Lighting Candles to Pray for Light

About

Well, this is me. I’m Kyriaki (Κυριακή), legally Kyrie (yeah, my parents named me after the Lord have mercy prayer), I go by Kyri most of the time. Im 24, I live in Australia, and I’m part of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia, but I’m not Greek and like to visit other parishes periodically. I do a crazy amount of embroidery. Some of it’s spiritual, most of it’s not. I really started this blog to talk about religion (the obligatory catechumen’s blog) but all the stitching ended up here too, so it’s an interesting mix. I was baptised Holy Saturday in 2008, and have been falling down and getting up again ever since.

I’ve got Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and that is annoying, but my cross to bear I suppose. I move between being okay with it and getting on with life, and ranting about it. I’m trying to find the happy medium. It settles down for a while and becomes mostly livable, then flares up and drives me crazy. It almost always gets much worse at the end of April, I think coinciding with the cold and flu season, which is really seriously not fun.

I’m also studying History at university, in between getting sick (and despite it!) and doing pretty well at it. I love History and always have, and want to pursue a career in it if I can.

I love at home with my folks, who are not Orthodox but cope pretty well with it all. My house is steadily getting filled up with icons and my family is learning to enjoy vegan food. There are icons in the kitchen, in my bedroom, and a whole section of the living room wall is covered in them, often with candles lit on the table in front of them. My family are used to this now, and at least it’s pretty so they don’t mind!

My stitching varies from primitives through to petit point and everything in between. I love Chatelaines, and I can’t seem to get the idea of small projects so most of mine are huge. I love them though, even though they take forever to stitch, and I figure I save on having to frame things all the time…it’s just expensive when I finish things!

I also love to garden and am interested in Simple Living – or, more properly, continuing the inheritance of my family, who were pioneers in country Australia and learned to grow and make things using cheap or recycled materials – and prospered. And taught me a love for home grown food!

Hopefully that gives you an idea of who I am 🙂 Welcome, hope you enjoy my ramblings and pictures.