References for Later

Happy Mabon my greenies! I’m so happy to bring this recipe for you to enjoy during this festive time. Like all my recipes, these can be used with or without a chant, you can create your own, or if you’re not a practitioner. I want to bring joy and comfort for this time of year. This is a recipe I used last year and decided to post it for y’all. I hope you enjoy!

Ingredients

5 Apples (I use honeycrisp)

1 tsp cornstarch

1 tsp lemon juice

2 tbsp granulated sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Pinch of sea salt

Pinch ground nutmeg

Dash of vanilla

For Topping

¼ cup all purpose flour

¼ cup brown sugar

¼ cup old fashioned oats

¼ tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Pinch sea salt

3 tbsp unsalted butter

Directions

First cut off the tops of the apples and core them. Make sure you spoon out the insides and save them. (Also save all peels to use as offerings or compost) Use the inside of the apple and cut into small ¼ inch chunks.

Mix together the apple chunks, cornstarch, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and vanilla. Put into the apple and make sure you leave a little space for the crumble topping. While mixing these ingredients, think on all you’re thankful for and fill the apples with love and hope.

Cut up the butter into little pieces and put some inside the apple. Then mix together the flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt and place on top of the apple. While mixing, you can say the chant below or your own. Use the rest of the butter to sprinkle on top of the apples.

Preheat ovan at 375 degrees F and place apples onto a covered baking sheet. Cover the tops of the apples with foil and bake for 15 min and the uncover and bake for 20. Wait at least 10 minutes before eating and enjoy with some ice cream.

Chant: While fog may cast in front of my eyes, the breeze of fall trails with browning leaves. A warm hand on my back and wisp of hair, let my future shine. Let my love rejoice and my mind rest with ease. My life, my hope, my dream.

Once again my lovelies, happy Mabon to you and your loved ones. I hope that with the shifting of seasons, brings change to our society.

With all my love, 

Longstitch binding

https://youtu.be/a_LZ-BWhH_Q

2)Japanese Binding

https://youtu.be/j-r6c_trSxY

3) Belgian Binding

https://youtu.be/w-oct9Ttp1g

4) Coptic stitch binding

https://youtu.be/TdHo8NtDOXc

5) Case Bookbinding

https://youtu.be/Av_rU-yOPd4

Crafts

quilting

embroidery

cross-stitch

knitting

crochet

sewing

Cooking and Baking

homemade bread

homemade butter

homemade extracts

dandelion jelly

Canning

26 canning recipes

canning jars 101

60 canning recipes

Gardening

edible trees to plant

what to plant to save the bees

cure and braid garlic

save seeds for next year

braid onions for long term storage

build a greenhouse

Animals

homemade chicken feed

raising mealworms for chickens

why to raise nigerian dwarf goats

Outdoors

starting a fire with sticks

trail signs

knotting

find true north without a compass

Medicine

homemade neosporin

Most people, when first approaching greenhouses, just build a generic shed that has clear walls and a roof. That’s what you see in the blog post above, while the author kept mentioning how incredibly hot it is. The author is located in central Washington state, USA.

Greenhouse with no ventilation/cooling or heating or electricity or gas, in a hot climate summer climate, cool winter. While conventionally attractive, it is not particularly functional, and is only useful for a relatively short period of the year.

How best to design a greenhouse can depend on factors like climate and latitude. 

If your greenhouse is located someplace very cold, you’re looking at issues with heating it, or else not using it at all during that time. There’s multiple ways to heat greenhouses, traditionally methane or propane gas, although in emergencies, and if it is wired for electricity, electrical heat may be used. Some people have even used wood furnaces (this is less than ideal) For any place with long winters this quickly becomes very expensive. Thermal mass is the clever trick to solve most, if not all, (depending on climate) heating issues in winter - no fossil fuels or deforestation required.

If your greenhouse is located someplace very hot, you’re looking at issues with cooling it, or else not using it all during that time. There’s multiple ways to cool greenhouses - fans/vents and shade cloth being the most common. Thermal mass can also help with this issue too.  

My favorite website on greenhouses (which longtime readers may recognize) is Penn and Cord. Heating and cooling greenhouses so you can use them for more than 6 weeks a year can be very expensive and very energy intensive - unless you start looking at passive solar greenhouse designs, such as those by Penn and Cord. You do sacrifice some space in the back greenhouse for the thermal mass aka giant barrels of water.

Can be built out of used or scrap material.

Above, barrels are on the left, hidden behind the plants. Below, this is what the wall of barrels looks like before plant beds are installed.

These 55 gallon drums filled with water and painted black, all along the north wall, are the “battery” that keeps these greenhouses usable year round. The roof angles are designed so that these receive direct sunlight (hence why they are painted black) in the winter, the sun heats the water, and they help keep the greenhouse warm all winter long. They’re working at high elevations in Colorado which means 1) wild temperature fluctuations 2) it’s pretty cold in winter there, down to -30F/-34C. The barrels also modulate the hot temperatures in summer. There are variations around this idea, but hopefully the concept makes sense. Sometimes people will create the northern wall out of concrete, and then put the barrels or bottles of water in front of it, for a similar “battery” or modulating effect. The interiors are painted bright white, to reflect as much light as possible to the plants.

Plants that are poisonous or develop strong root systems and return year after year have a saturnine quality, lending themselves to necromancy, cursing, and dark spirit work.

Plants with barbs, thorns, or irritants are martial in nature and are useful for defense and success in competitive areas.

If a plant has large, fragrant blossoms, it can be said to possess a venereal nature, potent in love, friendship, and beauty.

Plants that hold watery or milky substances or enjoy the shade have a lunar quality, useful in divination and foresight.

Plants with complex, small leaves or petals that flutter in the wind often have a mercurial nature, useful for learning, communication, and trade.

Plants that produce prolific nuts or seeds are connected to the planetary force of Jupiter, useful for success, wealth, and influence."

Character Ideas:

Character creation masterpost

Character Alignment Chart

More character alignment descriptions

Muslim Character questions

Characters with magical powers

Building a new character advice

How to create a character for an online or tabletop RPG (also a good guide on creating characters in general)

Royalty/nobility TV Tropes page

Basic character profile

OC masterpost

Random character generators - (1), (2), (3), (4)

D&D Character Building Tool

Character Design Ideas:

How clothing affects a character’s personality

Character Design Inspiration blog

Concept art, fan art, cool art to be inspired by

Character design references and inspiration

Sources for POC character design ideas and models

Create your own character model using HeroForge

For horned characters

Body and hair types guide

Random outfit generator

Naming Help:

Amazing site with an endless amount of naming resources

General advice on avoiding naming appropriation

Hispanic Surnames

Gothic Victorian names

Huge master list for character things in general

Masterlist of names of all types - including but not limited to ancient/old world names, Celtic, African, Northern European, Southern and Central American Native names, Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Polynesian, and more

Another name masterlist

How to pick a character name guide

Yet another names masterlist

Creating Background/backstory:

Character Sheet/Development Sheet

Another character development list

In-depth character personality, motivations and traits sheet

320 talents and passions for characters

On writing likes and dislikes that aren’t frivolous

Why you should write non-human characters non-conforming to the gender binary

Stereotypes, tropes, and archetypes

Random backstory generator

Assassin and thief character tropes to avoid

Character Interactions and putting your character into your world/story:

Comparing character height/height references

Characters who are scientists and writing about them doing science

Describing what different voices sound like

Describing skin tones

Writing friendship interactions that are platonic

Why having one character knock their friend unconscious to prevent them from doing something is a bad idea

Advice on shipping OCs with canon characters and what to avoid doing

Sweet Polly Oliver and Sweet on Polly Oliver situations (think of Disney’s Mulan for an example)

How to write multiple viewpoints/juggling a main cast of more than 4 to 6 characters

How to make readers care about your morally gray hero/anti-hero

On platonic OC and canon character relationships

How to avoid Godmodding in RPs

When it’s cheap to kill off a character

Writing dialogue

Things you shouldn’t do to canon characters

Avoiding purple prose in writing and RPs

Slang resources

Dialogue tips

Websites to chart your story/plot/character relationships

wanderlust and what you could become

Sunshine by Robin McKinley - practical baker is captured by vampires, escapes, reluctantly teams up with better vampire to kill the bad one.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones - young hat maker ages 60 years overnight, proceeds to upend the life of a disaster wizard while learning self-confidence.

the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett - hard to encapsulate, but equally funny and hard-hitting, tackling race and gender and corruption and other forms of inequality while also, like, making fun of post offices and Hollywood and Shakespeare. Three or four tackle war, true, but there’s something like 35 others to choose from.

the Accidental Turn series by J.M. Frey - recent Ph.D of colour lands in the Fantasyland™ she did her thesis on, goes off about agency and diversity while recovering from the Dark Lord’s attentions and learning the truth about her fictional crush.

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire - evil alchemist creates superpowered children to assist world takeover; children just want to be a family; family is complicated.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik - young woman takes over family business, must outwit fairies with a love of gold.

the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede - princess runs away to become a dragon’s housekeeper, fights off rescuers, solves problems large and small, melts wizards.

the October Daye novels by Seanan Mcguire - Half-fae detective solves murders, finds missing persons, develops found family, can’t stop self from upending the social order.

The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker - A quiet golem, a tempestuous djinn, Gilded Age New York. Immigrants, identity, friendship, hope, and self-discovery.

An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard - A witch from an outsider House enters New York’s magical Hunger Games, to prove a point. The problems of magic were not intended.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes - Part-time con artist gets hired to find two missing pop stars, with the help of the magical sloth on her back. Noir ensues.

Child of a Hidden Sea by A.M. Dellamonica - Nature photographer lands on water-world, discovers lost family, tries to convince self magic is impossible.

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips - Greek gods, washed up in North London, curse Apollo to fall for the cleaner. Existential crisis, meet rom-com.

Every Heart a Doorway (and sequels) by Seanan McGuire - the children of portal fantasy end up in boarding school coping with being kicked out of their various worlds, then some of them start getting murdered. 

The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan - the world is flooded, there’s a lady who works with a bear at a circus that sails to different places to perform, and a lady who is sort of an undertaker, and they fall in love

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees - there are fairies but no one talks about them anymore because That’s Just Not How We Are except this state of affairs cannot possibly last and people start getting lured to fairyland

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison - fifth son of emperor who’s lived his whole life away from court abruptly becomes emperor when his father and older brothers are killed in an accident, spends entire book trying to make friends and figure how the fuck to do a) confidence and b) ruling ethically

The Various by Steven Augarde - girl spends summer at uncle’s farm, finds the group of “various” (no direct parallel, but think somewhere between gnomes and pixies) that live in the woods, mysterious history, flying horse, The Cat Is Evil (this is technically middle grade but it’s so good I can’t even)

Ten of Swords 

Three years ago, I designed my first card, The Ten of Swords. For this brand new tarot deck, I’ve re-designed this card, so I hope you enjoy.