When we first started this blog I made a series of posts beginning with each letter of the alphabet starting with A. Unfortunately, they ground to a halt after L. So in honour of The Alphabet Club hosted by Chiara I have decided to resurrect the original posts and link up each month with the rest of the Alphabet Club posters. To learn more about this SAL follow the Alphabet Club link to Chiara's blog.
C is for Coven from A Dark Alphabet designed by Julie and Becky's Note of Friendship blog.
A coven is a group of witches of any number from three to thirteen. Once the coven grows larger than thirteen it will split into two smaller covens to keep the number manageable. One of the most famous covens is the trio of witches that Macbeth encounters on the heath who give him the prophesies that ultimately lead to his downfall.
And what does a coven of witches need to cast their spell? A cauldron, of course! A cauldron is simply a cast iron pot found in many homes in the past, used for cooking or maybe boiling up herbs and potions. Like the broom and the cat a cauldron could be used as "evidence" by the Witch Finders that an innocent old woman was in fact a Witch!
I found lots of lovely cauldron patterns online:
And onto cats, our third C. Black cats obviously as it is Hallowe'en! In England black cats are seen as lucky animals as they are in Japan too. However other areas are not so enlightened and view them as very bad luck. To the extent that they are often left in cat shelters long after their multi-coloured friends have been adopted. I have owned a black cat myself, named Spook who was very timid and shy. We also adopted a stray for a while until she wandered away. Here she is in a pot!
Many superstitious people believe that black cats can turn into other animals or even that the witch can take the place of her cat to spy on her neighbours. Often, just owning a black cat would be grounds for accusing a woman of witchcraft. So it is not surprising to find many designs featuring black cats (with or without accompanying witches!)
Fence Cat by Jaunty Fox Designs
JBW Hallowe'en Cat from JCS Hallowe'en Special 2012
And another:
So now it's over to you. When you comment on this post please could you include a link to your favourite Black Cat cross stitch design.
7 comments:
I love black cats! But unfortunately I can´t keep one in my house because some times in winter I have bronchial asthma. My favourite Black Cat cross stitch design is Lookin' Like Fall by Plum Pudding Needle Art http://plumpuddingneedleart.com/CompChart1/LookinLikeFallPlumPudding.pdf (because it has a black cat with a black bird and I love black bird too)
:-)
What an interesting (and educational) activity!
Here's one of my favorite designs with black cats. My sister is 16 years younger than me and I can still remember the year our mom made her a pumpkin costume for Halloween. For some reason, it became a tradition. All 4 of my kids used the pumpkin suit too. In honor of that, my favorite black cat design is BOAF's Halloween Cat.
Great post! I don't have a favorite black cat design unfortunately but maybe it's because I love Halloween so any Halloween design is a fave :)
Great post! I love black cats :o) They are just stunning.... and it is such a shame that people have a prejudice against them because of their colour...
Trying to pick a favourite black cat design is very tricky as each one I see I love... (generally!) but I don't think you can go past Lynn's mini black cat series (Mini cat cross stitch freebies) - while they aren't exactly Halloween they are still cute :o)
Hugs xx
This is definitely a great post, Jo, and I love all the Halloween-related pictures you found for the letter C.
I have no idea why black cats are supposed to bring bad luck, and here they have a saying that black cats crossing your way from the left (or was it from the right??)bring you bad luck, too. So I must be chased by bad luck because our neighbour's black cat has adopted our terrace as part of her way down to the meadows behind our house and garden and I see her crossing the terrace several times per day. But there is no bad luck in dight, LOL:
Wonderful, wonderful post, Jo, I really enjoyed it. Not sure what is my favourite black cat design - I do like Fence cat.
Love this post. My current favorite black cat design is OMG Tigger is Outside at
https://www.etsy.com/listing/186815929/omg-tigger-is-out-cat-cross-stitch
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