Blog entry

Every Flower is a Soul - Artisan Handmade and Vintage

Here in the Desert Southwest, you can feel that spring is not far off.  The days are getting longer, the winds are a bit windier, and, with the recent rains, the mountains and the desert have a lovely tinge of green.  The first swallows of the season are soaring and dipping through the arroyo that butts up against out back yard.  Other bird migrants will soon be here - yay!  I can almost feel the flowers stirring, flowers of all types will soon make their much anticipated appearance before the heat sets in.

Christmas Red - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade

As everyone is aware, the color combination of red and green is closely associated with the Christmas season.  From ancient history to modern time, color has been an integral part of cultural awareness and even an understanding of life.  The meaning of colors touched all members of society, conveying deep messages that everyone could “read”:  at one time, only royalty could wear the color purple and the red robes worn by Catholic Cardinals signifies the blood of Christ, even to this day.  The red and green color combination can be traced to the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh stories from the 13th century.  And these stories were most likely based on an oral tradition that dates back to the pre-Christian Celts many centuries before where a half-red, half-green tree figures prominently in one of the tales.  In pre-Christian times, red represented male strength and desire and green represented female harmony and fertility.

Bohemian Rhapsody - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade

It’s amazing how often my blogs are inspired by music.  As you have probably noticed, music is, and always has been, a huge part of my life.  For some reason, I have been listening quite a bit to the complete soundtrack to the Lord of the Rings movies.  Heroic music for an awesome trilogy!  It ended (for the umpteenth time) and I switched to my Pandora station.  And . . . Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen started the mix of music.  The song, which was released in 1975, instantly took me back to a time at university when several friends and I developed a Bohemian Rhapsody skit . . . and performed it at a university talent show!  Am sure the skit was absolutely, undeniably horrible.  But whenever I hear the song, it takes me back to all the hard work and laughter as we pulled the antics of the skit together.  Am sure there is a photo or two around, but I have no idea where they are.  

Eclipse Blues - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday

Yesterday, I was flying back home from Dallas right as the eclipse was happening in far West Texas.  Unfortunately, the sun was right above the plane, so I couldn’t see any of it.  But I was able to see the ground (something like 40,000 feet below) slowly growing darker.  Although since the eclipse was only about 65% in my area of the world, it didn’t get anywhere as dark as a full eclipse.  But what was interesting was watching the sky as the sun dimmed and then grew brighter - what beautiful shades of deep, rich blues showed up and then slowly dissolved into the more normal paler sky blues.  The colors looked almost velvety if you could just reach out and touch them!  

The photo above is the one and only photo I took yesterday towards the end of the eclipse. I just pointed my old iPhone at the sun and clicked, hoping the sun wouldn't fry the lense. Not a great photo by any means - the sun doesn't even look like it is eclipsing with all the "light leakage." It wasn't until I downoaded the photo on the computer that I noticed the lense flare with a clear eclipse shape in it, which is what the sun actually looked like at that time. Yay! But look at the sky . . . what an amazing color!