Monsoon season in the Vegas valley closed out August with a wonderful thunderstorm during my pool party. The week leading up to it had been lovely and still enough for me to manage to get the pool looking nice and clean, always a challenge when a giant pine tree hangs over it. The pool party started with hot, still weather and a few puffy clouds in the sky, as neighbors and friends trickled in through the open side gate. I was super excited by the surprise appearance of friends from out of town I hadn't seen in years. The clouds kept gathering and turned gray and we were all looking at the sky thinking it might rain. We heard thunder roll, and we all responded with enthusiastic noises. I called out to Thor, "I made a fresh pot of coffee!" and plink! drop! Shining diamond blessings from the sky! It started raining! 

So of course I had to go in and get a cup of coffee and come back outside to make a toast to Thor. I got back in the pool with my cup and finished it as the rain increased. Being desert dwellers, we all love the rain.

It's ironic, because one of the reasons I moved to the desert in the 90s was to get away from the constant gray winter skies, rain, and flooding in Sonoma. Now I appreciate every raindrop!

After our swim, my old friends met Sweetheart kitty. We had a drink and I passed along seed wheat I used to grow to make Northern Lights Goddesses Brew. One half of the couple is Derin the perfumer of Cherry-Ka's Trunk, and he brought me a sample of a new fragrance he made in honor of the Valkyries. By the time you read this, it will be in his store. I tried it and it's awesome. I put it with the other sacred Asatru fragrances on my altar. 

The next morning I recorded an appearance on The Bard's Archive. I demonstrated weaving and talked about traditional craft, women's work, women's magic, and how the question of who can do women's magic in the modern age was one of the causes of the schism between modernists and traditionalists. The rise of the modernist movement was one of the reasons I wrote the new version of my book, Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path. I felt I needed to cover the modernist movement so my book would still be a good introduction to modern Asatru with the new developments in our tradition, along with new scholarly discoveries, the increasing importance of the internet, etc. 

In the video linked below is my appearance on The Bard's Archive talking about customs and magic surrounding spinning and weaving in historical heathen times, and how reviving them caused a schism between traditionalists and modernists in today's Asatru. As a demo, I wove a small project live on the show. The first 12 minutes is a general introduction to Asatru and heathen gods; on the 12 minute mark I start talking about the goddesses and norns and fiber art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK1_vWKE4jQ 

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My housemate and I participated in the Pagan Flea Market and Psychic Fair, held at the Unitarian Universalist Church, which was a fundraiser for Pagan Pride Day. Las Vegas PPD used to be held at the church but outgrew the site years ago and is now held in a public park. I had a table at the Flea Market while my housemate was in the other room at the Psychic Fair reading tarot. The purchase price of the psychic readings goes to the charity.

I sold a surprising amount of my sunprint art, mostly from the Animals series. That morning I picked the season's first pomegranates and offered a free pomegranate with any purchase. That seemed to really get people to look at my things and see what they wanted. I also got rid of some of my "too much stuff," and traded with some of the other sellers. I bought a witch hat fascinator from Candace, and also traded for a present for my housemate, which is still a secret because it's for Yule. (Our birthdays are not til next year.)

Over the years, I've tried selling my sunprint art on the net, but photos just don't capture the full essence. When I was regularly selling hand dyed fabrics on an ebay store, I also occasionally sold sunprints. But other than that, they haven't sold well on the net. The artworks just look completely different in person. When I was involved in the local art scene and participated in selling at at City Lights Gallery and other art venues, I used to sell framed art, or at least art put into clear protectors with mat board. Some of the larger ones can be too expensive for a lot of people. At the Flea Market I was selling medium sized sunprints, unframed, untrimmed, with raw edges the way they come off the print surface, and they were ones I had made many years ago and had been stored rather than displayed, and I was not set on trying to make a living wage out of them as I might be if they were new and I was making them specifically for sale, so I was able to sell them at a price people were willing to pay. I also sold some crafts that had been made years ago, used and washed, so they were no longer things I needed to sell at a full retail price either. When I start selling more crafts that I make specifically for sale I will of course be trying to get a decent wage, so that will be different.

Due to my body, I was not able to stay the entire time, but the organizers knew that in advance and were ok with it. Even though I was only there about 4 hours, half the time as the other sellers, I still went to sleep as soon as I got home and spent the next two days sleeping most of the day too. This is why it's just not practical for me to do a lot of stuff in person. I would have the same recovery time if I'd spent those four hours (plus an hour total drive time) at a paid job instead of selling at a flea market. (This is also the reason I'm not going to attempt to go to the renfaire this year, or probably ever again, even though I've been going since I was 12 and have a lot of my social life wrapped up in it. I'm just going to have to find ways to see faire friends outside of faire, and also find sales venues and other money making venues on the net or in person where I can work at my own pace. Fortunately writing, editing, and crafting are all things I can do at home working at my own pace. Selling art, crafts, and random stuff I want to get rid of can be done online and that's also at my own pace, but sometimes I want to participate in an in person event.) It's the third day after the Flea Market as I write this section of this post, and I just now got enough mental energy to write on my blog.

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The following weekend, everyone had been invited to a free event in downtown Vegas to celebrate the fall equinox, but I had just barely gotten back enough energy to do laundry and yard work that morning, and just wasn't up to it.

Instead, I enjoyed sitting on the front porch with a cup of tea. I toasted the goddesses and asked if there was anything I should be doing, and Frigga indicated that I should start selling my crafts. (She didn't say "again," so I guessed she meant my weaving, which I've never sold before.) I had been thinking about trying to sell tapestries ever since I had been asked if I sell them during my appearance on The Bard's Archive where I showed the tapestry I made as a gift for my housemate of our kitty Sweetheart. So now I know I should start selling my weaving, in addition to other crafts, and writing about it here is my first step in following Frigga's instruction.

A gentle rain started. Of course then I also had to have a cup of coffee, for Thor. I had fun taking photos of the rain and sharing them on social media. Then I wrote this! 

So, I'll be selling crafts again. I used to do well selling my hand dyed fabrics, but I can't do that craft anymore due to arthritis. My current crafts are tapestry weaving, embroidery & embroidermending, and sewing / making quilt tops. On art: I stopped making sunprints long ago as well, but I still do photography. I think tapestry weaving counts as an art, even though all fiber arts are usually in the craft category. The line between art and craft is much fuzzier than the English language tries to make it. 

Of course I will also still be selling editing services. I edit genre fiction, and heathen and pagan nonfiction. Locally I'm available for cat sitting, and I do the occasional rune reading as well. And of course I sell my books. 

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The next day, I got up about dawn as usual and went to make my morning coffee and found the half-and-half starting to go bad. So I went out into the garden and poured it out for the landwight in front of the gnome statue. 

It was the weekend of the equinox and I set out to start selling my weaving. I dug out all my completed woven pieces that I had not already given as presents. I discovered an urgent housekeeping task and ended up having to clean all of them, but that worked out because I was able to assess each one and keep thinking about them in new ways as I happened to see them layed out flat to dry in my craft room / office. I decided I didn't have any tapestries ready to sell, but I had several woven items I had made when I first started weaving.

I decided my first piece to sell would be the all-linen piece in renaissance red and elven gray. Because it was linen, I had always associated it with Frigga, although I had not made it especially for her. The one I made especially for her was woven of a gray silk yarn that I had hand dyed years ago, and that one I'm keeping. I photographed the linen piece and announced on my social media, "I'm officially selling my weaving now."

I'm going to give it a while to see if it sells via my social network, and if not then it's going on eBay. I no longer have the eBay Store in which I used to sell my fabrics and sunprints, but I still have the seller ID magicalrealistartist. I am hoping to have at least a few craftworks and / or artworks for sale there most of the time, going forwards. There might not always be a woven item ready since they take so long to make and sometimes I make them for specific people, but I also still have embroidered items and silk rune scarves and other things to sell. 

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The next morning as I had my coffee, it occurred to me that I had communed with the goddesses with my tea, but with my morning coffee I usually only communed with specific gods. I hadn't opened up deliberately to all the gods, whichever gods happened to want to communicate in a while. So in addition to my usual toast (to Odin, Honir, Lodhur, Loki, Loki as Marvel-Loki, and Thor)* I made an additional toast, to all the gods and goddesses, and mentally specifically included any gods that don't fall neatly into either category, just in case. 

To my surprise, Tyr responded, but his words came slowly. He said I was losing my connection to him. I asked if there was something I could do to restore our connection. He told me that when I make my toast to his wife Zisa later this month, to also raise a toast to him. I said I would do so. 

*I know Lodhur, Loki, and Loki as Marvel-Loki are really all the same god. At some points I've just toasted Loki, but right now I'm specifically toasting each of those aspects, because they asked me to. The attention humans pay to Marvel-Loki waxes and wanes, and changes and adds things, and in between swells of attention the gods have asked me to help keep the Marvel-Loki aspect going.

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In part 2, coming soon, I talk more about my god-husbands Odin, Honir, and Loki. And I will talk about my Zisa Day toast on th 28th. Watch for part 2 next week!