tippity witchit

When I was little and ever and always the kind of child that believed anything and everything, Halloween was always tied in with this old southern saying. My mother would say it and then tighten down my buckram mask and send me out into a chill halloween night. Pretty soon the stiff and humiliatingly bad mask would go all icky about the mouth hole because i'd be chewing my lip between my begging for candy stops - just knowing that I'd be left outside the drifting throng and a sure and ready morsel for a witch- A very angry witch who resented poorly made buckram masks not at all in her image and one who didn't mind eating a sticky and chocolate laced little girl. It was also about this time that I read a little story that has stayed with me in a sort of hazy way. It is entitled "Tippity Witchit" and tells the story of a little kitten who wanders off only to fall prey to a witch who was going to use him as her familiar. I can't remember it all really, but I have the sense that morning came and with it his mother - or maybe she went searching for him as I would like to think. Anyway - it made an impression - daytime -good, nightime - bad, and for heaven's sake don't go off exploring at night because a witch could be just anywhere. Of course my little painting is of a happy and youthful witch dancing a jig with her somewhat less than enthusiastic little friend.

I have a little job for you

I am swamped - computer went haywire - house a mess, trying to navigate ETSY - etc.etc.etc. I need a familiar. I have plenty of familiars but they never perform tasks for me or magically fold laundry when I twitch my nose. They just pee in the house and look at me brazenly when I yell "who did this!"
i love Savannah but sometimes I miss the New England climate. When there is a nip in the air your internal sensors tell you its time to stock up,
make apple cider, get your firewood in order and haul out that knitting project you started but could never fathom yo sl2 yo sl2. That wonderful misty moisty atmoshphere where the world is full of slate grays, gauzy blues from chimneys and burnt oranges and scarlets of the maple leaves. Halloween is about my favorite time and in New England we lived next to a colonial cemetery. The boys played there and in the winter sledded down the rutted hill road that ringed the solemn and ancient sleepers there. It was a magic place and quite witchy. The town tomb was on the grounds and in olden times the dead were placed in its capacious vault awaiting the thawing of the ground in spring. I imagine there was quite the que. Many typhus and diptheria victims. Whole families of children. Horrible to have them in there and -accessible almost- and then go through the whole funeral thing again in the spring. My oldest son, i found out recently, shut my two middle sons in when they were 8 and 9. he and his friend howled with glee at their screams. Ah youth, what larks, as Jo Gargery would say.