snow in may

well, now i know why my lunar calendar is calling this a dandelion moon.....

sowing the seeds of love....even in cement

why oh why would you try to kill a plant that wants to live amongst us this badly? it offers itself to us from root to leaf to blossom to seed. every part edible, every part medicinal. and free for the taking most everywhere. the next time you see someone spraying her, let them know, use force if necessary (just kidding, sort of)

change is good

i constantly go back and forth about packaging. i recently made another switch back to glass for 2 of my oldest potions, fresh face scrub and float bath salts. they each started out in glass jars, wound up in tin jars, and now, back to glass. this time it's bottles. we shall see. i figured these would be easier to get a grip on with dry or soapy hands.

then

now

dandelion porn

i just can't get enough....

a good day for making medicine

yesterday was wonderfully hot and sunny, and from the moment i awoke, i was ready to go. rare to have an entire day to myself and having already purchased a large bottle of 100 proof vodka (this is always fun at the ABC store "it's not for drinkng, i'm making medicine" yeah ok miss), it was medicine time. i'd had my eye on a lovely patch of dandelion leaves for a couple of days and was planning on preserving their goodness in the vodka. standing there, munching on a few of these leaves, i noticed a lovely display of blossoming dandelion and couldn't resist digging up an entire plant. it took only a little maneuvering with a shovel, as it had rained not too long before. i dug her up and rinsed her off, leaving her to slightly dry off in the sun.

here she is basking....

here she is on the chopping block....

and into the jar she goes...


topped off with the vodka, labeled and put onto the shelf to admire for at least 6 weeks. i'm pretty excited about it. my first tincture from a whole plant, from root to stem to leaf to blossom to seed. should be pretty potent for general liver and digestive health.

treasures: incense, scarves, and baby krishna

baby krishna bag





incense direct from india, so good you don't even have to light it....



scarves of many colors...



aaauuuuummmmm..........


small & large prayer scarves


these items, and many more, are now available in the shop on Stafford

rules schmules...or, black is the color of my true love's hair

i was reading about spells of reversal recently and came across the idea that when it comes to 2-color candles, black must always burn first, lest the spell caster 'end by cursing themselves'. i can certainly see the logic in this. and while i agree tradition has its place, i believe and know that the most potent magik occurs when the practitioner has developed their own sense of things.

for example, in this image, you have two versions of a candle. one will burn black then lavender, the other, lavender then black. suppose i want to remove the energetic crap from my space prior to meditation or workings dealing with the highest chakra? well, i'd grab the candle with the black top. now if i'm looking for a a bit of alignment with my crown chakra, before getting into some deep delicious workings, i'd go for the lavender-then-black candle.

negativity is simply another side of the coin when you take away the connotations, no light without dark.....for me, black is the deepest earth, the womb, the place from which we all arrive and to which we all return....and with that, the black at the bottom of my candle can represent a greater energetic range.

that's what altars, and friends, are for

after sitting with a friend tonight, a friend going through quite a lot right now, i realized i'd forgotten to give her one of the hand-dipped candles i've been making lately. i thought the twisty, almost spirally blueness of it could help ease her woes to some extent. ever the impatient aries, i almost took it over to her....about 2 seconds after (i'm getting better!) i decided against adding yet another task to her plate and lit the candle with her in mind.