[Your breath was shed]

 Poem [Your breath was shed]

Your breath was shed

Invisible to make

About the soiled undead

Night for my sake,

A raining trail

Intangible to them

With biter's tooth and tail

And cobweb drum,

A dark as deep

My love as a round wave

To hide the wolves of sleep

And mask the grave.

from The Poems of Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1946 by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

Author Dylan Thomas

-via poets.org

Saint Pomegranate

 

"..The pomegranate tree had borne fruit, it was in fact laden with pomegranates. The pomegranates had ripened and cracked open, and their shining red seeds shone in the golden-bright sun. The woman thought that this was the truth, the pomegranate seeds. She had received a vision that truth, the truth which she did not know and yet had spent a lifetime guarding, was born of Saint Pomegranate."- pg.323, Touba and the Meaning of Night by Shahrnush Parsipur

I dyed another linen of my grandmothers' with pomegranates- this time with dried rinds. I cut open another pomegranate and dried the skin in the oven. Then I let the pieces sit in my bathroom under the skylight for a week or so to further dry. Once dry enough, I boiled and left the rinds soaking overnight, took them out the next morning added the fabric, simmered it, and let it sit for four days (I believe). The results are very similar to using freshly harvested rinds. 

The Witch

 

I made 'the Witch' for a Halloween decorating contest at the library. She's got a dried yellow rose tucked up in her logwood dyed alpaca hair. She sports a lightly pokeweed dyed top tucked into a logwood skirt and belt. She herself is a lovely shade of black walnut. Her pointy hat is sumi ink on felt. Every witch needs their familiar, and her kitty is a grey (like mine) from tea/iron dyed muslin. Every witch also needs their broom. Hers is made from some of my dried mugwort, willow, river birch, and black walnut from the woods out back. And, yes, I did just find the broom stick woven in vines waiting for me in the grass, already magical on its own. She surprised me when I finished her. (I also won Halloween)