Sunday Legends-Just Wait

Perhaps originating in West Virginia, this is story has several variations. Many people will be familiar with this story from the Scary Stories series, where the traveler is scared off by Martin.

So a preacher was riding through bad weather. He was on a schedule; perhaps he needed to give a sermon or preside over a funeral. Whatever the reason, he was trying to make the most distance he could before the weather made him stop.

However, since he had to get somewhere and this being the nature of the universe the weather got so bad that he had to stop-and stop soon. He found himself riding passed a long drive. Deciding to take his chances he turned his horse down the drive and found himself in front of a large house, obviously abandoned and in shambles. The roof looked sturdy and there was even a building to leave his horse in overnight; he decided to stay.

The preacher muttered to himself, “Well, the Lord will provide even if we don’t like the answer” and shouldered his way into the front hall. Finding living room complete with a fireplace-and even some wood-he wondered if his prayers hadn’t in fact been answered. So he built a small fire and by the light of the flames and the passing storm he settled in to read his Bible.

Eventually a large black cat sauntered into the room. Pastor was startled but then laughed at himself-he couldn’t be the only one in need of shelter.

“Good night, Mr. Cat”, he said.

The cat looked at him levelly and said in return, “Just wait until Emmet comes.”

Even more nervous than before, Pastor said, “Well, the Lord will provide even if we don’t like the answer.”

Soon after the first cat appeared, another black cat even sleeker and fatter than the first slid into the room. The two cats sat in the corner of the room. The second said to the first,

“What now?”

The first replied, “Just wait until Emmet comes.”

The preacher tried to go back to his reading but the two cats kept distracting him. A sound made him look up to the door again. At the door was a third black cat, at least as big as the other two put together and with eyes glowing as brightly as the fire in the grate.

“And what should we do with him?” He asked.

“Just wait until Emmet comes”, replied the second.

With that the preacher stood up and slammed his Bible closed with an audible thump.

“Well, I thank you for your hospitality,” he said, “But you’ll have to apologize to Emmet for me when he comes. I have something I forgot to attend to. Good-bye.”

american folklore

End of the Month Meta-March

-I’m doing blog hops again! If you have on that you would like to promote, comment on this post. The hops that I frequent are listed by day at the end of the columns page.

-Have you stopped by Inspired Weekends this week? The current round is still open!

-I finished the color association series:

red    orange    yellow     green     blue     purple

-Did you see, I knit Midnight a blanket!

-Have any suggestions for content? Want to submit a guest post? Email me at horrificknits at gmail dot com.

-My trip to Van Horn last year and my suggestions for scrap knitting both were quite popular this month.

2013 Canning List

What I want to make this season-

-Canned tomatoes-diced or crushed

-salsa

–firestarter (at least 3 batches, in half pints)

–apple-pear jam (at least 3 batches, in pints)

–pectin

-pickled onions

-winter salad pickles (at least 2 batches)

–dill pickles (at least 2 batches)

-sweet pickles (at least 2 batches)

–applesauce

–orange segments

-dilly beans

-cucumber relish

–blueberry peach jam

-blueberry black strap jam

-strawberry jam

–strawberry black strap jam

Inspired Weekends #12

Hello!

So what have you been up to? I finished my first truly large knitting project in years. It feels great!

Inspired Weekends #12

This week’s featured entry is The Wilderness Wife’s Slow Cooker Risotto. Please check out last week’s round for all the great entries that were linked up!

This is a free for all style link up-there are no rules! The only guideline is that each entry should be your own content-but feel free to link up round ups, link parties, giveaways, diy, recipes, tutorials, favorite entries from your archives, anything that you would like to share!

Click on the button that looks like a blue frog at the bottom of the page to view the collection.

Please link to entries, and not your blog main page.

Click around the list and leave a few comments or pin a few projects! Please try to at least stop by the last entry on the list.

I’d love if you would follow Horrific Knits on Facebook, Twitter or by email!

(Signing up puts you on a list for an email notification of future rounds. Please respond if you would not like to receive notifications either now or in the future. Thanks so much!)

Midnight’s Flower Garden

I adore this project. I had a blast knitting it, and it’s my favorite thing that I’ve knitted in recent memory.

This is also the most ironic thing that I remember knitting, pretty much ever. One of the things that I love about it is that it reminds me of a garden of flowers with the greens and the random explosions and pooling of colors. Which is almost hilarious, since I knit it for Mid.

The thing that you have to understand about my husband-thing is that he’s a huge goth. Leaning more to the steampunk now, he was high goth prior to when I started being around. Think white pan makeup, black eyeliner and big boots. Most of this was out of his system by the time I came around but the man still applies eyeliner better than I do. So the fact that I ended up knitting him a flower garden amuses me greatly.

I have no idea what yardage is on this one. I can’t even estimate. All of the yarn is scrap or leftovers, and there’s yarn taken from two other projects that were hibernating for years. There’s nothing that can felt in it though there is some Woolease and Vintage in it.

Happy

-I love the pattern (the original 10 stitch blanket, found on Ravelry). It’s going to be my default mindless knitting/default blanket pattern from here on out.

-It worked up really fast, though I wish Mid would have given me a better feel for size other than ‘keep knitting’

-I love how it organically pooled in places even without being a true varigated project.

Sad

Nothing seriously, really.

-It worked up really fast, though I wish Mid would have given me a better feel for size other than ‘keep knitting’

-I do like the splotches with the true white yarn better than the aran/off white, but I had piles of aran/off white and using true white would have meant buying yarn. I didn’t want to have to buy yarn.

Linked To-

mandatory mooch     a creative princess     what’s cooking love

the 36th avenue     fireflies and jelly beans     simply sweet home

craftionary     here comes the sun     ladybird lane

little house in the suburbs     30 handmade days     clairejustine

too much time     six sisters stuff     gingerbread blog

be different act normal      nifty thrifty things     i heart nap time

create with joy     i should be mopping the floor     the chicken chick

An Unorthodox Retelling

Persephone Bib0un (Deviantart)

I’ve been spending a fair bit of time, off and on for a couple of years now, meditating on the Persephone myth.

If the traditional way the story is told, with Persephone being tricked into eating the seeds works for you-work with the version that makes you happiest and gives you the most connection with that goddess. I just never clicked with her until I gave this some serious thought-and discovered that in a lot of ways my version of the story works with the classical image of a goddess so terrifiying that a lot of people just called her the Maiden.

This is my understanding of the myth-

Persephone was young, and unmarried, much to do with the intercession of her mother Demeter. Several gods had already come courting her but Demeter refused their offers, finding them to be an unsuitable match. One of the gods that had his eye on Persephone was Hades, king of the underworld [or one of them, depending on where you stand on Erebus but that’s a different entry]. However, Hades decided that he needed a much more direct approach than the one that Hermes and other gods had taken which was to go through Demeter to get to her daughter.

Persephone and her handmaidens were out picking flowers in a field. At this point most every day was at least warm and pleasant, if not high summer, and there were lots of flowers. Hades with his control over the underworld and things that go on underground, made sure that a seed sprouted a nice, happy, pretty flower that Persephone would be sure to pick. And according to plan, Persephone picked the flower-and Hades dragged her into hell.

And this is where, to use a deliberate cliche, all hell broke loose. Demeter realized that something was wrong and in her mourning refused to let things grow. The world fell into sterility and coldness. Basically, winter came. After awhile the gods, each for a number of their own reasons, approached the goddess to cheer her up. No one was able to do it, at least, not enough to get her to let the crops grow again. Eventually Zeus turned to Hecate, psychopomp and mistress of the dead and dying, and asked her to go into hell on Demeter’s behalf.

Hecate agreed and went into hell, where even Hades admitted her power. While there Hecate told Persephone that she could go home provided that she didn’t eat anything while she was down there.

…And this is where I have problems with the myth. This is where I had to spend a lot of time thinking about this to make it work to a point where I frankly didn’t find it insulting to this goddess.

According to more traditional retellings, Hades managed to trick the maiden goddess into eating a number of pomegranate seeds. This meant that she was now tied to the underworld and effectively making her his wife. Eventually the other gods managed to work out a deal with Hades so that Persephone would spend roughly half the year with her mother so her mother would let the plants grow-so long as she returned for a month for each seed consumed. And they all lived happily ever after and we have winter.

So my issue with this isn’t even a matter of feminism, though I do find a lot of problems with the idea of ‘it’s okay to steal women so long as they can go home to mom and besides they’re now a queen.’ Or maybe it is, but in a roundabout way. This is a deity that the classical literature makes out to be pretty flipping terrifying-and exceptionally intelligent. One of her roles was to judge whether or not a curse should stand and take action accordingly. She was certainly Hades’ equal. So how could she not understand something as pretty basic as ‘don’t eat this fruit’? No, really, how does she not come to a basic understanding about not eating a pomegranate-whatever the pomegranate actually stands for.

I guess I fall on a darker side of Persephone-I don’t think that she necessarily went willingly but I think that she knew what she was doing eating that fruit. I’m not even going to try to romanticize it and have her falling for Hades. I think that it was a power play-and I think we do her a lot of disservice to try to tone her down. It’s like when we made all the faeries small because they’re nicer that way.

…At least they didn’t take all the teeth out of her like Deviantart keeps wanting to do with Hades.

Sunday Legends-By Any Other Name

Sometimes you set up an idea or theme that you want to work with and the universe decides that it wants your energies somewhere else. Roses have been everywhere for me lately, so I’m taking the hint-and this time it wasn’t even a case of ignoring it and hoping the nagging would stop, this is just the first time I had to sit down and write on it.

Admittedly, this is a topic that feels strange to me. I don’t really mesh well with the traditional trappings of Western femininity. I think that I’ve said as much on this blog before, I must have. I am the girl who’s the first to admit that I’m not like other girls. I asked Mid for stuffed bats for Valentine’s Day one year. And when I think ‘roses’ I think about as girly as you can get, right up there with wanting to paint your bedroom pink and high heels.

If those are your type of things, rock out with your bad self- I’m going to be the one in the corner with the oxblood Doc Martins and black dress pants. That is in fact what I wore to my birthday party this year.

The flower has a deep connection with love and romance, being the flower of Aphrodite/Venus. I think that it’s interesting however that a lot of modern writers and poets associate her with something much closer to the ideal of courtly love than perhaps what she was actually good at-hers was a love that quite fine with the idea of rampaging.

The rose holds several layers of meaning. There are historical examples of the rose actually standing for secrecy as opposed to love. The symmetry of the rose has long been appealing to religious writers of various faiths who use the flower to express the concept of divine love and protection; the connection to the divine has also led to a perhaps increasingly archaic belief that deity smells like roses and a successful exorcism will smell like such.

For the Victorians the rose was all about love but color was pivotal. Red roses suggested hot, passionate love while pink was a little more restrained. Yellow was the color of friendship (I’ve also heard through oral tellings that yellow was sometimes used to reject a person-of the “let’s just be friends, okay?” variety), and white for chasity or pure intentions. Stripped of its thorns the rose would suggest love at first sight. Receiving black roses meant you probably angered someone deeply and you should watch where you step.

Purple

The last of the colors on the rainbow, purple is one of the richest, deepest colors in the spectrum. Due to its historical uses by various courts and the Roman Catholic church, purple has become intertwined with the concepts of nobility, royalty, and the sacred.

The word purple derives from the name of a dye that produced the color used in Byzantium. Falling in between red and blue, the historical associations with power and lacking the feelings of aggression that red can sometimes inspire, purple ties have started appearing in the wardrobes of world leaders. Interestingly, the concept of purple shifts from culture to culture,  with the amount of blue used to create the color shifting depending on country. The purple that was most sought by royals at one point in history may actually have been much redder than what people may envision by the word ‘purple’.

With regards to usage and associations, purple is connected the Easter season specifically. Purple is a holy color and is associated with both the Church and the concept of the spirit or the soul. However, like most colors, purple also has negative connotations, and is used to suggest vanity or pride.

Inspired Weekends #11

Hello!

So what have you been up to? I’m working on my first truly large knitting project in years. It feels great!

Inspired Weekends #11

This is a free for all style link up-there are no rules! The only guideline is that each entry should be your own content-but feel free to link up round ups, link parties, giveaways, diy, recipes, tutorials, favorite entries from your archives, anything that you would like to share!

Click on the button that looks like a blue frog at the bottom of the page to view the collection.

Please link to entries, and not your blog main page.

Click around the list and leave a few comments!

I’d love if you would follow Horrific Knits on Facebook, Twitter or by email!

(Signing up puts you on a list for an email notification of future rounds. Please respond if you would not like to receive notifications either now or in the future. Thanks so much!)

A Second Helping of Creepypasta

 

Marchers in the Woods

When I was young, in the Boy Scouts, I went to summer camp in a remote spot on the Mason Dixon line. It was fameous for being on the route of the South’s retreat from the defeat at Gettysburg.

There was a story that there was a lost patrol that still marched through there, on moonless nights. Anyone they noticed would be conscripted to join them.

It was one of many campfire stories we told, and I might have forgotten all about it, except for or one night. I woke up to the sound of drums in the woods.

The camp was silent. I cracked open the flap and froze. On the path a troop was marching through a low fog. Most were wounded, all wearing civil war uniforms, rucksacks, carrying muskets slung over the shoulder; as they marched a single drummer ticked off the time.

I tried not to even breathe as they marched by. Finally the last soldier came into view, and something about him really sent a chill through me. Just as they were about to go out of sight his head whipped around, and I thought our eyes met for a moment.

Soon after my family moved far away from Pennsylvania, and I convinced myself it was all a bad dream. I moved back here last month, and have been hearing drums late at night.

The new moon is soon, and I figured out what was disturbing about that last soldier. He wasn’t wearing a Civil War uniform. He wore a Boy Scout uniform.

 

The Hunter

 

There was a hunter in the woods, who, after a long day hunting, was in the middle of an immense forest. It was getting dark, and having lost his bearings, he decided to head in one direction until he was clear of the increasingly oppressive foliage. After what seemed like hours, he came across a cabin in a small clearing. Realizing how dark it had grown, he decided to see if he could stay there for the night. He approached, and found the door ajar. Nobody was inside. The hunter flopped down on the single bed, deciding to explain himself to the owner in the morning.

As he looked around the inside of the cabin, he was surprised to see the walls adorned by several portraits, all painted in incredible detail. Without exception, they appeared to be staring down at him, their features twisted into looks of hatred and malice. Staring back, he grew increasingly uncomfortable. Making a concerted effort to ignore the many hateful faces, he turned to face the wall, and exhausted, he fell into a restless sleep.

The next morning, the hunter awoke — he turned, blinking in unexpected sunlight. Looking up, he discovered that the cabin had no portraits, only windows.

 

No.

 

Coffins used to be built with holes in them, attached to six feet of copper tubing and a bell. The tubing would allow air for victims buried under the mistaken impression they were dead. Harold, the Oakdale gravedigger, upon hearing a bell, went to go see if it was children pretending to be spirits. Sometimes it was also the wind. This time it wasn’t either. A voice from below begged, pleaded to be unburied.

“You Sarah O’Bannon?”

“Yes!” the voice assured.

“You were born on September 17, 1827?”

“Yes!”

“The gravestone here says you died on February 19?”

“No I’m alive, it was a mistake! Dig me up, set me free!”

“Sorry about this, ma’am,” Harold said, stepping on the bell to silence it and plugging up the copper tube with dirt. “But this is August. Whatever you is down there, you ain’t alive no more, and you ain’t comin’ up.”