Winter Woods

December is here, Happy Chanukah to those who celebrate it!

Just put up one new Magic Vial pendant - "Guardian Heart" and was splintering off some red cedar wood to finish it up. The rest is a blend of Obsidian glass and a single chunk of genuine Rub.

The garden has already started dying off, leaving me without basil or mint. The verbena is none too happy, either, and while the sage will be fine, it has stopped putting out fresh growths, which is where I find the

leaves small enough to fit in my bottles.

I need to go for a long walk through the "wilds" of the park and see about foraging winter woods from the ground debris. Maybe

while I'm home in Mississippi for Christmas, I can go wandering through a real old forest and maybe find some things there.

But, despite the cold and recent wet and wind, I feel the need to be amongst trees.

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That's an easy enough segue, isn't it?

I thought I'd start more specifically about cedar, because it's in the vial, and it was always a favorite back home. I remember when Mom was refinishing grandpa's old steamer trunks, she'd always redo the inside in red cedar. I still love going home in the winter, digging through the trunks that hold a wild variety of forgotten treasures and the warm smell of those old trunks.

Unfortunately, that scent is rather hard to synthesize, and I just ended up being a little frustrated and branching out more into the overwhelming general search of "trees." (Yes, Virginia, Izile spent many hours on this one little blog post, didn't she?)

The first thing I came across is a leather iPhone case. Now, I don't have an iPhone, but like everyone else does, right? (heh) Anyway, this is a beautiful piece of leather workmanship and a gorgeous peach tree. Tovicorrie's "Beautiful Skin" has a gorgeous selection of all leather iPhone, iPod and iPad cases as well as a few non-tech-centered leather items. The selections and designs are definitely worth looking through if you have any of those

tech pieces.

Slightly more abstract as how I got from "tree" to this is next plug is PetalMix who is self described as a maker of "hair accessories and brooch pins are a modern twist on the Japanese art of tsumami kanzashi." The "Wood Elf" piece is how I assume I stumbled across her shop (and is pictured at left), but there's a wide selection of colors, styles and fabrics, ranging from $17 to $40. Definitely worth the time to browse the options!