Inn of the Wandering Dragon

It is officialy the eve of the new year. Reflections anyone? I am not one to make resolutions per se but I did make up my mind last year that there were a few things I wanted to work on.

Reduce clutter - has pretty much been an uphill battle all year. The boyfriend keeps bringing home more stuff - stuff from work, stuff from home, stuff from shopping. I have also contributed to the stuff collection but I appear to be the only one who is trying to weed out extra stuff. The end result is that I feel like I am drowning in clutter and just throwing a whole bunch of stuff in the dump is sounding more and more like a great idea. Allright, this one stays on the list.

Fill Sketchbooks - I have not been entirely successful with this one either. I have done a fair bit in terms of Artist Trading Cards and henna practice. I have done some drawing in my sketchbooks (I have 2 on the go right now) so I will not say it has been a total wash. This one also stays on my list for the new year.

Increase Movement - In this I have been successfull. I have regualrily attended dance classes and I have been working out at the gym. In fact I have been considering adding another dance class to the roster. I just need to decide if that will be workable schedual wise. This goal can now be re-written to Maintain Movement.

Oh yes, and if you really want to feel like you have come full circle, the boyfriend has upgraded the amp for the stereo system and is currently trying to reprogram everything. Again.

Happy New Years Everyone!

We are now well into the month of December and I can gleefully torment my boyfriend with everything Christmas! Don't get me wrong, he is not a complete Scrooge as he does grudgingly enjoy the family get-togethers. But to his mind all the trimmings are a complete waste of time.


Not suprisingly, I disagree.

Putting up the tree is an event in and of itself that is marked with the presence of family, Christmas music and good food. We are always invited over to my parents house for their tree decorating. It is concluded with turning off the house lights to sit back and enjoy the decorated tree in all of its splendor.


With the tiny space I have, my tiny Christmas tree gets put up on the book shelf, more to discourage the cat from knocking it over than anything else. The tree is out along with a few decorations, and the tree itself will be decorated sometime this week.

Wrapping the presents is typically done in one or two sittings and almost has an air of ritual present as the occasion (in my mind anyway) demands eggnog and a clear solitary work space. And of course one must always have some spare wrapping and ribbon present to satisfy the shredding needs of the cat. This way the presents are more likely to have their wrappings unscathed. This also gives me a good excuse to take a stretch break and play with the cat.

Gingerbread cookies have been baked, along with the bread loaves. There is still a little more shopping to be done - I hope to finish that this week. The cards have all been sent out and those comming in are being displayed up on the wall. I even picked up some new Christmas music to play, Loreena McKennit's A Midwinter Night's Dream, which I am looking forward to enjoying.

All in all this season is thus far turning out well.

I finally had a chance to play with my new henna mix. This mix is 1 part Jamilla and 1 part Rajasthani henna, two different crops from two different regions. I decided to mix them because the raj is supposed to be much more "stringy" than the Jamilla, which allows a person to string long delicate lines without the henna strand breaking. Essentially this opens up other avenues for the art work.

Unfortunately I made this quite a while back and I had to freeze it for later. Freezing the paste is fine, it is very effective for storage without breaking down the stain capabilities. But I do not recall how much sugar and lemon juice I added. As you can see in the picture, I obviously added too much! The paste, once thawed, alternated between pouring out of the cone and clogging. Massaging the cone helped somewhat. But my lines were quite soft and prone to spreading out (my technical term for that is splooging). In addition I had to hold my hand in front of the space heater just to get it dry enough to wrap. And this paste was not stringy at all, the Jamilla seems to have negated that.

When I first scraped off the paste I was in shock, the stain was so pale despite the paste being wrapped and left on over night. The fingers were darker, so I left those alone and reapplied the paste over the rest of the design. This time I only left the paste on for a couple of hours since I was tired and cranky and not in the mood to wrap my hand up again. The stain was still light but over the next few days it darkened beautifully. The design on my fingers was wonderfully dark and almost had a purple hue. The rest of the design was a very attractive red/brown. I did not think to take a picture of course and by now the effect is fading due to frequent hand washing.

But I have used up this batch so now this weekend I will try to make up some more. I shall cut back on the amount of liquid and see if that helps. This time I will write down what I mix for future reference! (although I may need reminding!)

Tomorrow is the 1st of December with just over 3 weeks left to get things done for the holidays. Like many people there are so many things I enjoy doing but I am finding a serious lack of time to do them. Of course a very large chunk of my available time has gone towards physical exercises, three days at the gym and one day at belly dance class. My health has to be taken care of, there is no way around that.
I have been asked to paint the cover art for a friend's upcoming album which involves a fair amount of research, planning and prep (then there is the painting to be done - that's the easy part!). I already know that I will not have both the front and the back done this month but we will see how far I get on one side.
I will happily be indulging in some baking this season - in part I have little choice because I was given one of those "friendship loaf" packages of already fermenting yeast, flour, sugar and heaven knows what else. I really *hate* letting food stuffs go to waste so the appropriate day for baking has been committed to. And why not squeeze in another recipe while I'm at it that day? (gingerbread maybe?)
Christmas cards will be my project for this week. Now here is where I really am cutting back. Due to time constraints I will not be making the cards this year. They are store bought but at least they will be sent.
Christmas presents are in the works. The boyfriend and I managed to find presents for a couple family members today so hooray - scratch a couple more off my list!
I am not sure how much will happen in the way of decorations around the house. This year I may cut back and just do a few things here and there. Since we are spending the holidays at the farm it will save cleaning up the mess that occurs when the cat decides he's bored with no one around.
Meanwhile we go to work each day and deal with the normal needs of day to day life, laundry, cooking, family, cleaning, getting some sleep to ward off getting sick - the usual that we all go through. I have cut back on some things, but I am still constantly busy. I'll just have to gauge it as I go along. If I am still enjoying myself two weeks from now then I guess I pruned just enough.