Perplexed

I just read something on a blog I find curious, A woman was described as a 5^th generation needleworker. Since most women of a certain age like me, would have learned from a mother or grandmother, how the hell do you know how many generations you go back? Especially since not too many generations back mothers made all their kid’s clothes.

My Brighid puppet complete with embroidered flames and Brighid’s cross

My mom did needlepoint and she made all my and my sister’s clothes until I was a teenager because I rarely fit anything from the store. She even made my tshirts and pants. She smocked all my dresses from when I was born until I was 7 or 8. (That picture of me and my brother I posted earlier in the week was her handiwork.) Mom also hooked rugs and made a huge floor rug she designed in needlepoint of the Queen’s beasts after she saw them in Kew Gardens.

My grandmother taught me to embroider and to design my own patterns as part of our family traditions and to chant things while I did it. At the end of my bed is one of the handmade quilts my great grandmother created. We still have several including one covered in butterflies that was on my bed as a kid and now dwells up in the cupboard next to a Hudson Bay blanket because I really prefer a comforter.

Lady Olivia Robertson, FOI puppet

I assume she was taught by her grandmother and mother. My grandmother had one of those foot pedal black Singer machines. I loved that machine and when I learned on my mom’s Singer she gave me a speeding ticket. I made a lot of my clothes for years because it was fun and I liked picking fabrics that were stealth pagan and had things like moons and stars. I lost my sewing machine when we had to let the storage go and we really don’t have room for it. I did when I lived alone but not now since I live with my sister and can’t leave things with pins and stuff out because of her cat, my cat had been trained not to go near my stuff.

Mom and Dad in our living room in front of three of her creations

I had a Great-great Aunt Annie, who was the family scandal and black sheep, not because she refused to get married but because she became a nun in a Scots Presbyterian family and she’d joined sometime in the late 1800s. I have a photo of her somewhere that I need to scan of her playing the guitar before she converted and her convent used to send boxes of handmade lace to try to raise money from the family. So she had to have been a needleworker too. The last box arrived when I was really little after all her brothers and sisters had died and I remember my grandmother and mom going off about it. I think that was the last time they heard anything from her and she had to be in her late 90s because her brother had died at 92 in 1945 and she was a little younger, I think, we can’t find her in ancestry.com and we don’t know her nun name.

So how can you say you’re a 5^th generation needleworker? Now a days it’s more rare for women to be embroiders or sewers but 50 years ago almost everyone did. I can remember being at meetings and gatherings as a kid with mom’s friends and someone would be knitting, someone crocheting, my mom doing needlepoint she designed from photos, maybe someone tatting or making lace. All kinds of things were created because they considered it lazy not to be doing something with their hands.

I have to say I come from a long line of needleworkers that go back in history with no end.

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Yule cookie – Melt in the Mouth

Melt in the Mouth

½ cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1Teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
¾ cup sifted flour
1 Teaspoon baking powder
½ Teaspoon salt
½ cup finely chopped nuts

Cream butter, add sugar, vanilla & egg
Beat until light
Add sifted dry ingredients and nuts
Drop by scant teaspoons onto cookie sheets
Bake in hot oven

400 degrees for about 5 minutes Cool for ½ minute
Remove to wire rack

Yule Cookies – Walnut Crispies

​2 Squares bitter chocolate

1/2 cup shortening
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup sifted flour
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts

Melt chocolate in heavy saucepan
Add all other ingredients except nuts
Beat well by hand
Spread mixture in greased jelly roll pan or 3 (8×8 inch pans)
Sprinkle with nuts

Bake in  400 degree oven for 15 minutes
While warm cut with cutter into bars or squares
Break apart when cool.

Makes 4 dozen

Yule treat – Pineapple Pickle

Don’t knock it until you try it!

Pineapple Pickle

2 #2 ½ cans of pineapple chunks
1 cup cider vinegar
1 cup brown sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
20 whole cloves

Drain pineapple, reserving the liquid.
Add liquid to other ingredients and boil for 10 minutes
Add Pineapple and simmer for 10 minutes longer
Remove spices
Seal in hot sterilized jars or refrigerate until ready to use.

Serves 6-8

Warning when we made this for Thanksgiving and Christmas there is never any left to store. The longer you wait before serving the better the spices will do their job. So make the day before at least.

Yule treat – Pecan Pie

Pecan Pie

Make a pie crust or use one of the ones available at your grocer

Filling for a 9″ pie
Beat together with a rotary beater:

3 eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 Tsp salt
1/3 cup butter
melted 1 cup dark corn syrup

Filling for an 8″ pie shell:

2 Large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter
3/4 cups dark corn syrup

Mix in 1 cup pecan halves / 3/4 cup pecan halves

Pour into pastry lined pie pan

Bake until set and the pastry is slightly browned in a 375 degree oven for 40 to 50 minutes
Cool
Serve cold or slightly warm

This from Mom’s really old Betty Crocker Cookbook from the 1950’s with the cool photos.

A Samhain prayer

On this Samhain Eve

I stand at the head of a long line

The last of my bloodline that there will ever be

I look back at the face of those that came before me

I see my nose and my chin

I see the red of my hair

I see those who went gray and white as I am changing

I see those who walked like me

I see those who loved trees and plants

I see whose who taught me to see the faeries

I see those who taught me to see life

I see those who taught me love

I see the ones who hurt inside so they hurt me

I forgive them

I see the friends that have gone through the veil

Before me

I see those love imprinted on my heart

I see all the shining ones who stand there

It is not my turn to join yet.

This year taught me how close it came to joining you

Some day I will see your shining hearts and faces

I keep you close to me

You taught me so much

I am grateful to have been loved

I am grateful to still have love around me

Hecate, this is your day

You are holding the veil back for us

To send love through

Faerie Queen, you sparkle on the other side

We bow in your honour

And we dance

Brighid, we turn our heads toward winter

And know your quiet strength

Is there for the asking

Elen, your swans pass over

Taking the new souls to Tir Na Nog

And we listen for the sound of wings

This Samhain I honour all those

Whose feet trod the path I walk

Walk with me

Teach me

Tell me stories

Let my ears and eyes be open this night

Let my hands and heart know what is important this night

I wait for the Dark Goddesses

Teach me

Tell me stories

Let my ears and eyes be open this night

Let my hands and heart know what is important this night

I wait for the dead

Teach me

Tell me stories

Let my ears and eyes be open this night

Let my hands and heart know what is important this night

2016

Beloved Dead

Goddess, I miss him so much

Some years are worse than others

I miss my shadow

I miss my near twin

I miss his huge smile

I miss his hugs

Oh Goddess

Why does it not getting any easier?

He’s gone and he always will be

I miss his humour that was different from everyone else in the family

I miss when he didn’t get our jokes

I miss him trying

Goddess, grief is an unfillable hole

Yes, grief reminds us we loved

But oh, it hurts sometimes

It hurts to stand alone in the memories

Memories that only he and I held

I miss him hiding behind me when dad hit me

I miss being his protector

I miss him in the audience when I sang

I miss being his audience

Goddess. I’m selfish

I miss his love

I miss his smelly feet

I miss knowing I could call him if I needed

I miss the secret names we called each other

I miss seeing his eyes when we came out to each other

I miss the wonder of knowing he was gay too.

I miss knowing I wasn’t alone with my secret

I miss that he will never know how Harry Potter ended

The last book he read was number 6.

I miss that we can’t share Star Wars rebirth

He kidnapped me to the very first one

Insisting I would love it.

Goddess, I miss my baby brother

And it hurts so much…

Dem Swedes in the woodpile

Going through these old photos of my great grandparents makes very conscious of how much loss they went through just to have a family. Their first two sons died 2 days apart, Axel at 3 and two days later George died at age 1, the next child, Ella (Veldma) survived until she was 18. Then came Hattie (Hatta or Harriet), Della (Lilly), my grandfather Carl, William Blaine who died at less than a year, Elsie (Alla), Robert was the last one. So three sons and one daughter died as children and three girls and two sons lived. The ones who survived Hattie made it to 73 and the others were all over 80. Great Grandma died when I was 5 at 95 in 1959.

I’m thinking my mom advocated for us all having Scottish names after growing up with the Swedish ones. All the girl’s names were suspiciously like the names of the Borden cows in the commercials when I was little. The names in parentheses are the first names they were born with and the other name is the American name they went by after they moved to LA. They started out in Minnesota when it was a territory and then Hilda (Halda) moved them all to LA around 1900 because she swore she was not going to live someplace colder than Sweden. I found the citizenship docs for the kids but Minnesota became a state in 1858 so I have no idea why they needed them if they were born here even if Isaac and Hilda weren’t citizens.

It must have hurt to lose 4 children. I can’t find any death certificates that say what they died of but they were living in Duluth at the time so maybe there was an epidemic of some sort in 1890 when the first two boys died. What killed Ella/ Veldma in 1908 at the age of 18?

Hilda is listed as a Smeddotter on her emigration report in the church records in Sweden. (Why church’s had emigration records I have no clue) Smeddotter means blacksmith’s daughter. So I have smiths on the Swedish and Scottish sides, probably where I got the urge to whack metal with large hammers. Funny, how things you like to do can maybe travel along your genes as well as what you look like. Kind of cool.

I know they all spoke Swedish until Hilda made them join the Presbyterian Church because it was the only church that has services in English and she wanted the kids to learn English because now they were in a America. There was one problem with this. When she got very old when I was little she would slip back into Swedish. I can remember my Uncle Don trying to get her to say “Jam and Jelly” and she’d reply “Pass me the yam and yelly” which used to reduce me to giggles.
Hers was the first funeral I ever attended. For some reason I spent most of it with my grandmother in the car. That was fine with me because Grandma could tie a handkerchief into a rabbit and make it hop up and down her arm and she kept Livesavers Chocomints in the handbag. I wish they still made those.

The biggest change after she died was the unanimous refusal to ever serve lutefisk at a holiday meal every again. Everything else Swedish was fine but no lutefisk, ever!

I got so much from them. My love of photography, grandpa gave me my first Brownie camera so I could be like him with his Leicas. Most of the photos I have of us as kids are from him. Dad took slides and so far they resist copying because they are too colour saturated for my scanner.

I got my boobage from my Great Aunts. I’m built like them to my mother’s horror. She would look at me and say, I don’t know where you go those but I look just like her aunts so it wasn’t hard to figure out.

I got my love of milk and pastries at breakfast from them. And some of my baking talent comes from them.

And I got my nose and I think my enormous hands from them. I bet I have bigger hands than Donald Trump, I had to wear men’s gloves when I was a bell ringer. Women’s gloves were way too small. My piano teacher in college loved them. I could reach more than an octave. Dad called them farmer hands. My sister has these long graceful thin fingered hands but even when I was skinny my hands were not but it was great for doing gymnastics because I rarely missed if I could get my hands on the bars. And it tickled my ortho that even when I had horrible tendinitis I had a grip strength of 80lbs in my left uninjured hand. Most women have a grip strength of 30 lbs or less. The right was only 70 lbs injured. And more than a few men that tried to give one of those handshakes they think are going to crush a women’s hand to exert dominance regretted it immediately when all I did was grin and bear down back. LOL! So dem Swedes were good for a few things. I think it’s the blacksmith’s fault,

Oh Hecate

Hecate

Now is your time

You walk among us as the veil thins

Please be with your Priestesses

Wherever they may be

They are called to ease the loved ones

The ones that are choosing this time

To pass through the veil

Let them know what is needed

Be with their hearts

They are breaking

Be with the ones leaving

Ease open the curtain

Let them pass easily

Surrounded by those that love them

Let them know that love awaits them on the other side

Comfort those left behind.

Stand with them

Hold their broken hearts

Let them know that love lasts

And is not gone

It’s never gone

Only harder to see

Hecate

Be with us at this time

We turn our faces to the veil

It is not our time

Heal our hearts

Let us know peace

Let us know there is no end

Only endless beginnings

Be with us and to the hour of our passing

Be here now,

DNA, Ancestors and Family in the World

I did the Nat Geo DNA testing and they just revised it to 100% European, 59% Great Britain and Ireland, 19% Western and Central Europe, 15% Scandinavian and 3% Eastern Europe, instead of the 4% Saami and Siberian they originally said.

When your get your results you can add it to another DNA site called FTDNA and that is when it gets weird because you get invitations to join groups based on your DNA results some of which went with family history like the MacFarlane and MacGregor family groups we already knew about since we have them on the family trees on both sides, but then I got one from a Polish group and I don’t know about any Poles anywhere. So I joined all the Scottish ones it suggested because I knew those were right.

It then tells you everyone you are related to that has taken the testing for several cousins out and they and you can start contacting each other. I just got a request from a 4^th cousin in Sweden. My family left Sweden about 125 years ago. It’s kind of cool and kind of weird to know that I have so many relatives that I have never met and that they are all over the globe. So far I have a list of over 1500 people who are related to me by my DNA. My family has never been highly reproductive so that kind of blows me away. 1500 people that I have never met are my direct relatives. Wow!

We could only do the MT DNA test because there are no surviving males, my dad and brother were the last Y DNA Robbs on their branch of the family tree. His sister’s kids would only have MT DNA and his two brothers died before they could have children and his dad’s dad only had a sister.

When they do the DNA matches they start with those who share the biggest blocks with you and so far I don’t recognize any of the people that it says are my second cousins. My new 4^th cousin shares a block of 28.

This is my haplogroup mtDNA      U2e1f and I haven’t seen any one on the list that shares that haplogroup. I like that it sort of looks like elf even though it’s e1f. Hey, maybe that’s how the alfar do their DNA, LOL!

U2e started out in Eurasia and North Africa. There is something about DNA testing and seeing the results that brings home that we really are one people and the differences are on the outside not the inside. Sometime way are back in history my ancestors may have roamed Egypt, Algeria or Libya or the Middle East. What stories would they tell? Who knows maybe I am remembering the BunniHoTep stories. Maybe one of my ancestors told those stories too.

Why did they roam so far and how did they end up in regions that were as far as you could go in Europe without getting on a boat which I suppose they eventually did because my family ended up in Los Angles in a climate not that far different from where they started.

I know some of the stories from the last few hundred years and so far they match what the DNA testing says but what about the ones further back? What were their stories? All I do know is that I must have relatives and ancestors who looked far differently than I look now. That any one I see on the bus or on the street or in the store could be related to me no matter what they look like. Makes me want to be kinder. That part of the Girl Scout Promise that says I’m a sister to every other Scout, is really true.