I was a pagan before I ever knew it: my early years were spent scrambling up the trunks of trees, and cradled in the safety of their branches, I'd gaze down at the folk going about their business, mystified by their complete disregard for the natural wonders surrounding them. 

So profound was my connection to the elements, plants, and animals that i felt no compulsion to conform to societal norms or fit in to any organized group that put consumerism and material possession above the value of walking through a glade when the morning sun sparkled through the leaves, and the birds offered up a symphony of sound, celebrating new life and heralding another cycle of awakening. 

Then the pressures of earning a living and contributing to the family's welfare became a priority, and i had to find a way to juggle an existence which still held in highest regard this planet's abundant offerings, yet maintained the responsibility of serving the urban community in which i dwell with my husband and child to this day. 

My spiritual journey took me on many paths including shamanic studies with the aboriginal elders nearby, here in Southwestern Ontario. I resonanted with these remarkable people as they demonstrated a reverence for Nature, the spirits of our ancestors , and the knowledge that preparing for seven generations in the future was the wisest way to live one's life. 

For them the circle is unbroken, but i'm afraid to say, that is why they are still brutalized and bullied into submission , as their protests against uranium mining fall on deaf ears in our government even as we speak. 

I am not Aboriginal by birth, in fact my roots go back to France and Austria - and strangely enough I cannot listen to Celtic music without the deepest sense of longing and incredible melancholy, as though I once knew of a magnificent place beyond the veils of this existence, where that music played, and echoing notes of that time still penetrate me to the core. 

How does one reconcile this calling, from another time and place that the soul is connected to, surely as a child in the womb draws sustenance from the chord to its mother, with the world we live in today where the Mother is virtually forgotten? 

The pagan way is my way of finding that place, and only by giving back what was offered to me as a child by the trees, animals, and the Earth herself, can I say I am walking my talk, and serving as a model for the generations to come, to ensure that this planet and all who draw on her for life will be able to do so in harmony and peace. 

A full moon, vernal equinox, and movement into Aries all in the same 24 hours !

Here’s a summary of how historically this energy was celebrated courtesy:

http://www.schooloftheseasons.com/spring.html

The spring equinox is one of the four great solar festivals of the year. Day and night are equal, poised and balanced, but about to tip over on the side of light. The spring equinox is sacred to dawn, youth, the morning star and the east. The Saxon goddess, Eostre (from whose name we get the direction East and the holiday Easter) is a dawn goddess, like Aurora and Eos. Just as the dawn is the time of new light, so the vernal equinox is the time of new life.
The New Year

In many traditions, this is the start of the new year. The Roman year began on the ides of March (15th). The astrological year begins on the equinox when the moon moves into the first sign of the Zodiac, Aries, the Ram. The Greek God Ares is equivalent to the Roman Mars for whom the month of March is named. Between the 12th century and 1752, March 25th was the day the year changed in England and Ireland. March 25, 1212 was the day after March 24, 1211.

The festival of Nawruz, Persian New Year,  falls on the spring equinox. They fix a special dinner of seven food dishes that begin with ’S.’The table is decorated with a mirror, a bowl of water with one freshly-picked green leaf floating in it, a candleabra containing a candle for every child in the house, a copy of the Koran (or other sacred text), rose water, sweets, fruit, a fish, yogurt and colored eggs.
The Coming of the Spring.

Although we saw the first promise of spring at Candlemas in the swelling buds, there were still nights of frost and darkness ahead. Now spring is manifest. Demeter is reunited with her daughter, Kore (the essence of spring), who has been in the Underworld for six months and the earth once again teems with life. The month of March contains holidays dedicated to all the great mother goddesses: Astarte, Isis, Aprhrodite, Cybele and the Virgin Mary. The goddess shows herself in the blossoms, the leaves on the trees, the sprouting of the crops, the mating of birds, the birth of young animals. In the agricultural cycle, it is time for planting. We are assured that life will continue.

In the myths of the Year Gods — Attis, Adonis, Osiris and Dionysus — who like Christ die and are reborn each year. These gods are always the son of a God and a mortal woman. The son is a savior who saves his people in some way, sometimes through sacrifice. He is the vegetation, dying each year (at harvest) to be reborn in the spring.

In ancient Rome, the 10-day rite in honor of Attis, son of the great goddess Cybele, began on March 15th. A pine tree, which represented Attis, was chopped down, wrapped in a linen shroud, decorated with violets and placed in a sepulchre in the temple. On the Day of Blood or Black Friday, the priests of the cult gashed themselves with knives as they danced ecstatically, sympathizing with Cybele in her grief and helping to restore Attis to life. Two days later, a priest opened the sepulchre at dawn, revealing that it was empty and announcing that the god was saved. This day was known as Hilaria or the Day of Joy, a time of feasting and merriment.

Sound familiar? Easter is the Christian version of the same myth. Even the name Easter is stolen. It comes from the Saxon dawn-goddess Eostre, whose festival was celebrated on spring equinox. The date of Easter is still determined by the old moon cycle. It is always the first Sunday on or after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

I celebrate by embracing the Ukrainian tradition of wax design on eggs and the end result is:

Stricken with childhood rheumatic arthritis and
diagnosed with a form of Lou Gehrig's disease in her
last two years, Connie, was presented with far more
challenges than I have ever had to face in my
life, and she handled every one of them with quiet
grace and courage.

Never in the eight years I was blessed to have her in
my life did she speak an unkind word or stand in judgment
of anyone's efforts, especially mine, as I continue
struggling to get lofty ambitions realized, the most
common phrase to be heard in her presence,
after she lent a sympathetic ear was : "How can I
help?".

From day one, when I was proposed to by her son, and
shuddered to my core at the prospect of meeting the
in-laws, being a woman ten years older than my husband
to be, with a seven year old child from a previous
marriage in tow, I was immediately embraced without
reserve or hesitation.

David's parents helped us finance our first house
purchase ; they contributed to numerous trips I had to
make to Europe for business ventures I am pursuing, which
still haven't brought them any return; and above all,
whenever my son needed anything they would immediately
step in - it was in fact David's family that paid for the
entire school trip to France and Italy Richard will
undoubtedly remeber the rest of his life.

How do I express my gratitude? How do I pay homage to
a person far greater than myself in the face of
adversity? I embrace no religion, and empty ceremony
of any kind would do this brave soul a final
injustice.

I can only try to live my life as woman,wife, mother,
friend, the way she lived hers: content with the
simplest of pleasures and peaceful moments with family
on the farm watching red squirrels fight with
chickadees for sunflower seeds - she knew the value of
things in the deepest sense and I can truly say that
for the first time in a real way I understand what
living a saintly life means.

I will hold Connie in my heart always, and ask her for
guidance in the future as always, while i stumble
along this journey of life, even though i have been
more capable of walking straight and tall than ever
she was.

Never have I met a person who embodied the spirit of
the dove so completely - and finally this bird of
peace is free to fly, no longer imprisoned by a
twisted body. May she soar high above us and bless
those of us who remain in this reality .

What better way to celebrate a day that revolves around relationships than to share with you the process my husband and I took great pleasure in creating together to celebrate our 8th anniversary.

We created our own wedding bands which made an infinity figure eight of two circles. This was an incredible process working with a young silversmith in her studio in Toronto. The website for anyone interested in doing the same is : http://thedevilsworkshop.ca

Here are all the stages:

I have now created no less than six versions of the Moebius scarf by Cat Bordhi and I will never tire of this pattern , as it suits ALL yarns and textures, and is incredibly useful for remnants that have been breeding in your stash for years.

Euclidean geometry was one of my subjects in High School that maintained my interest beyond graduation and I thought I'd add the history of the Moebius strip from Wikipedia for your edification.

Leave it to a woman to take a complicated mathematical principal and convert it into something elegant and practical !

The Möbius strip or Möbius band (pronounced /ˈmøbiʊs/) is a surface with only one side and only one boundary component. It has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. It is also a ruled surface. It was discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858.

A model can easily be created by taking a paper strip and giving it a half-twist, and then joining the ends of the strip together to form a single strip. In Euclidean space there are in fact two types of Möbius strips depending on the direction of the half-twist: clockwise and counterclockwise. The Möbius strip is therefore chiral, which is to say that it is "handed".

It is straightforward to find algebraic equations the solutions of which have the topology of a Möbius strip, but in general these equations do not describe the same geometric shape that one gets from the twisted paper model described above. In particular, the twisted paper model is a developable surface (it has zero Gaussian curvature). A system of differential-algebraic equations that describes models of this type was published in 2007 together with its numerical solution.

The Möbius strip has provided inspiration both for sculptures and for graphical art. The artist M. C. Escher was especially fond of it and based several of his lithographs on it. One famous example, Möbius Strip II, features ants crawling around the surface of a Möbius strip. It is also a recurrent feature in science fiction stories, such as Arthur C. Clarke's The Wall of Darkness. Science fiction stories sometimes suggest that our universe might be some kind of generalized Möbius strip. This is especially prominent in the Perry Rhodan-series. In the short story "A Subway Named Moebius", by A.J. Deutsch, the Boston subway authority builds a new line, but the system becomes so tangled that it turns into a Möbius strip, and trains start to disappear. The Möbius strip also features prominently in Brian Lumley's Necroscope series of novels.

A popular limerick is often associated with this design which reads 

"A mathematician confided

That a Möbius band is one-sided,

And you'll get quite a laugh,

If you cut one in half,

For it stays in one piece when divided"

As an opener for all you dear visitors, I wrote a small essay  - not to justify why i engage in something normally associated with the elderly and infirm but in order to regain the Avalon I remember and facilitate access for all who stop here or put their hands to good works.

TAMURILE

"All evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing "
Edmund Burke

I live in a city  which shuffles it’s elderly into homes and corrals its children into day care centres in order that the dual income privileges of ownership are maintained.

I live in a city whose prisons and hospitals are full to the brim, yet the government has seen fit to cut back on community services even when it reflects budgetary surpluses.

I live in a city which claims to have a high standard of living  and calls itself one of the developed nations, yet the number of homeless  is on the rise , food banks can’t cope with demand, and our school system graduates illiterate students completely unprepared to  contribute to a rapidly changing  work environment.

As the escalating aggression in the Middle East reverberates a warning to all world leaders that everything we hold dear is in jeopardy, I ask myself daily what can I as a mother, wife, and concerned citizen do to reroute this testosterone driven express train bound for oblivion.

What can any single person do when chaos seems to have the upper hand? 

Stay out of fear. See a positive outcome. Make it happen – one stitch at a time.

Just as we avoid the harshness of winter by clothing our loved ones with hats, scarves, sweaters and mittens, so too can we have an impact on the sorry state of this planet and restore her to her natural , nurturing self. in all her former glory.

Am I saying that a pair of hand- knitted socks will lead us back to Eden ?  Yes.

Studies on primate babies have shown that given a choice between a wire surrogate equipped with a bottle of milk and one covered only in fur, the newborns will inevitably choose  warmth over sustenance.

Our society in its attempts to control and conquer has forgotten this basic principle of life, and in so doing has repressed, tortured, executed, and virtually annihilated the feminine in all facets of human existence

 When I pick up a new skein of wool and loop the thread gently over the needles in my hand , I hold the intention of every woman who has ever opened her heart unconditionally, dedicated her time freely, and offered herself without thought of reward, to ensure the wellbeing of others.

The circle that has been broken by technology, progress, and material gain, is restored with a single thread that binds us all beyond time and space. This simple act by a pair of  loving hands can and will heal our wounds , because its stands as a reminder of where we came from and above all, that no matter how far we stray, we can find our way back home by following that thread.

I applaud every man who has ever picked up a pair of knitting needles for each and every one is a hero in the truest sense : he has embraced that aspect of himself that honors mother, daughter, wife, lover, friend in a balanced partnership and equal exchange at the risk of being ridiculed, ostracized, emasculated.

Until we can each as individuals achieve this balance between catering to oneself versus service to others, the need to dominate versus a willingness to surrender, the compulsion to move forward versus standing still, it is my hope that by creating something for another’s comfort  synchronizes  my thoughts and actions with a force far greater than any man-made facsimile.

And that’s why I knit.