Wandering Adventure Party

I think it is their rareity which makes them so fascinating to people. These squirrels have fans, like other pockets of white squirrels in other places. 🧵3/3

the white squirrels of Trinity-Bellwoods, but they are well documented. You can google it. They even have a street, White Squirrel Way, and a café named after them.

There are two ways in which squirrels end up white instead of grey, black or brown. They may be albino squirrels, or they may have a rare white fur coloration known as leucism (due to a recessive gene). My local squirrels seem to have red eyes, so I think they are albino. 🧵 2/3

Happy #SquirrelAppreciationDay! Despite the opinion of some people in my home there’s a colony of white squirrels in Toronto’s Trinity-Bellwood Park! I know. I’ve seen them. This is a portrait of one of them, climbing head-down a maple tree, along with the words “Legendary White Squirrel of Trinity-Bellwoods”. It’s sort of become a running joke to question the reality of 🧵

https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/81433172

#linocut #printmaking #squirrel #whiteSquirrel #Toronto #TrinityBellwoods #typography #mastoArt

@juergen_hubert very timely!

Thanks, I am interested in all this winter folklore and connections between stories.

Epiphany is also the day for La Befana! The latest in my slightly sinister winter holiday folklore collection: the Italian Christmas witch. La Befana is a witch of Italian folklore who brings sweets & gifts to good children and coal or cinders to bad children on Epiphany Eve. She flies on her broom and comes down the chimney. It’s dangerous to watch her. She’s both grandmotherly and a witch, beloved & ridiculed. 🧵

#linocut #printmaking #Epiphany #Christmas #folklore #Befana #12daysofchristmas

with her Perchten. In contemporary alpine festivals she is accompanied by an entourage, the Perchten, either beautiful and bright Schönperchten who bring luck or ugly Schiachperchten with fangs, tusks and horse tails (resembling Krampus) who are supposed to drive out ghosts and demons. She is viewed as the one who rewards generosity and punishes bad behaviour.

🧵4/4

https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/1310517230

enforce cultural taboos, such as not spinning on holidays. If young people were good (and completed duties like spinning their flax or wool) she would leave a silver coin. But if not, she would slit their bellies open and stuff them with straw or refuse! Between the beautiful and ugly forms of Perchta I include a spindle. In her beautiful form she was known as Grandmother Winter, the bringer of snow.

Some legends associate her with the Wild Hunt, and claim she rides through the night sky 🧵3/

Celtic traditions in the Early Middle Ages. She has two forms, both shown in my print: young and beautiful and as white as snow, or an old crone with a long knife and often a beak-like nose. She sometimes has one large, possibly goose foot. Jacob Grimm (of fairy tale fame) thought this indicated she was a shapeshifter or swan maiden. She is associated with birch trees and looked over the forest and wildlife. She was said to visit homes during the 12 days of Christmas and 🧵2/

Epiphany is time for my #linocut of Perchta, also known as Frau Perchta or Berchta (or Bertha in English), a figure from Alpine folklore, who visits during the 12 days of Christmas. Her name may come from “the bright one” or the German word for the feast of the Epiphany and her history is linked to white robbed goddesses like Holda who oversaw spinning and weaving or the goddess Frigg and she emerged from Germanic and 🧵

#printmaking #folklore #Perchta #winter #Berchta #12daysOfChristmas