Dia de Los Muertos...

...days to honor ancestors and one's dead in Mexico....so many traditions have this time for such reflection and ritual. This is considered to be the time of year when the 'veil between the worlds' thins.

I'm in the middle of a respiratory illness (problematical because of chronic asthma) so I can't do what I originally wanted to do this year. Here's just a wee offering...

First, something to make:

The full tutorial for this guy (they call him "Morty") can be found on the Berroco Design Blog here.


Here, to stand for all those of my beloved dead, is my mother George-Anna, c. 1926 at about age 3. You see behind her some of the iris she adored all her life, iris that my grandfather grew on his flower farm at College Hill, Ohio.
Yes, that is a real owl she is holding on the stick.
I don't remember the story about the owls exactly, but the clues to it are in several negatives in the family papers I salvaged, negatives of each of my mother's sisters and one of her father, holding small owls on a stick. I think that something happened to the mother owl and my mother's family handfed and raised the babies... I'm hoping I'll find more clues as I begin to read some of the massive amount of letters and writing my mother left.

I know that my Aunt Suzanne was always called Hootie because of her love for owls. I wonder if these pictures mark the time when that nickname came into being.

Owls are surrounded by myth and mystery. So I think this is a wonderful picture to post to mark this day...to focus my thoughts on those who came before (whose lives have become so close to me as I've gone through the papers and built the family tree) and those dear ones who have left my sight in my lifetime....they know who they are. They know they are beloved still by me....
Blessed be,
Zann