Dear bookworms, we have added themes for #BookWormSat until April! If you would like to know what's to come, you can have a look over here: signemaene.com/bookwormsatu... Happy reading and see you Saturday! 📚🐛

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” (Shelley) 🎨 Wiktor Kriżanowski #wintersky

He's a snow kitty now.

Woodland in the Snow, Henri van Seben (1825-1913).

'There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.' -Louis MacNeice 🎨Stasys Eidrigevičius

… and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him.” (Kipling) 🎨 Pascal Campion #wintersky

‘Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too, And which on warm and cold days I withdrew From my heart’s ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue, And wait thy weeding.’ ~ Barrett Browning. 🖼️ John Northcote Nash

Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep – Lord Byron, 'Don Juan', Canto XIV, 1823 #poetry #booksky #gothic #art #painting by J. H. Füssli

'Silent, and soft, and slow Descends the snow.' -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 🎨Akira Kusaka

A poem from my collection, In the Shadow of Gods. It’s called January. 🖼️ Winter Tale, Ferdynand Ruszczyc, 1904.

Italy has a Christmas Witch. La Befana. She gives gifts to the little ones on the Eve of Epiphany. But what does she do after a job well done, today, on Epiphany? La Befana starts walking again and… - read more in our last #yulefolklore tale below! 🎨 Botticelli (detail)

'Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last.' -Robert Frost 🎨Louis Apol

A winter landscape, Leo Piron (1899-1962).

The Lady of the Snows, George Henry Boughton (1833-1905).

Hares, William De Morgan.

Silent processions walk tonight on the Eve of Epiphany, so they say, made of the living and the dead. Join those at your own peril, but we may at least watch them in a forest somewhere in Germany, in our 36th #yulefolklore story below! 🎨 Robert Paterson

Owl, William Holbrook Beard, 1889. #OwlishMonday

"For beings more extraordinary than owls inhabited the old castle." (E. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen "River Legends". Ill- Gustave Doré, London, 1875) #OwlishMonday

A poem from my collection, In the Shadow of Gods, Hoar Frost. 🖼️ Hoar-frost And Stars, Gustaf Fjaestad.

More wonder! ❄️

Winter wonderland! ❄️

“…To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes how they run: How many make the hour full complete, How many hours brings about the day, How many days will finish up the year, How many years a mortal man may live.” (King Henry VI, 3) 🎨 Ayami Kojima #Shakespearesunday

Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear Has grown familiar with your song; I hear it in the opening year, I listen, and it cheers me long. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 'Woods in Winter' 1839 #art by Louis Apol #poetry #booksky

'Moon at Musashino' - Tonouchi Misho, ca. 1937. From the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art collection. #FullMoon #JapaneseArt

Bone horses still walk the village streets. ‘tis the season! But they are mummers, right? Well, let’s go to Kent and find that out, in our 35th #yulefolklore story below. 🎨 Mark C. Greene

🖼️ The Frozen Meadow, Winter 1929, Alexander Jamieson.

Beautiful Bonheiden.

The first skirt I sewed without any help and I'm so pleased with it! :-)

“But grass came there and grew again long and green upon that hill, alone in all the desert that Morgoth made; and no creature of Morgoth trod thereafter upon the earth beneath which the swords of the Eldar and the Edain crumbled into rust.” (J.R.R. Tolkien “The Silmarillion”) #bookwormsat

"How do you know but every bird That cuts the airy way Is an immense world of delight Closed by your senses five?" - William Blake, 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' (Picture is the title page from the 1790 edition) #BookWormSat #WilliamBlake

“Thus he came alone to Angband’s gates, and he sounded his horn, and smote once more upon the brazen doors, and challenged Morgoth to come forth to single combat. And Morgoth came.”   (Tolkien “The Silmarillion – of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin”)   🎨 P. Amachree   #bookwormsat

'I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon's sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green.' -Shakespeare 🎨Arthur Rackham #BookWormSat

"The otter will frisk on the river bank like a puppy," from "Our Wild Animal Neighbors" in the January 1918 issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine.

Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke #BookWormSat 🖼️ Richard Dadd

'Beneath the Moon and under star he wandered far from northern strands, bewildered on enchanted ways Beyond the days of mortal lands.' -J. R. R. Tolkien @signemaene.com welcomes you to #BookWormSat! 🎨Theodor Kittelsen

Mummers go from door to door in a lot of places during the season, but some might be more than dressed-up youths...   We meet a group of rather peculiar koledari in our 34th #yulefolklore tale in Eastern Europe.   Read how not to treat them below!   🎨 Józef Wilkoń

‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.’ ~ Tolkien. #BookWormSat

‘It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.’ ~ Tolkien, LOTR. This #BookWormSat is Tolkien’s birthday so we will travel to other worlds and fantasy universes. Come with us.

Winter Queen's Flowers, Zofia Plewińska-Smidowiczowa (1888-1944).

Last Flowers, Jules Breton (1827–1906).

Up North, the Wild Hunt rides and it is often saga heroine Gudrun or Guro Rysserova, as she is called here, who leads them. We meet her in our 32nd #yulefolklore tale in the last night of the old year and meeting her means doom, of course, but read the story below nevertheless 🎨 weremoon

'Saishoin Temple in Snow, Hirosaki' - Kawase Hasui, 1936. #JapaneseArt #shinhanga

Morte… morte… Bruges-la-Morte… — the cadences of the last bells, weary and slow, little, worn-out old bells which seemed to be shedding petals — was it on the town? Was it on a grave? -Georges Rodenbach 🎨Fernand Khnopff #WyrdWednesday

Vintereventyr (Winter Adventure), T. Kittelsen, 1903.

"She may swear that on her knees to the holy cross upon her necklace till she’s hoarse, but it won’t be true!” said Arabella. “She’s never found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till she’s as he is now!” (Thomas Hardy "Jude the Obscure") 🎨 Agnes Miller Parker #wyrdwednesday

The Little Milkmaid by Charles Edouard Frère (1837 - 1894).

Matchmaking at a crossroads in the days between the years? There is a custom from Wales, meeting your future spouse at midnight, but... Cau dy geg, Gwen Know-it-all, shut your gob, or else! Find out about the “else” in our 31st #yulefolklore tale below. 🎨 de Saedeleer

Goodnight. Ruine dans un paysage au clair de lune, Arnold Böcklin.

'And on the frosty hills the sombre pines Harbor an eerie wind that crooneth low Over the glimmering wastes of virgin snow.' - L.M. Montgomery 🎨Walter Moras

Abendlicher Klosterhof (Monastery courtyard in the evening) Carl Hilgers (1818–1890) #art #painting #gothic