Music Monday: Winter Song

It's very short notice, but if you didn't already know, tonight (technically early tomorrow morning) there will be a unusual occurrence. A lunar eclipse will begin around 1am Eastern time, and one "bite" at a time, the moon will slowly slip into our Earth's shadow, and if there are clear skies, the moon will turn a creepy orange around 3:17am, with the show ending around 5am.

This is a special lunar eclipse, though, as it falls on a full moon on the winter solstice, which hasn't happened since 1638. And perhaps another reason it is special is because it also falls on my birthday. Not just any birthday, but a milestone birthday. Some see the lunar eclipse as a bad omen, some ancient documents connecting disasters like famine with the lunar eclipse. Others see the movement from complete darkness back into light as an opportunity for personal transformation. National Geographic has an interesting article on this event.

Perhaps there are some positive personal transformations in my future, or maybe a cool picture! Who's staying up with me? Weather report has my local skies clearing up around the time of the eclipse from cloudy to mostly cloudy, unfortunately.

I leave you with a video of "Winter Song" by Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson in honor of the first day of winter.

This is my first of hopefully many Music Monday, an effort to pay more attention to my woefully ignored blog. Please stay tuned for Wordless Wednesdays and Theme Thursdays as well.

Starry Night, Moonless Sky

On our recent cruise to the Bahamas, like the cruise we had taken a few years ago, one of our stops was Key West. I had remembered this one particular store from the previous trip, called Earthbound Trading Company. They sell a variety of things including incense and candles with African and Southeast Asian motif.

What I had forgotten about this place is that they have a bin of gemstones that you can pick through. You grab a little velvet pouch and cram as many as you can in there. Its a flat charge for the pouch, regardless of how many you get to fit - you just have to be able to close the bag. Very exciting!

One of the several stones that I took home with me was a somewhat rectangular shaped piece of hematite. It took a while to wrap it in wire, mostly because the magnetic stone took quite the liking to my meta toolsl, and now a couple of my tools are even slightly magnetized! I decided the magnetic pendant would be best fit at a choker length as opposed to a longer necklace where it would get in the way picking up paper clips and have the freedom to stick to metal objects close by.

I strung some hematite beads, black beads, and black diamond Czech E beads on a choker sized memory wire with the pendant. The silver lined blue/gray "black diamond" E beads give a glittery appearance with the black and silver metallic colors of the hematite, hence the name "Starry Night Choker."

On the subject of starry nights, did you happen to catch the total lunar eclipse 2/20/08? I tried to capture it on camera, but my photography skills, or lack there of, did not do the event justice. It was absolutely gorgeous! There are more poor quality pictures of the eclipse on my Flickr page as well, if you want to check them out!