Sunday 22 February 2009

New Moon in Pisces

The New Moon is a time of rebirth—a time when we are given a chance to start fresh. On Wednesday 25th February the New Moon is in the altruistic, receptive, and dreamy sign of Pisces. So what does this mean? Well, it is a good time to commit to personal goals that express positive and creative energies.
You might choose to:
• take a leap of faith – believe in something that you always wanted to believe in, but were too afraid to put your trust in,
• accept imperfections in yourself and in others,
• start a creative or imaginative project,
• consciously put aside time for peaceful, rejuvenating activities – these can include yoga and meditation, but can be as simple as recognizing your need for “down time” on a regular basis (a cup of tea and five minutes silence every afternoon for example),
• practice putting yourself into others’ shoes, and let some things go (such as judgments and frustrations),
• energize yourself through new experiences that require your imagination and compassion,
• connect or re-connect with a lover on a romantic level; share a dream with a friend.
One of the “lessons” brought by Pisces is to release some of the anxiety that takes control of our everyday lives. As an example if someone takes your place in a queue, tell that person, “Go ahead”, and mean it! If that feels sarcastic, don’t say it out loud, but think it instead. You might “lose” a minute of your time because that person jumped ahead of you, but you will have saved yourself the stress and negativity that comes from allowing yourself to get annoyed and impatient. Same goes for when you are driving. Let small grievances go. Smile at other drivers, or at least, smile to yourself. There is no need to get worked up. These are “little things” that, if practiced often, will help us to understand and apply Pisces lessons in far-reaching ways.
It can seem that the fishes are the easy going, romantic sign of the Zodiac but still waters run deep and we only see the part that’s visible. Pisces swim in deep waters and what happens deep within requires a level of solitude to understand. This is an ideal new moon to find your own way of diving within. One way to do this is through meditation, but you may have another method for accessing that deep private place. For me, it’s yoga. You might prefer surfing, chanting, or walking in the woods. Going deep within is the alternative to catching up on the latest news bulletins, and riding the waves of fear. This is the time to choose another path, and turn inward to find what you need to sustain you through hard times. Since Pisces is the natural artist, this diving inward is also a path to greater personal creativity, too. So unleash your creative side, bake a cake, paint a picture, make something. Do it just for you and enjoy yourself!
So this new moon is a portal to choosing love or fear. We are more powerful than we realize; what’s cultivated within is reflected by the kind of world we live in. This new Moon is a chance to re-create the world, one that is a mirror of who we are, at our most compassionate, unique, colorful, visionary and hopeful.
Today’s painting is by the incredibly talented Josephine Wall. With many thanks to her for her inspiring work.

Friday 20 February 2009

I'm back

Just a quick post to say that I'll be back over the weekend with some ideas for the New Moon in Pisces coming up on Tuesday - it's a time of homecoming and awakening so should be fairly nurturing and blissful after overcoming the challenges that this moon phase usually presents us with - you know going deep into the darkest parts of our self, etc.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I wanted to carry on writing on this blog as well as the one on the main Green Parent site. So, hope you enjoy reading...

cloth from pineapples!

Following on from our exciting natural textile discoveries in the latest edition of The Green Parent magazine, in which we showed beautiful clothing made from nettles, hemp and bamboo, I have just learnt about a cloth made from the fibre of pineapple leaves. How cool is that!
Produced entirely from the leaves of the pineapple plant, Pina Cloth is gossamer thin yet strong enough to construct light, airy garments. It makes a fantastic animal-friendly alternative to silk, is fair trade and is still made using the age-old traditions that have been used to produce it for hundreds of years. Weaving the fibres from the plant's leaves is an age-old tradition which was recently revived in the past 20 years. History records suggest that Kalibo's Pina cloth was traded during the Pre-Hispanic times and reached as far as Greece and Egypt during it's heyday. At Boutique Ethique, Pina cloth produced by a fair trade family-run company in the Philippines features is used to make items for the Spring/Summer 09 Collection, like this beautiful blouse, £130 (pictured). The company employs 85 weavers and insists on maintaining the traditional techniques, such as manual extraction of fibre, and preserving the cultural heritage of the weaving industry.
For more info on natural fibres see issue 27 of The Green Parent magazine.