First of all, apologies if you're finding the Tairis website slow - it's driving me up the wall, too. Hopefully it will get sorted soon.
In other news, I've completed another article for the site, which sees the Festivals section finished (as it stands now, anyway). In the long term I need to go over the articles in the section and update them a little, and possibly re-write the first one I did (covering Samhainn), to make it follow the same general format as the others. That needs the most work doing to it, I think.
The last article to be added is on Là Fhèill Mìcheil, or Michaelmas - the festival that falls close to the Autumn equinox. It's a little heavier on large chunks of quotes than I'd like, but then it seemed pointless to just paraphrase it when I could put in details straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. In my defence, F. Marian McNeill did pretty much the same! So there...
I found this one really interesting to do - Carmichael gives a lot of detail in his description of the festivities on the Islands, and although it seems a little confused at times (to me), it's a good example of just ritualised daily life was, and how that was emphasised on the important days such as this. I've tried to make sense of it all, and not rely too heavily on Carmichael; hopefully that works out.
There's still a whole hell of a lot I want to do. Now the kids will be at school or nursery for a good portion of the day (but not long enough for me to get a proper job), I'm dreaming of having the time to actually get some proper research and writing done (I could pretend that I aspire to be a better housekeeper, but frankly, unless I ban everyone else from the kitchen, it seems pointless to sacrifice myself at the altar of Good Housekeeping...I've dealt with the dustbunnies, what more do you want?!).