Another week begins

31/01/11.  Today is the final day of January and the final day of Winter.  Spring comes tomorrow so tonight is known as St Brigid's Eve.  There is quite a lot of tradition attached to this evening and tomorrow as well.  The beginning of Spring and the hope of the light getting stronger and stronger with each passing day.  Brigid is the only goddess from the pre-christian era to make the jump to Christianity.  She is known as a protector, healer, guide, patroness of chicken farmers and dairy farmers.  She is also known as 'Mary of the Gales' and is supposed to have helped Mary with the Baby Jesus.  She is also thought to have been his wet nurse.  There are many different tales about Brigid.  She was the daughter of a famous Chieftain who renounced  her ideas and became a Christian.   She set up her abbey in Kildare. http://www.sacredsitetour.com/sacred-sites-of-ireland/kildare-and-st-brigids-cathedral.html  this site contains pictures from the town of Kildare where her well and monastery is.  Liam took me there once to visit and it is a really lovely place to be.  It is a place that people go to visit to leave all their cares and worries behind them.  Another is in Liscannor in Co Clare.  Another beautiful well.  http://www.castlebar.ie/news/article_2705.shtml  I have also been here and tasted the water and left offerings and some worries.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Brigid's_Well  more details about Brigid and the well.  There is also a tradition connected with her cloak.  When she went to the King of Kildare for some land to build her monastery he told her she could have as much land as her cloak would cover.  She lay down her cloak upon the ground and by some miracle it spread out and covered an area which is now known as the Curragh of Kildare.  She had ample land to build her monastery.  She was called the protector of the poor.  As part of the tradition these days, a while cloth is put out on Brigid's eve and as she passes over the land tonight she blesses the white cloth.  Tomorrow I will bring it in and cut it into strips and I will give a piece of cloth to each family attending our celebration tomorrow night.  Another tradition which we will also be doing is the making of the St Brigid's cross.  It is supposed to protect the home and is placed over the door on the inside of the house.  We burn the old crosses before we make the new ones.  There are four different ways of making the crosses but this is the one which is traditional here in Munster. http://www.iol.ie/~scphadr/makecross.html  It is a lovely one to make and I also find it very calming.  When our celebration is over we will have some tea and milk and honey scones traditionally made for St Brigid's Day.  There are many Brigid well's here in Ireland each having its own particular pattern and stories associated with it.  I hope you have enjoyed this little talk about Brigid and can get more information on her by the links if you would like to do that.

I finished the lace jumper I was knitting.   http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1804114664730&set=a.1639022017517.2091456.1295766448  this is a pic of the finished jumper.  I am glad it is finished but I did enjoy making it.  I will put up a link to the wearer when I give it to her.  I am now working on a project I began nearly two years ago, a jacket for myself, I have the front and back complete so only the sleeves to do now.  It shouldn't take me too long as it is knit on very large needles.  There are four balls of wool woven together as I knit so the colors are very interesting.  Looking forward to seeing the finished article.

Yesterday was absolutely beautiful here.  The sun shone for most of the day.  Liam, Donnchadh, Maria, Toby and I went for a walk in the local bog.  Toby had the most exciting time.  His nose was twitching madly and he had great fun searching behind tufts of grass and thorny bushes.  Both himself and Liam fell asleep on the sofa when we got home.   
Don't they look comfy together.  That's my jacket on the edge of the sofa on the right of the picture.  He has threatened to put up a pic of me he took later on asleep on the sofa with Toby beside me.  Haven't seen it yet though.

Today I had a bit of a disaster in that I spilled some coffee on my sister's laptop.  I was typing out her assignment for her course for her.  Anyway lots of prayers and *******'s later I think it is ok.  Most of the keys that were not working are now working and it is only the backspace one that has to come back working.  Hopefully it will be ok tomorrow.  Luckily Donnchadh was able to put the document which I had saved onto a CD onto my laptop and I was able to finish the typing.  I emailed it to her a little while ago and hope she was able to get it downloaded and printed off.  Haven't heard anything to the contrary so hopefully all is well.

I have enrolled on a course called the Community Resilience Leader course.  It is being run here in Tipperary and is all about learning how to use green energy and sustainability and a lot of other things besides.  http://www.green-works.ie/community-resilience  It is coming up the end of March so will let you know more about it as the times comes closer.  I am looking forward to doing it.

Right I better log off now, I am procrastinating by being on here for so long as I have an assignment due next week and I need to get working on it.  Have most of the reading done for it, just need to sit and write it now.

This has been a long post.  I hope you have learned something from it.  Wishing many blessings of St Brigid on you and your family in the year to come.

Love and light to all