Lucky Pigs for the New Year!

A ladybug landing on you is also good luck! Four leaf clover obvious

Glücksschweinchen, little lucky pig

The marzipan pigs are a good luck token in Germany. "Schwein haben”

(literally, have a pig) means to have good luck. Historically, pigs were the luckiest place to move to in a medieval board game and Germanic tribes would carry images of boars into battle.
  The Niederegger candy shop was founded 200 years ago in Lübeck, the trading alliance The Hanseatic League's leading city-state. Lübeck retained some degree of independence from Germany into the 20th century, when it used one of its privileges to ban Hitler from organizing there in 1932. In revenge, he is said to have refused to ever utter the city's name and the Nazis abolished its status as a city-state and incorporated it into Schleswig-Holstein

Misty Evening

I like this kind of weather - warm weather over cold snow makes ground fog, soft rain falling. Willow tree.

 

Male Cardinal

 

CCGS Griffon, pulling up buoys

 CCGS Griffon, pulling up buoys in St. Lawrence Seaway before it closes for the season to shipping

 

Solstice sunset

December 21, 2022, Sunset. Winter Solstice in about an hour.

 

Canada Aviation and Space Museum

BOMARC Missile, caused the Diefenbaker government to fall.

Me 163B, rocket propelled fighter  - I could not find the Baron von Munchausen riding a canon ball used as an emblem by Jagdgeschwader 400, the squadron that this plane belonged to - I remember seeing one on display in Ottawa in the early 70s, either at the War Museum or the National Aviation Museum.  Valerie Wood, assistant curator at the museum, tells me that the design was painted over in 2001 to restore this plane to a more historically accurate paint job.

Nose art from another Komet that was on display in Berlin.

Messerschmitt Me 163 NoseArt Mascot

photo by baku13, 12 Aug 2005

on display at the Luftwaffenmuseum, Berlin-Gatow Germany, via wikimedia  

I asked the Canada Aviation and Space Museum about it, and they said the example of the plane that was in Canada in the early 70s is now at National Museum of the U. S. Air Force. 

If you are dropping secret agents into occupied territory, give them a folding bicycle to get them on their way!

Heinkel He 162, cheap jets made of plywood and metal - the position of the engine made ejecting from the cockpit very dangerous!

Nose of Avro Arrow - only partial reconstruction of plane at museum

l'Épervier, designed and built by engineering students in 2006 

Part of tetrahedral kite built by Alexander Graham Bell, 

 

No, those aren't Welsh witches at a tea party

Trinity Hospital, Castle Rising, Norfolk, England

These photos have been in circulation labelled as 'Witches Tea Party' or 'Welsh Witches'. They are really pensioners at Trinity Hospital, Castle Rising, Norfolk, England. This was a charity set up for the support of older women in the 17th century, and they were given a red cloak, in a similar colour to the scarlet coats of  of the Chelsea Pensioners and lived at the almshouse.

The most obvious difference between them and the traditional image of witches is that their hats have rounded tips, not pointed ones, although there are versions of these photos and those of Welsh women in traditional dress that have hats that have been photoshopped to look pointed that are floating around on the internet. Their cloaks look black but this is because the photographers of the time used orthochromatic film, which is insensitive to red like the paper used in darkrooms, so red looks dark.

The traditional Welsh woman's dress has a flat topped hat with a bonnet, and instead of a cloak, an apron over a dress and usually a shawl worn over the shoulders:

Porcelain figure of Welsh tea party, three women in traditional dress

Trinity Hospital in Castle Rising still exists, although the pensioners no longer wear the red cloaks all the time, but do put them on on Founder's Day.

Pensioners in red cloaks, The Almshouse Association

In the 17th century the hospital required that the pensioners "...must be of honest life and conversation, religious, grave and discreet, able to read, if such a one be had, a single woman, her place to be void on marriage, to be of 56 years at least, no common beggar, harlot, scold, drunkard, haunter of taverns, inns and alehouses.”  It was founded by Henry Howard, the Earl of Northampton.

Photographer Howard Sykes took a series of photos in 2007 of the pensioners at Castle Rising wearing their red cloaks on Founders Day. https://homersykes.photoshelter.com/gallery/OLD-LADIES-OF-CASTLE-RISING-NORFOLK-UK/G0000BJgKk7_Oino/C0000c3rJh59D15g