Easter Egg Rolling

"Eostre"

For our family, Easter means a large family gathering for a brunch of drop scones, followed by egg rolling from the top of Meldon Hill.

Everyone decorates a hard boiled egg - some put in a lot more effort than others!

Mine was a very lame attempt in between cooking hundreds of drop scones.

My cousin made a fabulous Mr Bump

and my sister contributed Big Buddha and Big Buddha's Little Brother.

Once we have voted for a winner, everyone takes it in turns to roll their eggs down the face of the hill, inevitably helped by an overexcited pack of dogs.
The winner is the person whose egg gets furthest down the hill, intact.

Afterwards small boys practised rolling down the hill like eggs,

and we all reclaimed our hard boiled eggs (those that hadn't been snaffled up by dogs!) to eat in the glorious sunshine.

Happy Easter to you all - I hope you had as much fun as we did :)

Eostre

'Eostre'

She's finished, my interpretation of the goddess, Eostre. The colour is slightly darker here than in the original, because I can't get the colour quite right with my camera ( it is too large for my scanner). So this is another that will have to wait until I get in to Exeter to the printers studio for some professional scans.
Folklore tells us that Eostre was an Anglo - Saxon goddess, celebrated during the fourth month of the year. She represents new life and fertility, and is symbolised by eggs and hares. It is often assumed that the Christian Festival of Easter took it's name from this, hence the traditions of Easter Eggs and Easter Bunnies in Western Europe, ( which, let's face it, have nothing to do with the crucifixion and subsequent Resurrection of Christ) though it would appear that there is scant written evidence to prove this. The only mention of Eostre in historical texts, is by the Venerable Bede (672 - 735 AD) in his work' De Temporum Ratione' .

Progress continues with 'The Hare Wheel', but very slowly. I am laboriously stitching words in the last hours of my evenings, slowly, slowly filling up the wheel.

A wander round my garden today found that my beautiful, silky rich, deepest crimson hellebore flowers had opened. I love these, grown from seed many years ago, the clumps quietly expand each year, untouched in the shadiest part of my garden, blooming in all their Gothic beauty each Easter.

And this is Daisy, come to stay for a while. I've known her since she was about 10 weeks old (she's only just over a year now) but her people's circumstances have unavoidably changed recently, and so she was in need of a new home. She has come to stay, to see how she likes being here, and she seems to have settled right in. We all love her lots ( we did anyway, before she came) and Magpie seems to like her too, which was my biggest worry, as I didn't want Magpie to feel pushed out. The cats are not best pleased, but they are asserting their rights, and Daisy is wary of them. Especially the ginger thug, Miu, who turned into a hissing, spitting, erratically bouncing hairball when he first met her. Miu even swiped at Magpie in his fury, which hurt her feelings deeply, although he did come over to apologise afterwards. Beetle, on the other hand, is more reticent, slinking alongside Magpie for protection. She mothers him, curling herself around him as a guardian when Daisy barks at him. Aside from that both dogs seem very relaxed and happy, so we are hoping it will work well.