celialowenthal:

This past Sunday, I was briefly at a Swedish Lutheran church for a special Lucia-themed event, it being the Sunday closest to St Lucia Day (today, 12/13).

To say I felt like a Jewish spy is to simplify my often-confused feelings on faith.

It was my old light-up crown that the church’s Lucia was wearing, and yet the discussions of saints made me uncomfortable and an outsider. In the past, I have tried to visually reconcile my dual-religion upbringing by depicting them in concert, together: as a dark-haired girl dressed as Sankta Lucia, a self-portrait lighting a menorah. But in this volatile age and devoid of my personal context, that would be an image of assimilation rather than reconciliation. So I suppose I’ll leave it to you to decide if these girls are lighting the same menorah or not. 

andersonsallpurpose:

Completely irrelevant fun fact: I have actually been the Lucia, once. The only reason it ever happened was that my school didn’t do the whole popularity contest thing, instead having the teachers decide who got the honor that year. I vaguely understood it as a consolation price for being so profoundly uncool, but it was also kind of a big deal for a 11 year old so I wasn’t about to let that stop me.

My school was also pretty big on *~*Old-Fashioned Traditions*~*, so I got to wear a real candle crown with live candles. I remember it was brass, unexpectedly heavy, and looked like some kind of medieval torture instrument (except with candles). I wore a wet cloth under, but I was still picking bits of candle wax out of my hair for a week.

surface–detail:

😮 I never showed you my bake!
Good grief.
Bake Off week 5(?): Pastry.

Bakewell tart. I don’t normally say I’ve made a perfect bake, but hot damn I made a perfect cake, I took it to work and it went down a storm. So much so I had a few people very surprised that it was gluten free. There’s a new guy in the lab and he’s now my best friend because he was the only person who requested a large slice, made a refreshing change to ‘ooh just a little bit’. He did offer me fruit and nut mix today so he’s lost a bit of my respect but he’s a foodie so it’s all good.
Either way I pride myself on the fact that I have never had a soggy bottom, I thank my mother for that, she taught me good.
This week I am combining elements from the first and last challenge and I’m making a three layer, layer, not tier, I canny do tiers man, coconut and lemon cake. Sunday is going to be a full day of baking.
PAY DAY ON FRIDAY!!! I HAVE £2.50!!!!! I CAN DO IT!?!?!?!
28th September 2016