An Upcycled Medicine Bag, The Year of the Sheep, and Home Made Incense

Magic is most definitely afoot...

  So here's my latest: a medicine pouch made with upcycled materials.  Specifically, an old wool blanket, fabric scraps, and a sparkly rhinestone magnetic clasp I salvaged from a necklace I made last year.  Apparently driftwood is not the sturdiest media for jewelry making.  Here's the post I wrote about my former necklace:http://thedelightist.blogspot.com/2014/03/year-of-wood-horse-talisman.html. Long story short, I found a small piece of driftwood on a beach in Mexico with an "H" engraved into it by some sort of bug.

 It also had a hole in it that made it perfect for a necklace.  When I got home I saw that it was the beginning of the Year of the Wood Horse according to Chinese astrology.  Cool. The Universe is talking to me. Alrighty.  So I made my year of the wood horse necklace, tried to be all intentional and stuff, and promptly forgot about it all as the zillion things that happen in a year happened.    So here I am a year later, still not super interested in astrology but not against it either and I noticed a few articles showing up in my sphere on the Chinese astrological new year turning yet again. This year is the year of the Sheep.  Hmmmm, I thought excitedly, I wonder if I'll have another magical happening around this like last year? The funny thing is I said this to myself as I was working on these WOOL medicine pouches I have mostly been obsessed with  lately.  Yay!  I love the kind of magic you don't even know you're enacting until you're smack dab in the middle of it.  Which brings me to an even more amazing magic I am currently immersed in.

  Above is a picture of some of the potent ingredients I've chosen for this pouch.  I harvested the golden resin last weekend from a variety of pine trees in Central Oregon. (Sidenote: I love the energy and symbolism of this fragrant golden substance that the tree draws up from the earth and down from the sun to use to heal itself)   However, I did not gather the resin for my medicine pouch project, I gathered it for an incense project I got all hot and bothered to do back in December.  
  I love incense and I thought, "wouldn't it be cool and powerful to make my own incense with only local ingredients I harvest myself?"  I could easily make "loose" incense (the kind you just sprinkle raw resins and herbs on a piece of charcoal) but I really wanted to make cone or stick incense because I DON'T KNOW WHY.  Googling away I find out that the very very special bark that is used as the binding agent in this type of incense comes from a very very special tree that grows in Asia. Well bummer. There goes my idea of local incense.  Totes disappointed.  But wait, maybe if I could just find a picture of this tree I could find one around here that is similar and give that a shot.  So I managed to find the Latin name for this tree and googled up some photos.  You are never gonna believe this but it's the tree in our back yard!  I couldn't  believe my eyes at first so I called Rob over to take a look. Me: "Rob, what is this?"  Rob: "Hey, that's our tree."  No one has ever known what this tree is.  I've not seen one anywhere else.  It looks like a magnolia tree but it gets clusters of small white flowers in the Spring.  So anyhow, I still need to do some more research on how and when to harvest the bark.  I'm also still collecting other fragrant and potent items to put into my hyper local incense.  I will keep you posted on how this all goes.
  And here's one more important thing: this desire to make home made incense led to yet another inspired and magical idea around community and creativity.  But I'm not quite ready to share it YET.  Because A) This post is already getting too long for my taste and I need to get back to making stuff and B) I'm so deeply immersed in this magic, it's story is still unfolding as we speak.  Best to let it unfurl a little but longer.  I will keep you posted.  Meanwhile here's to a wild and wooly Year of the Sheep.  Cheers.