This Friday evening @eileenbudd and I are having a wee celebration. There’s still time to come along if you fancy a bit of Scottish folklore craic and shenanigans :)

So so true

Love this review thank you so much Thea 🥹

Finally !

Just my cat and my book - melting together

Filing under things I wish people remember on the daily “Debates are not adversarial opportunities to make your ouponent look like an idiot. They are opportunities in which we can all become better, and grow.”

We had rain - the first in 6 weeks I’m so happy about this !

Returning to writing after authoring a book is the weirdest feeling - I am happy to be back in the idea soup but I think I’ve forgotten a bit how to slurp it up like before.

Had a great chat with Dareagh on his spirit box podcast - was an absolute pleasure to chat to as a long time listener first time caller - check it out ! (Try not to laugh too hard at the autogenerated chapter titles haha open.spotify.com/episode/5GA4...

Thanks to Brooke and Laura and the amazing team at Black Moon Botanica the book launch has sold out. If you wanted to come along and have a blether there will be other opportunities, @eileenbudd and I are planning one on the evening of the 27th June in Edinburgh - all welcome!

Happy bealtainn all x

A huge thank you to all the brilliant indie bookshops and indie shops who have chosen to stock Mill Dust and Dreaming Bread on #indiebookstoreday. @wedale-bookshop.bsky.social @brambleandbone.bsky.social @blackmoonbotanica.bsky.social

Doing a thing - wanna come along ? blackmoonbotanica.co.uk/products/boo...

I didn’t have using up the water in both my rain barrels watering my garden in April was on the cards but here we are … I’m not sure what this means for summer crops and the ecosystem.

With all this equinox chatter sharing some writing which went on to inform my book cailleachs-herbarium.com/2016/03/fool...

This is the first quote I’ve seen pulled from my new book. When I wrote this over the course of the last ten years I didn’t realise it would be published with everything going on in the world today. Seems a bit uncanny. Thanks for loving the writing @tehlorkay.bsky.social

So nice to see these books out in the wild ! Thanks to everyone who supported the Kickstarter or has preordered !

By the time I have gotten to the end of the book signings and hand written thank you notes I will have scrawled abooout 13000 -17000 words. Thank you all for the support, I have loved reading your comments and thoughts but my wrist will be requiring a break soon!

As part of the Kickstarter for Mill Dust and Dreaming Bread, I had the pleasure of commissioning a stunning piece of art from garth.laidlaw. Here it is on my writing desk in the rare March sun. Garth brought something truly special to life. An image of Scotland’s oldest known animist shrine.

Today is #worldbookday and I’m over the moon to be spending the day parceling up and posting the first edition copies of my new book Mill Dust and Dreaming Bread - Exploring Scottish Folk Belief and Folk Magic to early Kickstarter backers.

My house smells like books and hyacinths and I’m not mad about it at all.

I was reminded of this quote by Katherine Briggs in Fairies in Tradition and Literature. Some folk try to shape the fairy faith into a single dogmatic narrative but that is not the way it has ever worked. Scotland is a melting pot and that pot has been stirred by countless hands over the years.

Special edition Mill Dust and Dreaming Bread - Out May - (other editions out late summer)

Exploring the themes of circular buildings, home, displacement, death and birth in this article exploring the ritual use of house spaces, birthing straw, spring festivals, squares and circles. #scottishfolkmagic (And town planning 😜) cailleachs-herbarium.com/2025/02/the-...

Just signed up to Bluesky flashes - I’m loving these alternative spaces and SO happy there’s a image app to connect via as I’m not a very effective tweeter short form writer haha

Investing in old things this year

cailleachs-herbarium.com I write, a lot, and it’s all available on my website for free. I’ve been tinkering at the ages of it for a few days … the website that is not my writing …

Luminescent moss green sound recording day. I ponder how moss might sound … If silence sang, it would be this; the tender press of rain’s cool kiss, the sigh of roots, the hush of shade, a song of time the wind unmade. #scottishfolklore #soundrecording

The stories we carry are as vital as the bread we bake and the songs we sing. Mill Dust and Dreaming Bread is a book about memory, land, and the quiet resilience of everyday folk. A love letter to Scotland’s past, woven from lived experience and deep research. Pre-order now.

Gathered a few good folks to start a folklore and folk magic starter list for folks! Hope it’s useful to find folks to follow go.bsky.app/8WusE1u

The hush of winter lingers but Candle flames flicker like the first whispers of spring, banishing winter’s hush. Milk, white, rich, and sacred, flows in tribute to life stirring beneath the frost. Birch, the tree of beginnings, stands watch at the threshold of change. #scottishfolkmagic

Circle things Ogham things Book things

Is there ever a good time to reintroduce yourself? With all the social media activity, I thought now would be a good time to say hi and tell you a little about myself. I’m Scott Richardson-Read, a working-class writer, folklorist, social worker, counsellor, and cultural historian ... 1/

When the 1st sliver of light ‘adharc nan ùir, the horn of the new moon’ pierces the darkness, this is the true mark of the start of our festival days like Là Fhéill Bríde. Not the dark of the moon, not absence, but return. However you mark the passing of time, I wish you a bright Là Fhéill Brìde.

Before the new moons crescent emerged, the moon lay in the ‘deed dark’, an old Scots phrase for the few days when it was invisible, lost in the black of the sky. The echo of midwinter, the deid o’ the year, when the land itself holds its breath, waiting. Even now, traces of these customs linger.

In Scottish Gaelic and some Scots traditions, time once flowed by the rhythm of the moon rather than the sun. Festivals like Imbolc, or Là Fhéill Brìde, were not fixed to modern calendar dates but moved with the waxing of the gealach ùr - the new moon or the more poetic name solas ur new light/lamp

If this is your idea of a good time we should be friends :)