This is an archive copy of a tinyletter from 2022, for the complete newsletter with images and links, please view the original archive.
Hello friends,
Happy Lunar New Year! For those who celebrate it, today is the first day of the Lunar calendar and it’s a festival full of stuffing our faces with different types of traditional cakes and sweets, pestering grandparents and married relatives for red pockets filled with money, and mostly is just an excuse for the family to come together.
Anyway, I hope you’ve had a peaceful and wonderful January.
This past month, we had a new moon in Capricorn, among many other planetary movements, and it should encourage the pursuit of new projects, given the workaholic natures of the astrological sign. And while energetically the month was a little chaotic, I still tried to take advantage of this new moon by giving myself a deadline to complete illustrating a full deck of Lenormand cards (36-card cartomancy system). It was my way to kickstart my creativity for the new year.
But while I was making the illustrations for the deck, crouched over my tablet (so much back pain), I kept thinking about my relationship with digital painting, my issues with finding a ‘style,’ and ended up putting all of those thoughts into a little rant.
I’m hoping I’ll be done with the whole series by the end of this month so I can start working on turning it into an actual deck. I really want to have a Pisces deck that’s more dreamy since my last one was a Scorpio.
I'm currently done with 28 cards out of 36, so fingers crossed I get them done by February! (I'm the type that can't start with a second project unless I'm done with the first -- one of the two projects will always ends up being unfinished or less than satisfactory if I try to juggle both). My trick is to juggle projects of different mediums; so there's always one writing, one work-related project, and one painting project. They'll be different enough to not make me run off too far with either one of them.
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In other news, I’ve also been working on a laisee / red pocket design for Asia Art Archive to bring in the tiger new year. I love the people in my office, and I love working with them, no matter the project, but this one was a particularly fun one — this is also my first red pocket design ever. Look, how pretty!
An alternative version of the design (originally for a gold foiled version of the red pocket) was also shared with patrons of Asia Art Archive.
I've also recycled one of the earlier scrapped concepts for the laisee as a little fortune-telling daruma (which showed up in the last newsletter and blog post); screenshot the gif on my Instagram post to find out what blessings you have in store for you this lunar new year!
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In January I gave myself a little website refresh, so I reorganized some of the pages on my website so things are less cluttered around. And one of those refreshed pages is a dedicated Tarot space. The page really just lists everything tarot-related that I’m working on or have done, just so it’s a little easier to find it.
Also since January 1st, I’ve also launched a separate Instagram to dedicate all of my tarot reading things to it. I wanted to challenge myself with a daily reading for 365 days but it proved to be too exhausting after 22 days. So I'm dialling back to doing spontaneous readings on that account now. Feel free to follow it if you want to :)
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I also promised a story for this newsletter and here is a very short spark of a story based on the Fates, or the Moirai of Greek mythology. As you can see, I really ran off with the idea that greek mythology doesn't actually have a canon. It's a first draft that needs a lot of expansion but by writing for this newsletter while there isn't a lot of you here, for now, gives me a good deadline to work to (I also have a painting I want to do for this story but that's another project for another time). Please be kind to me if you have any comments though!
DISTANCE — A STORY ABOUT THE FATES.
PART I
“And that was how your brother managed to escape the wrath of Zeus,” concluded Nyx. The Goddess of the Night leaned back into the darkness that filled her home in Tartarus. The room was far too small for her to fully stretch out her shape-conforming mass, but her three daughters preferred the indoors as they would often bring their work with them when they visited. Nyx would do anything to keep them happy — even if it meant sacrificing her own comforts. These visits were so rare.
“So Hypnos ran crying to mummy,” Atropos cackled. Of the three, Atropos is the only one who enjoyed Nyx’s stories, especially if they’re embarrassing ones of their half-siblings. Picking up a bundle of shimmering golden thread, Atropos snipped right in the middle of it with her silver shears, only pausing to gnaw at the last hair with the blunt edge of the blade. As it screeched against the thread, Atropos cocked her head to the side and listened for screams in the distance. Then she smiled at her sisters, baring all three rows of her shark-like teeth. Atropos dropped the rest of the bundle to the ground, letting it flicker and dim until the golden sheen of the thread turned into a dull dirt-brown.
“Stop trying to make more work for me, Atropos, I have to recycle that!” Clotho grumbled, her head kept down as she ran her fingers through the soft fur of the golden Angora rabbit on her lap from behind the wooden spinning wheel, in an attempt to calm down. It didn’t matter to Clotho that Atropos liked to cut the mortals’ lives shorter than expected, but she should at least keep the discarded thread in a basket or something so it doesn’t touch the floor.
“I’m sure it won’t be too much trouble, my little workaholic,” said Nyx, trying to soothe Clotho who was starting to wheeze. “You’ve always enjoyed the work."
Lachesis, who sat at the foot of the wheel, nervously tugged on Clotho’s dress. “I can help you?” She offered earnestly. “I can tear the brown threads apart. it’s soft enough, just like yarn. It won’t be as powerful as yours, but I can xspin it with a regular wheel so it’ll be regular yarn and maybe I can knit it into something? I’ll even do it while you meet with the Olympians — ”
“Just—” Clotho exhaled, “just focus on your own work,” before swatting Lachesis’ hand away from her dress.
Being the youngest of the three, Lachesis was used to being rejected. She picked up the brown bundle and threw it on the pile in the crook of Nyx’s arm before pushing it further into the darkness. Lachesis hoped that if Clotho couldn’t see it, she would soon forget it. The pile had about two hundred skeins, which would be enough to make ten blankets. It’s not a lot, but it’s better than nothing, she told herself, before settling down by the spinning wheel to measure the newly spun golden thread with her agate ruler, which grew and shortened to her will.
“Besides,” Clotho said, stroking the rabbit on her lap to sleep as she gently pulled its shimmering, shedding fur to be twisted through the aged, wooden spinning wheel — all in time to the slow steady steps of her foot on the pedal. “It’s not like you’ll be able to say that to our brother’s face — he could put you to sleep, serve you as breakfast to Cerebrus, and you wouldn’t even know.”
“I will break your precious spinning wheel, even if it was a gift from Zeus,” said Atropos, who always meant what she said. “Mother will protect me. Won’t you, Mother? You said Zeus was afraid of you.”
Nyx let the darkness flow over Atropos, in an attempt to hold her beloved daughter. “It is ‘Nyx,’ not ‘Mother,’ my dear.”
Unfazed, Clotho continued to work. “His Majesty might be afraid of Nyx, but she doesn’t have any power when it comes to us,” she replied. Lachesis looked up from her measuring. “What do you mean, sister? I thought Zeus cheated and took us away so he can keep Moth — I mean, Nyx in check.”
There were two versions of the story. Each made their way around Olympus and the Underworld respectively. The first is that Zeus had adopted the sisters in name, and gave them a purpose when Nyx couldn’t. The story was spun so that Nyx became the irresponsible parent. One too drunk on the chaos her other children brought upon the world, that she couldn’t take care of the only three who could be more.
The second was that Zeus was afraid that Nyx would one day want to claim his throne, something that the primordial Goddess of the Night could easily achieve. To prevent that and to keep Nyx from overpowering him, Zeus stole her favourite daughters, holding them hostage on Olympus.
Both stories had the same ending: the God of Thunder, Lightning, and the Sky gave the eldest sister a spinning wheel, made from the trees that bore golden apples in the Garden of Hesperides, as a sign of peace between him and her mother.
Clotho never told Atropos and Lachesis the truth of what happened that night, who had been born only minutes before they were sent to the cloud courts of Olympus.
Weeks before, Nyx had felt her powers weakening. It began as a yawn during the evening times, then gradually turned into a nap or two. Slowly she could feel time passing, her mass of a body disintegrating into a mere force of nature, like her siblings that came before her. Long before the first Titans were even born, she had watched her older brother Tartarus fall. She had seen how the once all-consuming power crumble into nothing more than a prison for the damned, croaking for souls to feed on. Being the only primordial goddess left, Nyx’s pride was far too great to be reduced to such a being.
So to prove that she was still the true reigning deity when the sun goes down, she gave her daughters to Olympus with a caveat; the Moirai were incarnations of destiny for both mortals and the divine.
Clotho wasn’t about to tell them the truth now. “Yes, Lachesis, Zeus was a cheat,” she said. “Sister, where is the pile of excess thread?”
“Oh, uh it’s with Mo— I mean, Nyx. I was thinking of re-spinning them later.”
“Lachesis, don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” said Clotho. She had seen Lachesis hide these brown bundles before, weaving them into blankets and robes during the day before passing them to their younger brother Thanatos to bring to the newly dead. “Even if these souls have passed before their time, thanks to Atropos, pity is useless. Especially for the dead.”
Lachesis’ face turned red. “I’m just trying to be kind,” she mumbled.
Atropos continued to snip away at the bundles. “You’re still young, sister, you imitate too much of the mortals. This kindness, or whatever you call it will dissipate when you find peace as a soggy old prune like Clotho.”
“Enough,” Clotho reprimanded. Then she whispered, “Sister, do not forget what happened the last time you wanted to be ‘kind.’”
How could Lachesis forget the day she fell in love with a mortal?
(To be continued.)
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Things I've loved this month!
In terms of listening, I’m still not off my high of Lin Manuel Miranda’s stuff and have a playlist that consists of the soundtracks from Encanto, Tick Tick Boom, and In The Heights. Given that Encanto’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is number 1 on Billboard charts, it is worth a listen if you haven’t already (My personal favourites are Dos Oruguitas and Surface Pressure).
If you’re watching Encanto on Disney+ (I swear I’m not sponsored by Disney — I wish I was), there’s also a short called Far from the Tree that explores the same times of generational trauma as Encanto does. But I also just love the big snuggly (illustrated) raccoon butts.
On Youtube, I’m also just constantly watching cooking videos; especially ones where no one talks — they’re perfect for just writing or painting to. My current favourites are Imamu Room, Choki, and Her 86m2. These videos have been keeping me company while I deal with a rather tough January.
Thank you to those who replied and shared your favourites from the past year, and those who gave my recommendations a chance. If you have any favourite things you’d like to share, please do (you can always reply to these emails directly).
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This is a bit of a long one, so thank you for sticking through it, and for being here. I hope you have a wonderful Lunar New Year, full of warmth and love, and that you stay happy, safe, and healthy.
身體健康，事事如意!
Lots of love,
Charlotte