image thing? Well, it's good that I have a wry sense of humor otherwise I could have be in tears as I was already upset that I accidentally cut a part out that I wanted. I tried to watercolor some, color pencil on others. Oh, well, it's all play, right? Who knows, maybe I will do something more to them to cover up my humanness. Or not. Or maybe I will just sit by the fake fire and look out at the changing autumn scene, or build myself a crannog (a Gaelic round house built on stilts above the water) just in case mother nature thinks that the foot of rain we have gotten isn't enough.