MAKING A CLEAN SWEEP: February 2012

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Spring Cleaning - Making a clean sweep!

It's almost time to sweep out the old and bring in the new!
I live in a drafty old historical house in an old neighborhood in Eugene, OR and every winter we let the curtains down to keep the heat in and even put up some extra ones in open doorways to keep heat wrangled into our living areas. You can imagine it gets kind of dark and cozy in there and when spring comes around we are more than ready to open everything up and let the sun shine in and when we do the light shows us just how much dust we've been collecting. Yikes!

The nice thing about my place is that I have nice wood floors throughout the entire house which makes it easy to clean and, being a broom maker, I have all the right brooms to do the job!

Below is a list of our brooms and their functions:

THE KITCHEN BROOM - This broom great for all hard floors and for sweeping the porch and the sidwalk.

THE BESOM - Used for sweeping corners and getting cobwebs off the ceiling.

THE HEARTH BROOM - For cleaning the fireplace.

THE KID BROOM - Put the kids to work! This broom is fun for the kid's but it's also useful for small spaces like the bathroom or the pantry.

THE TURKEY WING BROOM - This hand broom is perfect for getting into corners and sweeping under counters. It also looks very lovely hanging on the wall.

THE WHISK BROOM - This hand broom is great for sweeping up small messes and fits perfectly into any dust pan for sweeping up dirt piles.

THE COBWEB BROOM - A broom for the cobwebs! This lightweight broom on long stick is perfect for grabbing cobwebs from the ceiling.

Each of these brooms is available on my ETSY site: www.broomchick.etsy.com
You can also find them on EBAY: http://myworld.ebay.com/broomchick/?_trksid=p4340.l2559
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/BROOMCHICK/123580760996450
Twitter: Broomchick: https://twitter.com/#!/Broomchick

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Wedding Brooms and Handfasting Besoms

In recent years the wedding tradition of "broom jumping" has become more and more popular, but it has actually been around for centuries and over the 15+ years I have been making and selling brooms I have come across many different explanations for the act of "jumping the broom", mostly from the Pagan based religious folks and the African American community. According to Wikipedia:

“ Jumping the broom is a phrase and custom relating to wedding ceremonies in different cultural traditions, found in "many diverse cultures, those of Africa − Europe including Scotland, Hungary and Gypsy culture", all of which "include brooms at wedding rituals." [1] It is particularly associated with the Romani gypsy people of the United Kingdom[2], especially those in Wales.[3] There is "evidence showing the wedding custom was practiced by gypsies(sic) in England, Scotland"[4] as well as by African Americans and other groups. ”

The ritual of "broom jumping" is exactly as it sounds. Toward the end of the wedding ritual couples hold hands and jump over the broom, either together or one at a time and although the symbolism may be different, all couples arrive at the other side of the broom being married.

We have several brooms that work great for these ceremonies, it’s totally up to you to choose what broom fits best. For the Neopagan we offer the traditional ceremonial besom aka the witch’s broom, is about 56 inches long and is sewn in the round “old world” style, it comes in a variety of colors: Natural, Rust, Black or a Mixture of all 3 colors.

We also offer a smaller version of the witches besom, which we call the cobweb broom or small ceremonial besom at 56 inches it is about 1/3 the thickness of the ceremonial besom. It is only available in natural.

If you are not into the “old world” style besom we have the kitchen broom aka the wedding broom, which is a flat broom style, 56 inches long, it comes in a variety of colors: Natural, Rust, Black or a Mixture of all 3 colors. We also offer this broom with tree spirit carving ( carved kitchen broom ).

Carved Kitchen Broom

A smaller version of the kitchen broom is the kid’s broom, 48 inches long, it comes in a variety of colors: Natural, Rust, Black or a Mixture of all 3 colors.

Finally, we have the hearth broom, which is 36 inches long and it comes in a variety of colors: Natural, Rust, Black or a Mixture of all 3 colors. We also offer this broom with tree spirit carving ( carved hearth broom ) and we offer it in the “old world” besom style in both regular and carved ( hearth broom round and carved hearth broom round )