Talking About Crafts

Hey.
 
Okay.
 
I’m listening to this New World Witchery podcast about blending secular holidays with religious Pagan (Wiccan) ones, and it’s really kinda neat.
 

O is for Otherworld – Pagan Blog Project 2013

So I haven’t really ever been there.
I’ve talked a lot about how I’m not much for Traveling, have difficulty going into trance, and am frankly scared to death of taking a walkabout once I get there.
So this is less about going to visit the Otherworld and more about having the Otherworld come and visit me.
Or, more accurately, visit my wife.
 

Full Moon – Berry Moon Crests

So, strictly speaking, the full moon was on Monday. Late again, late again. None the less, let’s get into it, shall we?
 
I have about a litre of sour cherries frozen in a zip-lock bag in the freezer (that’s on top of a cherry pie and a few cups of cherry-chocolate spread). I regret not picking even more of them but, unlike the serviceberries, these are all from trees in other people’s front yards. Goblin Fruit means that you can’t just take everything, y’know?
 

O is for Ordeals – Pagan Blog Project 2013

So. There has been some talk lately about Ordeal Work, possibly because the Dark Oddessey folks now have an entire programming track based on Ordeal Work – how to facilitate it, how to handle it, how to go through it. This facinates and excites me, but it also scares the shit out of me.
 
Granted, maybe that’s part of the point.
 

Spicy Pickled Radishes (Extra-Tiny Batch) – Recipe Makes Half a Cup

Hey!
So I did wind up making pickled radishes. While I was waiting for my last three jars of garlic-dill cucumber pickles to process. Because I’m… like that. Right.
 
Anyway. The recipe, below, used four of my guerrilla-gardened radishes, but could easily be doubled or quadrupled or whatever depending on how many radishes you have lying around.
It could potentially be made with fresh ginger (diced, like the garlic) and might do nicely with the addition of a quarter teaspoon of whole yellow mustard seeds as well. Not sure. Will try again next year (or with more radishes).
 

Garlic-Dill Cucumber Pickles – 2013 (recipe)

So I’ve made (or almost made – I’ve got two more jars to fill with pickling solution, and then I need to process everything) six pints (2-cup jars) of garlic-dill cucumber pickles this year.
I may or may not make more, depending on (a) if I can find pickling cukes on discount, and (b) if I can dig up more pint jars out of the recesses of my work room. (Honestly, I don’t think that’ll be hard, but there you go).
 
I used a very similar recipe to last year‘s (only this year, I nearly forgot to put the garlic in. Ack!) with a few adjustments, mostly based on what I had available in the house.
 
 

Radishes! (Guerrilla Gardening)

So… I’ve got radishes.
I’ve got radishes that I planted. In a traffic-calming island (or… something like that) up the street.
I also planted squash along side it. Someone else has planted corn. We’re an enterprising bunch in my neighbourhood, I gotta say. 😀
 

N is for New Moon (Berry Moon Begins) – Pagan Blog Project 2013

You’re getting a two-for-one (or one-for-two?) today, since I need to post Berry Moon and, hey, we’re at “N is for ________________” in the PBP13 cycle. Strictly speaking, Berry Moon (or Fruit Moon) began on Monday, even though its pervue (the first harvest) and its influence (home, Home, H/hearth, emotions, and empathy) started to hit me closer to Summer Solstice, just after Rose Moon started waning and the sun itself moved into Cancer space.
 
The serviceberries are, at this point, so ripe they are dropping off the trees and rotting on the ground[1], the strawberries are stilling coming in at the markets, and the sour cherries and red currants are ripe and ready and will be for another week, maybe two. I picked something like a litre and a half of cherries (pitted) yesterday, which are now sitting in a bowl in my fridge, waiting to be turned into Black Forest Chocolate-Cherry Spread – one of the recipes I’m trying out with the hopes of using it as a teaching-recipe in a canning course I want to run next summer.

Strawberries, Sour Cherries, and Red Currants (Jam and Fool)

So I had to be out of the house for a bit today. I walked up into the Glebe, talked to a guy who wants to start what sounds like a combination artists’ commune and artists’ temp agency… or something, and got to explain to him what forest gardening is. It seemed right up his alley, so hopefully he’ll look into it further when he has the chance.
I also hit up a couple of grocery stores and a few local fruit trees and bushes and brought home the following:
16 pickling cucumbers
Bacon
About 2 C Quebec strawberries
About 1 C sour cherries
About half a cup red currants
Chocolate ice cream
Yoghurt
Whipping cream
Two tins of lemon-dill tuna
A package of bacon
 

N is for Nest – Pagan Blog Project 2013

This post could have just as easily gone under “H is for Hearth/Home”, “K is for Kitchen Witch”, or even “D is for Domesticity”. Which should give you a good idea of what I’m going to be talking about today.
 
I’m a home-body. I’m enough of a home-body that, when my land-line phone died, I waited a couple of weeks before replacing it. (I now have a new, cordless, landline which, for some reason, still isn’t working. I’m wondering if maybe my old phone worked fine, and that it’s the jack and the Bell Guys mucking about in the room next door that are the problem). I’m an introverted enough that People are fequently overwhelming. But I’m also social enough that I love entertaining in my home. Being a broke chick who loves to cook anyway, it’s a good way to see people without (a) having to spend (much) money, or (b) having to sort out how to get home after the party. The end result here is that I’m very “hearth focused”, as Miss Sugar would put it.