A Flock of Werewolves

Werewolves. Next to vampires, nothing beats them for existential angst. I have to say I'm a little bit tired of vampires, although I was besotted with them when I was a teenager. Werewolves are more to my taste now. They're fond of the countryside and like a good run. Also, vampires spend far too much time on their hair.

Barry Dransfield's folk ballad 'The Werewolf' gets the atmosphere just right, I think. And Mr Dransfield appears to have eyebrows that meet in the middle.

The short story 'Gabriel Ernest' by Saki is also beautifully wolfish.

Terry Pratchett's lady-wolf, Angua, is a vegetarian (echoing Eric Morecambe's Reluctant Vampire). I'm a veggie myself and it can be difficult to achieve the 'nom' factor in meat-be-gone dishes. Here is my favourite cold-weather, repressed-carnivore recipe, specially devised for abstaining werewolves. It's very approximate and you should change the quantities & add seasonings to your own taste.

Smoked Tofu & Butterbean Stew

- In a medium pot: two large potatoes, cubed, 1-2 cloves garlic, whole, 4 cups water, one made with a stock cube (Kallo French Onion stock is good). Boil, simmer till potatoes are very soft. Liquidise very smooth.

- In a large skillet or pot: Fry 1-2 chopped onions, 1 tablespoon mustard powder, 1 teaspoon asfoetida (if you have it) till onion is soft. (Other possible additions: pinch salt, ground coriander, ground cumin, thyme).

- Add potato mixture and 1 drained can of butterbeans, and thinly sliced firm smoked tofu (which you can get in health shops like Nourish on Wicklow Street, Dublin 2, or the Quay Coop in Cork). Heat through and serve.

Bagladies & Airy Mice

Airy mouse, airy mouse, fly over my head
and you shall have a crust of bread,
and when I brew and when I bake,
you shall have a piece of my wedding cake

When I started making cards, the name 'Baglady Designs' suited what I did. I had always collected dead leaves, snail shells and bits of fluff. I kept numerous bags of these 'art materials' as I liked to think of them. I made collages out of tea-bags and scraps of wool.
For quite a while I've been wondering about changing my business name. Now, my main work is wedding stationery, which doesn't lend itself to visions of eccentrically dressed ladies in stove-pipe hats. But with the coming of the internet, all conceivable names seem to be taken. And then, if I called myself something like 'Rose Boutique' (don't worry, I wouldn't) then where do all my witches and fairies fit in? Lady Bea is, sadly, taken. So is Lady Bee. Lady Bean is not only taken, but if you google it you are rewarded with very disturbing images of Mr Bean in drag. The problem is that while I do genuinely like designing wedding stationery, I'm not a very wedding-minded person. So I find it difficult to come up with a name that works.
Airy Mouse does not say weddings, to me or to anyone else. It is a little prettier than 'Baglady' though. And while it is an old quaint term for a bat, if you'd prefer not to know that, you don't have to. And it is distantly connected to weddings, via that lovely old rhyme. Anyway, I probably won't use it as a name, but as this blog will be about all my designs, a lot of which are witchy, I think it will do as a title for now.
Coincidentally, for my own wedding we used drawings of bats on the invitations. I adore bats. Bat-watching is like ghost-hunting - most of what you see, you're not sure was ever there. Bats in Ireland are for the most part tiny, zipping things. You can find out about bat-watching events from the Irish Wildlife Trust: www.iwt.ie and have a good read about them courtesy of the Bat Conservation Trust: www.bats.org.uk
Below you can see my romantic bats (these are the ones I used for my own wedding) and my design for April, in my 2012 desk calendar. I chose bats for April because that's the time of year they wake up and stretch their wings after hibernation. The calendar bats are far more anatomically correct! My wedding bats didn't know that their wings were meant to be attached to their feet and tails. So they're sort of little dragon-bats. But as they're in love, they don't mind at all.