Blog

A new year begins with so much to do.

I have begun bookbinding. I bound my first book the day before yesterday. It was not too hard to do! Why did I get into bookbinding in the first place, you might ask? Scribing, that's why. Research purposes. Some of the best knowledge is first-hand knowledge. It's one thing to read about material preservation, ink materials, printing processes, and bookbinding, and it is a whole other thing to actually hand-stitch signatures of pages together in a humid climate and observe the way the paper reacts and expands, to feel the weight of cardstock and the strength of polyester thread.

I've been contemplating the preservation of the Craft and how quickly and easily records are lost. I've been looking at medieval manuscripts and clay tablets and asking how and why do we have these materials? What really makes something last?

It's been an entertaining project, especially with how my research into medieval and ancient techniques and materials that take time to create and utilize contrasts so heavily with the age of computers, cell phones, social media, and instant communication I have grown up with. It makes me reflect on how quickly the Craft as a whole and Paganism have changed radically in the public sphere as a result of its spread through social media. It's almost like a big game of Telephone. Even in one of the many Discord servers I'm in, some friends who approached the Craft seperately on their own knew they "needed" some "Moon Water" but couldn't articulate why or how to achieve having it!

There is something to be said in favor of the slow exchange of information through mechanical processes that involve mutiple parts of the body and brain. The muscle memory of repeated ritual structure, and the information retention from hand-copying has benefited me greatly. But, what happens to all that when we're gone? Will there be a properly archived body of work, or will it be barely a footnote in history? Who knows? All I know is that I live in the age of information and should take advantage of that to preserve what I value. Maybe I will dedicate a page on my site here to document my scribal processes and progress.

I had such a fun weekend! I got to see Dazzling Nights at Harry P. Leu Gardens, and I also was able to attend Orlando Zine Fest '25!

Dazzling Nights was absolutely stunning. The light setups were very dreamy. I loved the Winter Solstice setup, the tree with the dried orange garland reminded me of my own Yule tree and pommanders! I think my favorite however was the purple spiral trees. My spouse said, "this music reminds me of... pokemon!" and I noticed and pointed out that the spirals went Deosil and upward. It was just so enchanting and romantic.

I saw where people complained about the prices having gone up since last year. It's unfortunate, but I'm reminded almost everything has gone up in price. I paid very close attention to the event setup down to the way the bolts were screwed in; to have an event set up in such a clean way (especially a semi-permanent installation that has to last a whole month) requires a lot of labor. That massive star structure... I know what it is like to be on my hands and knees bolting structures like that. Many people who do labor like that are gig-laborers, and it's not cheap. A safe event industry with proper safety certification and practices is not a cheap event industry. The team did a beautiful job! And the areas where kids could roam and play looked so fun and engaging. It reminded me of when I was a kid going to places like Wonderworks, or the kids and science museums with the interactive exhibits. There were also multiple live performances, musicians and jugglers! It was expensive, but it looked like a lot of effort was put in. It wasn't just "I paid $80 to walk and look at a bunch of lights", it was "I paid $80 for two tickets, got to see many light exhibits, play on interactive exhibits, see live performers, get great photos, and got free Makers Mark samples, plus safe and well-lit free garage parking and a free bus ride where I got to see more residents' home light set-up along the way". And the live performers, they had performed multiple shows. That had to be exhausting. I could tell when we saw the last performance of the juggling and hooping act of the night that they were losing steam after multiple performances. But they still delivered! I would go back again next year if I can!

And then there was Orlando Zine Fest '25! I thought it would be some people selling zines inside Blackbird at the tables, and at tables right out front, but when I pulled up they had the WHOLE LOT filled with people and tables and zines! I had to park offsite and walk over. I got so many cool zines and met cool people. So pretty much, because I walked over it, uh, got things moving. I had to use the restroom as soon as I arrived, so I went inside Black Bird. While I was waiting in line, the guy next to me waiting started chatting me up, and he told me about his buddy's zine stand and that it was his first time EVER tabling at an event! So I had him take me there first. I bought a sticker and a few zines. Max Sol's booth was super cool! I shared a photo of my Zine haul on Instagram and linked the creator's Instagrams there, but I'd love to share more here. Here is the list of Zines I got!

• "Who is Video Witch" by Luis Diaz
• "Stressin", "The BLANK PAGE", & "The BLANK PAGE: Rollercoaster of Emotions Issue no. 2" by Max Sol
• "Cnideria conversationalis: A couple's guide to the world of Jellyfish" by Rutja Bavadekar & Vana Sanchez
• You Are Already Enough: A Zine About Self Compassion" by Kelly Rose
• "SR50: Central Florida Arts & Culture Magazine Issue 5.5" by Harryson Thevenin & Alexander Escober & Multiple Contributors
• "3 Cards & Tea" & "2025: Year of the Snake" by Vanessa Steele

I even gave out a very small handful of my zine, "Laurels". I have a pdf of it, but I'm kind of hesitant to post it here because I like the idea of it being exclusively in-person and physical for now. All in time. Zines are meant to be photocopied and passed around physically, and I love that aspect to zines bringing in-person connection!

Tonight I finished my Zine! I didn't even talk about this over on the 'gram. I have a decent amount of Pagan devotional poems I've written and I felt it was enough to compile into a nice little zine! I am super happy with how it turned out. It has pretty pictures to go alongside the poems. I used to draw a lot, but my art wasn't suited for the look I was going for with this zine since I wanted the classic photocopy look with that art nouvaeu, old-school pagan publication feel. I wanted something that looked like it was hot off the Magickal Childe press, with all kinds of fonts no regular publishing house would use.

For the art, I lucked out thrifting for books because I found one of the old copies of Dover Publication's free graphics books. It came with the CD unopened, full of royalty free jpegs! Who needs AI art? Not I! I hauled out my gasping husk of an old laptop to give the disk drive one final spin. After about 10 years of waiting (10 minutes), I had copies of over 500 Art Nouveau-style jpeg clip art, flourishes, and borders! I was relieved to find something like that because I used to use Pixabay, but now they are unreliable, just teeming with AI art. The book had plenty for me to use to complete my zine!

Oh, I suppose I should also follow up on that last blog. I did make the sistrum, it turned out pretty neat. Also my spoon wands didn't sell on FB Marketplace, so I still have them. Oh well.

I have this idea in my head that I eventually need to get out. I want to craft a sistrum out of bottle caps. I have bottle caps leftover, so I've already just nailed holes through them. I'm a fan of reusing materials where possible, and honestly those would just end up in the garbage. I do wish we had actual recycling, but we do not. Thus, I try to take boxes and convert them into cat scratchers, and I take things like vegetable scraps and make broth and such. To make a sistrum, I'll need to find a really good and thick forked branch. Preferably one I can carve into if I have the energy. I've seen people make them before, but I've never been a fan of the look with the raw branch. Carving it and painting it bright colors is probably going to be the way to go to coordinate with the colorful bottle caps. If I'm going to make soething out of trash and scraps, I might as well go big or go home! I'll have to take a walk around and see if I can find a good stick.

I've also recently added some handmade spoon wands to Facebook Marketplace. I made them a while ago with custom grimoire pages explaining the correspondences I chose for the tools. There are 5 of them, an elemental set, but I am selling them individually. They are some of my favorite pieces I've made, where I carfully wood-burned them and wire-wrapped the crystals onto them. You get the wand and the page, great for a kitchen witch!

I have been adding more gradually to my little witch hat I posted about on Instagram. Today, I finished off a Turkey Tail mushroom. I want to add at least two more of those. Sometimes I think about stitch-witchery and fiber magick, and I think one of the coolest things about it is that you can add intent and correspondence within every stitch, but also in the form the final shape takes. Botanical shapes could hold the correspondences and symbolism of that plant! I'll be considering that as I add more vines and flowers and mushrooms to my hat.

Today, I created a new website for myself. I wanted a site that is free to begin with, and one with a host I support. I appreciate Neocities keeping things old school, so I decided to go with them this time around. My original website was expensive, and the way I had it formatted I did not truly love. Admittedly, I wasn't the biggest fan of Wordpress either. The layout I liked was not going to be supported any longer, and I didn't know enough about web design and development at the time to really do anything about that. It didn't seem reasonable to keep paying so much money for a domain and hosting when I wasn't happy with it. So here we are now! Hopefully this little corner will turn out nice.