Pro-Choice

In light of the recent attacks on women's reproductive freedom this week, I feel like it's time that I need to draw my line/s in the sand.

I am pro-Choice. This doesn't mean I want abortions or delight in dead babies. I couldn't even abort one of my own. Maybe in the case of massive abnormality that would impede survival and quality of life, but other than that, no. I personally couldn't. I believe in choices and options. I believe in giving people the information and pill to help stop abortions. I believe in giving people safe abortions should they be required.

For me, elective abortions are acceptable up until the point when the fetus can survive outside the woman's body. After that, I can only really get behind abortions that come from medical necessity, or when a couple receives the awful information that their child will have a deformity that will not make it possible for that child to live or enjoy life; I do not include Down's or other manageable issues in this. I used to work with Down's, autism and Angelman's people. I know that there are ways to educate, raise, and give these individuals a good quality of life. I'm talking about issues in which those disabilities will cause $1 million babies, because they need so much support, have a poor quality of life, and will probably die before making their first decade.


If a person believes that abortion and birth control are wrong, they should avoid it themselves. It is not their place to tell others, or force their morals upon others. From the doctrine of free will, I kind of get the impression that their god wouldn't appreciate it anyway.The abortion debate is much bigger than all of this.


When I get pregnant (hopefully), I would like to be able to do what I believe is best for my baby. I would like to be able to choose the birth plan that would provide the best entrance into this world for that baby. Should anything go wrong, I would like to know that a doctor would remember his Hippocratic oath and not let me die as some kind of martyr for something that would die anyway.

I have a right to life too.

Having breasts and a vagina doesn't mean that I sacrifice this by default.

I don't like, nor want to see abortion. Like I said, my heart doesn't delight in this. However while I don't like abortion, I wouldn't want it removed from the table of options that women have; the same goes for birth control. Were that to occur, we might as well be looking at Communist Romania, and the effects of Ceausescu's breeding program.

Women In Heathenry Questionnaire

Today on one of the groups I frequent, a group focused on women's Heathenry, a member made a request for us to help out one of her friends by filling in a questionnaire about the woman's experience of Heathenry. Normally, I don't bother with this kind of thing, but seeing as the guy doing the survey seems to be somewhat influential in his local area and his purported goal was '...to encourage more involvement or interest to create more of a balance in our Heathen community.' , I figured I would give my two cents. As the questions and directions the answers took me in, were interesting, I thought I would post them here for possible future discussion. I have omitted the first two questions as they're just the usual background questions about how and why one came to Heathenry.

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3.What is your view of current Heathen gender equality?

It depends on the country. I've participated in Heathen communities in 3 countries to date (England, Germany and the US), I'm a member of the German org 'Der Eldaring' and I'm also friends with numerous Danish Heathens. In my experience, in Europe, the genders are pretty much equal. However in a lot of the US Heathen communities, I've come across all kinds of misogyny. Here are a few examples that I or Heathen women in my acquaintance have come across in various US Heathen communities:

* Being ignored or cut out of participating in more scholarly conversation topics. Or an 'Ok, now the 'estrogen' has left, we can talk about serious stuff' kind of attitude

* Being subjected to personal abuse for daring to (politely) disagree with a man about a point of lore when in the same conversation, a man can express the same disagreement and in the same way and get a perfectly peaceable response.

* People addressing your husband and asking them about you when you're standing right there and obviously capable of answering for yourself. Or asking your husband if they are allowed to speak to you or friend you on Facebook.

* People mailing your husband when you disagree with them to complain about you and then wishing your husband 'luck in being married to you/that' after he tells them that they deserved what they got for their rudeness.

* Being subjected to peer pressure to have children and conform to the role of being a motherly 'peace-weaver' type.

* Unmarried women receiving messages about how they need to hurry up and get married or they'll be too old to have children and then will be therefore 'too old' to marry and what about 'breeding for your folk'?

* Judgmental comments that imply a link between childlessness and lack of worth in community. Or attacks based on physical looks when a disagreement arises in a completely unrelated point.



4.What is your view of gender roles/requirements in the time prior to the conversion of Northern Europe? Both in the scope of appropriateness and your knowledge of them – it is ok to say that you do not have wide or deep knowledge of the subject, many do not (hence why this research).

Well, it would depend very much on which society you were talking about. For example, Anglo Saxon women enjoyed a greater measure of freedom than their Icelandic counterparts. We know from records that Anglo Saxon women could rule and lead armies (see Procopius's 'Island girl' account and Aethelflaed of Mercia), that women could bring cases to court, inherit, own property and trade. We know that the weregild was the same for a woman as for a man and from stories like Judith, in which a woman killed a man that was going to rape her, that the Anglo Saxons saw nothing wrong with women stepping into those 'male' shoes and meeting all attacks with equal or greater violence when warranted. Surviving continental laws regarding women mostly show systems that took great pains to protect women from abuse (be it physical, sexual or even regarding her reputation), to give her recourse if she was abused and that respected her. She could inherit ancestral lands in most cases (the Salian Franks were a notable exception in this) and while each woman had a guardian (Mundwald), that guardian could be male or female. Among the Lombards, there were women warriors and they were treated legally more like men. For more information, see: 'Peace-Weavers and Shield-Maidens' by Kathleen Herbert and 'Germanic Women: Mundium and Property 400-1000' by Kimberly Harper Dunn.

In sharp contrast, Icelandic women (most likely because of the high number of slaves/freed slaves making up the female population) had very few of those rights. A woman had no say in who she married, her consent wasn't even required until Christianity required it. Her family had the right to physically torture her to a certain degree if she fell pregnant before they could marry her off, in order to ascertain the name of the father. Any children she had were the property of her husband, to do as he wished after birth.
She couldn't inherit and would spend her life going from the guardianship of her father, to any husbands, to any male kin left alive. Maybe when she was a widow of a certain age, would she have a measure of freedom. But that's if she didn't die in childbed after too many births or from disease somewhere along the way.
If she (a free born woman) was to serve someone in her father's hall, she would be expected to serve that man in any way he wished, regardless of how it would negatively affect her marriage chances or honour. One example of this can be seen in the account of the father that promised his daughter that she could stay with him for the duration of a visit by a suitor by the name of Hákon, so as to avoid him exercising his guest's rights with her (Viglundar Saga 14.13:87).

In many cases, women were effectively property, as shown in the Landnamabok in the case of Sigriðr, who killed herself after her husband swapped land and wife with a friend. Yes, women could hold property, but it was only under certain circumstances and yes, there were exceptional women, such as Auð the deep-minded, however even they faced societal rebuke for daring to step out of their assigned roles, as we can see from Chapter 32 of Gisla saga. An interesting paper which examines this aspect of ON society is 'Regardless of Sex: Men, Women and Power in Early Northern Europe' by Carol J Clover (available on JSTOR). For more information about the general lot of the Icelandic woman, see 'Women in Old Norse Society' by Jenny Jochens and 'Women in the Viking Age' by Judith Jesch.

Naturally, as a modern woman, I find the treatment of Icelandic women to have been barbaric and would much rather have lived in Anglo Saxon society.


5.How, if at all, do you feel they have changed?

Well, for starters a woman is her own agent in modern society, with the right to choose her own matches and marry when and who she chooses. Women have the right to hold property and inherit, women can trade, own business, become lawyers, bring cases, join the armed forces, have children without fearing that the father won't accept them and then order their deaths, lead, rule in government and basically have almost the same legal rights as men (although current politics are working very hard at eroding those rights again for women).


6.Do you support the re-establishment of traditional gender roles, as much as possible in our current state of living, in modern time? Why or why not? To what extent? How would you frame the roles?

Define 'traditional gender roles'. We often discuss the female gender role in terms of the 'Peace-weaver/Shield-maiden' dichotomy, however historical record shows that this isn't entirely accurate (except in Iceland and hopefully the examples I gave above demonstrate why that would not be an acceptable model to try and recreate) and that women simply did whatever they must, as they must, to get by and/or look after their families. I don't think that any gender roles should be established in modern Heathenry except perhaps in the ritual sense (such as the role of horn bearer at Sumbel) and that any attempts to establish these 'traditional gender roles' in modern Heathenry would only result in more Heathen women marrying non-Heathen men or withdrawing from the communities that attempt this. I know of several instances where this has already been the case.

7.How involved do you find most women to be in Heathenry in modern times?

It depends on the community. In communities where women are mostly treated as equals, in my experience, you find greater involvement by women. However because of aforementioned issues in question 3, I know a lot of women that stick to their local communities and that don't participate on a wider scale, instead preferring to limit their participation to the safety of their inner-yard.

8.In what ways do you think that women could be involved in the future? Do you think that it is necessary for this?

Women should be involved in all the ways that men are, only then will Heathenry gain some balance, maturity and become more sustainable as a movement.


9.What is your opinion with the modern focus on the Vikings and much of the warrior-centric views of the worldview?

First of all, I'm no fan of the implication that the warrior-centric view is a 'man-only' kind of deal. Being a woman doesn't exempt you from life's issues and troubles. It doesn't exempt you from having to fight attackers or wanting to take dangerous forms of employment if capable. We do a great disservice to (to name one glaring example) the many women in the armed forces that, due to the nature of modern war, are increasingly on the front lines and in combat. They are warriors too, more so than some keyboard warrior that *feels* that Odin wants him for a snowflake.

Secondly, to my way of thinking, the wannabe-viking thing is something that modern Heathenry needs to grow out of. While I'm aware that it's a great draw for many males, it gives a skewed impression of the worldview to outsiders. Heathenry is about much much more than lame wannabe-vikings. One of the ways that we could do that would be to promote education about Heathenry from the perspective of the spindle side and all that's sacred in that. There is relatively little written about the Asynjur, there is relatively written about women's rituals or hell, even the importance of traditional ritual roles like that of horn bearer during Sumbel!!! We also need to work on removing the seeming (unspoken) taboos surrounding men that worship goddesses. If there is true respect there for the goddesses, that would not exist. Anyone that has truly experienced a goddess, knows that offering to a goddess is no wuss's game and was often a bloody affair in the past.

At the same time, we also need to deepen our understanding of men's roles on both a community level and when dealing with the sacred. We've kind of gotten stuck there on some kind of superficial level that's all sound and fury that really, mostly signifies nothing. Without that depth, we have confused men trying to live up to an ideal that was never really commonplace in the first place. I believe this is endemic in modern society for males anyway. There are no guiding principles anymore for men, no definition of what a 'real man' is and so it tends to fall back on treating women as being lesser in order to feel greater. However this is not greater. If anything, the misogyny that I listed in question 3 is a symptom of weakness, of a lack of self esteem and confusion as to what they're supposed to be in order to be 'real men'. Our sons need to know that both men and women are equally valuable, that we are all our deeds and that it is ultimately a man's honor, integrity and responsibility that will define him in the minds of women as a 'real man'.


10.Any other thoughts, observations, comments or other things that you believe should be addressed in the questionnaire?

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I left the last question blank, I could have gone into more aspects of modern Heathen society that I think need to change in order to help affect change for women in Heathenry, but for the purpose of this questionnaire, I think I covered everything I wanted to say in the other answers. However what would those answers be for you? How would they differ from mine? Not just the ladies that read this, but what about the guys? How would you answer these questions about women in modern Heathenry?


In other news, I need to stop procrastinating and get back to researching some damn paper.

Loki

One of the most fractious fault lines in the US Neo-Heathen community (not so much elsewhere), is that of those that offer to Loki and those that don't.

I fall very firmly in the 'Noki' camp.

When Loki is brought up in discussion, I've noticed that one of more of the following usually occurs:

*The Loki fans jump in and say how much they love him and how he's 'misunderstood'.
*'Noki' folks like myself jump in and say how much they think he's a pile of shit, often with jingoistic responses like 'May Loki be bound' or something equally as ridiculous.
*The Loki Fans claim to be persecuted and that the 'Noki' people are obviously struggling to shrug off their Judeo-Christian upbringings or have fallen prey to tainted lore.
*Things get really nasty and fraught.

Now it's all well and good and, quite frankly, a time-honoured neo-Heathen tradition to accuse those that don't agree with you of being 'Christians' or somehow less Heathen than yourself, as is screaming intolerance. But it's not very productive and quite frankly there's intolerance going on on both sides of the spectrum here.

Yes, you heard me, the Loki fans are being intolerant with their accusations that 'Noki' folks like myself are somehow hoodwinked by lore or somehow less Heathen.

So just for the record, why is it that I feel the way I do about Loki?

Firstly, if you're going to dispute how the lore portrays Loki, don't then refer to lore references in which Loki is Odin's blood brother or friend to Thor. That smacks of confirmation bias to me i.e you only believe the bits that you personally like. Just as the argument can be made that Loki turning evil is a product of Christian influence, the argument could also be made that Loki's 'good' (although self serving and to get himself out of trouble) actions, were also the product of Christian influence, after all, Satan was a fallen angel.

Secondly, if you look at social structure and law in Medieval Iceland, from the POV of a medieval Icelander, there would have been very little about Loki to recommend him and for the gods to keep him in their community. He's not kin (allegedly he's a blood brother to Odin but if you're going to dispute Ragnarok, you should definitely be disputing anything from the Lokasenna, especially with how late it was written), he merely cleans up his own messes to save his skin and although the gods do get something out of that, it could be considered a form of weregild.

Thirdly, there's no record of Loki existing anywhere outside of Scandinavia and any earlier than the conversion period. As someone that focuses on AS/Continental Germanic Heathenry, he simply doesn't feature.

***UPG Alert***

Thirdly, and the most importantly to me, it feels *wrong* with a capital W. Not in a 'I've been told not to do it.' kind of way, but in the kind of way that when I think of Loki, I think of darkness, of dank, spikey 'unhaelu'. He *feels* like the epitome of a gateway to what we don't need in our world, that which sucks out and perverts what is holy. People that say that they call upon Loki when they hit rock bottom confuse me. To me, that's like a person turning to whiskey to make their problems go away. It might feel good at the time, but eventually it's going to come with its own measure of trouble and it wouldn't just affect you. It would affect everyone around you. And believe me, I've been rock bottom a few times. I know that place. The only way out of it is to decide to change, slowly and steadily pick yourself up, brush yourself down and begin the climb up again. There are no quick fixes, there's no waving a wand. Just a slow and steady climb out, and if you haven't been too much of a dick on your way down, family and friends to help you.

Forthly, in 2007 I had about four months when I couldn't sleep properly at night. I would lie in bed trying to sleep but always end up in this awful half trance/half sleep kind of state. Every. single. night I would dream of Loki and other beings that are often collectively referred to now as 'Rokkr' and in those dreams, these beings had gained too much control in the world and the world was paying the price. I know they were just dreams, but they still left an impression.

And that's another thing. When we offer to or call to these beings that have been long dormant, we should show more care. Paganism and Heathenry have, to some extent, become 'All You Can Eat Deity/Otherworldly Buffets', but sometimes, surely it's better to let some things lay dormant? Especially when they are things that were never offered to back in the pre-Christian period? Why is it that we think we somehow know better than they did? Because that's what it boils down to. We, who have been separated from those days by over a thousand years, who think we're so clever with our iWhatevers and cars and better understanding of science.

It's one of the best jokes ever.

Lil Miss Abnormal

Maybe it's the darker nights, or the howling gails that echo down our chimney. Maybe it's the weather or cold. Maybe it's none of those things, maybe it's all of them. Whatever it is though, for whate ver reason, at this time of year, my thoughts always tend to run off into more 'esoteric' directions. Scary experiences that I haven't thought of for years come to mind, snippets of stories about family members passing, pieces of folklore and traditions all float around in this noggin of mine to produce this winter ridiculousness. I'm also possibly reading way too many posts on cracked.com....

Maybe some if this is normal, I don't know. Normal and I have been in an abnormal relationship for some time now.

This week has been surreal, like something out of a movie. You know the kind...awkward situations during festivities, then crime (not me) and family scandal, followed by a present I really wished we'd never got and aren't quite sure how to dispose of.

It almost makes you think the creepy memories you have from being a kid are normal in comparison.

My mother always said I should write those stories down, make them into some kind of horror book. Make some money.

And to add to this, the UPG/MUS also comes thick and fast at this time of the year. Not only that but this time I have the hugest urge to talk about it somewhere. But where? A lot of those that would are pretty crazy (says me...'Lil Miss Abnormal' over here...) and I've learned to be guarded about this over the years with everyone else.

It's probably going to come spewing out in some.embarassing webpost at some point that I'll look back on during some Yule in the future and repeatedly berate myself with the words ' What the FUCK was I thinking posting *that*!'

A Woman's Honour

So I've been trying to figure out how to make this kind of a blog post for a while. To say it's not an easy one would be an understatement.

However, over the past week or so, I've come across this phenomena twice.

Ladies pulling down ladies.

Now if your brain instantly flashed to two scantily dressed women, wrestling in a mud pit, you wouldn't be alone. I went to festivals a lot when I was younger and that was a popular entertainment.

But in all seriousness, I think it's a problem and while I normally don't really care what folks outside of my inner-yard do, I think women in Heathenry face enough crap that it really doesn't make sense for us to pull each other down, not if we want better for our daughters.

As I've mentioned before, women are treated differently in Heathenry. At best, we face social censure more often than guys do for our opinions, in some communities we are questioned/hassled about our breeding choices (as if our uteruses are anyone's business but our own and our parters), we may find ourselves excluded from any serious lore conversation and at the very worst, we're exploited sexually. But this is very much a 'mileage may vary' kind of deal. If you are a woman that's reading this blog, you may or may not have experienced any of this. We all have different communities with different histories. BUT, I will say that I have heard of all of the above happening to women in various American communities and all within the last 5 or so years.

And of course, this is not acceptable.

However adding to these issues are the issues that women create for women, to tear them down (and presumably attain some kind of status for doing so). During the course of the past week, I've heard of and/or dealt with one Heathen woman that has repeatedly made sexual advances towards the husbands and boyfriends of other Heathen women and another who basically wanted to point out how she wasn't fat but her sister was, on a group that her sister wasn't on. She even posted photos.

Both, to put it mildly, are shitty behaviours and they're really not the extent of it either. I once heard a workshop on Ravencast about gossip and how gossip was used to exert social control by women. Now that's all well and good, but seeing as we modern women live in a society in which we have more rights than our forebears did. And therefore don't NEED to rely on gossip and shaming our menfolk in order to get any amount of social control - or at least we shouldn't. My point is, shouldn't we be aiming a little higher? Instead of gossiping, or inciting others to do our dirty work, shouldn't we be taking control ourselves and going out and dealing with those that we have issues with directly? Surely that is what *should* be socially acceptable?

We often hear talk of honour within the context of men, but what of a woman's honour?

What *is* woman's honour? Is it, or should it be any different from that of a man and if it isn't, shouldn't we be judged the same as a man for doing as honour requires?

We need to talk about these topics, we need to decide how we'd deal with a lack of honour shown by women in our local communities and most importantly, we need to make sure that we stand together when one of us is treated differently because of gender. Be it when speaking out or trying to act with honour...whatever that may be.

I look forward to reading any thoughts and feelings on this.

Let's Push Things Forward

During the course of this past weekend, we've had the pleasure of having Heathen friends over on both nights. After coming from living in Germany, where our nearest Heathen was almost 2 hours away and very busy with grad school, this is a complete (dare I say it?) luxury. To be able to talk about subjects that we are passionate about, with people that also get it is just incredible and not something that my husband or I would ever take for granted.

These conversations have given me much food for thought over the past day or so, nothing truly groundbreaking as I was already of the same opinion when it came to these topics, but it's kind of like the same feeling that you get when going through a cupboard and finding something you haven't used or looked at for a while.

On the first night, we discussed reconstructionist Heathenry and how there shouldn't be this distinction made between reconstructionist Heathenry and mainstream. It should just be either Heathenry or not. Let's face it, there's a lot of stuff in mainstream Heathenry that really has no place but has been there for years and years and just regurgitated to the next generation regardless of veracity or usefulness to the wider community. Something that isn't well rooted can easily float off with the fairies and it's increasingly my personal opinion that it is the rootless nature of a lot of practices or concepts that are taken for granted within the Heathen community,that has contributed to a lot of the craziness and controversies that can be found as well. A lot of it comes from the era that a lot of the first modern Heathens started out in and while we must never forget that without these folks, we probably wouldn't be around and accord them their due respect for this, we mustn't be afraid to examine and be critical of the things that have been passed down from the earlier days either. That which doesn't change and adapt, dies. That which doesn't have strong roots, will eventually wither and if our communities are to thrive and grow, we need to have those strong roots and we need to also be able to adapt.

Herein lies the problem. We're still looking for those roots, we're still examining them and trying to figure it out. The actual historical concepts that we're discovering are receiving little to no dissemination to newbies and when the newbie becomes more experienced, it's hit or miss whether they're ready to consider any other viewpoints than the ones that they initially found in the 'Asatru 101' books. Ezines like Odroerir are starting to try and address this issue, but not all newbies know about it and some might find it inaccessible if they're really 'green'. We have no equivalent of the 'Asatru 101' book that gives concepts in easy-to-swallow chunks. This is an issue. Another multifaceted issue is the issue of communication between those that identify as being reconstructionist and those that don't. The 'reconstructionists' don't always express their disagreement with prevalent views in the best way, the 'non-reconstructionists' become very defensive, the whole thing turns nasty, repeats, and a needless fault-line occurs.

Now I'm not saying everyone should just jump and change, just that people should at least know what is accurate, try and adopt the worldview behind the actual concepts that existed and acknowledge that the practices they *want* to stick to have become their tradition (and there is nothing wrong with that). As my friend said on Saturday night, we need to push things forward. Unfortunately as long as the people trying to reconstruct worldview remain in the minority, we won't manage that. We'll just become a joke like some aspects of Wicca have. I want better for Heathenry. I want something cohesive and beautiful in its simple, rooted elegance. Not weighted down with dross and clunky concepts that don't work properly even within the paradigms that spawned them. As German friend of mine once said:

'I guess at the root of things we're following a heathen path because we receive strength from the cult and that's it what it's all about for me: religion is for the people,but ours isn't opium, but a strengthening medicine to help us live our lives in the best possible way. '

Is the prevalent Heathenry really doing that for us? I don't believe the 'clunk' strengthens. It confuses. When we're in a place where we believe that some deity has selected us to be Odin's special little snowflake and that he's talking to us and going as far as to tell us how to wear our hair, how he likes his cookies and which way to walk or where to park, then something has gone drastically wrong. We're in a place of weakness (and quite possibly mentally ill). When we're in a place where we let synchronicity run our lives, we're in a place of weakness and next to no good to our communities or ourselves. Hell, to use a less insane example, even when we're in a place where we believe that a deity really gives a shit about if we behave in daily life or not and is going to punish us in some otherworldly place for transgressions, we're weak. What is the point of doing something that weakens?

However there is a lot of resistance to calling this kind of thing out, and this leads me to the conversations on Sunday night. We are Heathens, we reserve (or should) reserve the right to call judgement on those that we come across or that come into our communities. Be it about silly, faux-viking names, behaviour, generally accepted concepts or someone that believes that they are so special, that a deity takes a personal interest in their life or has even wooed them in the romantic sense. One might cry for tolerance but these seemingly harmless affectations often hide a myriad of other problems.

Ironically, it's often those that cry for tolerance in those cases that are the least tolerant and ultimately the most venomous. In my opinion, it is those people, that tend to cry for tolerance, that tend to be the ones avoiding the 'you' statements, that tend to speak of how their feelings were 'hurt' by disagreements and that throw the word 'bully' around, that are the most manipulative and ultimately the most harmful to a community. To heap on the irony, they are using more passive aggressive bullying tactics in order to try and stifle opinions that they don't like. This kind of behaviour is yet more of the 'clunk' that Heathens need to call out for what it is in their communities and censure accordingly.

Let's push things forward.

Turtle Island

Leaving Europe was hard, really hard and there were several times on the flights over that I found myself hiding tears from my husband. Eventually, I took myself off to the bathroom and gave myself a stern talking to. As an Englishwoman, I have to keep something called 'stiff upper lip' and so this seemed to work.

I won't bore you with more about how much I love Europe and how much I'm going to miss it. That goes without saying. Instead I'll talk about what it's been like here so far on the huge chunk of land that lots of the Native Americans call Turtle Island.

To say it's strange and a mixed bag to be here should also go without saying. I feel rootless here, I have no ancestors buried here and there's so much I don't know about the land, the myths and hell, even basic stuff like the fact that over here, 'Entrees' on the menu means 'main course' and not 'appetisers'. Sure I've lived in places where I've had no bones in the land or cultural links before, but it was different because each time, the culture was obviously different as opposed to this deceptive feeling of similarity between American cultures and English (or indeed German).

On my second or third night here, my grandmother-in-law gave me a huge bag of knitting/crochet yarn, needles/hooks and pattern books. Some of these items came from my husband's mother, some from his grandmother and some from his great-grandmother.



This gift blew me away. There is so much history and so many stories with these knitting needles and crochet hooks. Tucked among the books are notes that the great grandmother made of all the people in her family she was going to make mittens for, their various sizes and colour preferences. This list is quite long. Other notes are dated and tell of growing children needing new mittens, mittens which she'd then knit up to keep her family warm in the frigid New England winters.




I can't crochet, but my husband's mother could and so I kind of feel pushed to learn. There is the most beautiful example of crochet I've ever seen, a fine lace doily that's already found its pair in my own grandmother's tablecloth which I've oathed to finish. Looking through these treasures, I felt a little less rootless and pulled out my grandmother's tablecloth, examining the stitches that my grandmother struggled to make until the arthritis and blindness stopped her.





These items are made with love, they're truly precious and in a weird way, I kind of feel a pressure from both my husband's female ancestors and my own to lovingly craft things for family, friends and my home. I think that would be the most perfect repayment for such a gift.

The next day, I started knitting a duckling to send to my niece. It's finished now and really very cute. I now have a baby whale on the go for another child.



This is one hell of an adjustment, but by the same measure, it's exciting. It's so pretty here and people have been very friendly so far. I'm now in a land where bears, moose and coyotes aren't just something that you see on films, they might be in your backyard! The house where we're staying at the moment is surrounded by trees, a little way up there are goats and chickens and then you have a wooded hill with the most amazing rocks on it, dumped by the slowly receding glaciers way back when. Some of them reminded me of the 'fairy rocks' from back home and being a tactile person, I ran my hands over them. At that moment, it got a little easier, I stopped feeling down about everything I'd left behind in Germany and England and decided that I want to learn about this land and thrive instead of being wary of the bears and moose and coyotes and whatever else there is that is strange to me. I want to discover this big nature.

And then probably poke it with a stick.

Just kidding :P.