Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

And all my days are trances   And all my nightly dreams  Are where thy grey eye glances  And where thy footstep gleams—  In what ethereal dances  By what eternal streams.” —” To One in Paradise " - Edgar Allan Poe   I made a collage tag for Tag Tuesday's  current theme  "Edgar Allan Poe", just in time for the season of  spooky  stories and Halloween.  I used  pieces of torn  paper - text, painted or printed household paper, tea bag, magazine page and a photocopied image of  E.A.P.  I finished  the tag with a rows of machine stitching.  Such a challenging theme set by Design Team member, Michele , but please visit the Tag Tuesday blog to see amazing tags  from very talented artists. 

Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse... It’s Christmas Eve…. And you just have to read out aloud, to your family, to your friends, to your pet or to yourself, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ …. This classic poem was FIRST called ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’ and published anonymously in 1823. It was later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore in 1837. I have discovered this last month whenever claiming a Christmas FIRST, there is always a but… but now some literary historians now think that the author might have been Henry Livingston Junior.  While most of the evidence  has  favoured Moore, most recent studies might suggest otherwise ...      MacDonald P. Jackson, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand has spent his entire academic career analyzing authorship attribution. He has written a book titled Who Wrote "the Night Before Christmas"?: Analyzing...

"Garden Party" tag inspired by a poem by Wang Wei.  It would have been  a delight to sip tea in the garden, but ... Softly closing the chamber door,  Alone I await you in the empty room.  You never came.  Disappointed, I drink solitary tea .       - Wang Wei: An Occasional Poem During the last year, I have been reading a lot about tea, and especially poetry inspired by tea. This little verse by Wang Wei is amongst my favourites. However, the most well known tea poem of the same period in Chinese history was written by Lu Tong , a hermit, who was so moved by a gift of tea that he wrote : The first cup kisses away my thirst, and my loneliness is quelled by the second,  The third gives insight worthy of ancient scrolls,  and the fourth exiles my troubles,  My body becomes lighter with the fifth, and the sixth sends word from the immortals, But the seventh - of the seventh cup -  If I drink you, a wind will hurry...

"Wise Words Wednesday" is a new idea for my blog... I will still be posting my regular updates about my art work, but this will be a little extra post now and then.  I have been collecting wise sayings for a few years and wondered why I haven't shared them. Many of them have been included on wooden tags on my message stick dolls, but most of them are just written in a notebook. Here are today's wise words featured on this message stick doll, designed for Christmas. ' “Peace is always beautiful.”  ―  Walt Whitman ,  Leaves of Grass      tags:  peace ,  poetry Read more quotes from  Walt Whitman   (from www.goodreads.com)