Solstice

It's winter solstice, the shortest day, the longest night of the year.

The world draws in its breath and holds it for a few days, before moving on toward the future.

Now is the solstice of the year. Winter is the glad song that you hear.*

Although I'm not of the pagan persuasion, I do love the workings of the natural world and the changing seasons. To commemorate the day, I found a webcam so that you could visit Stonehenge on the Solstice yourself. Turn on your sound and enjoy the birdsong.

Knitting proceeds apace. The second sleeve for the Sienna Cardi is still in progress and about half finished. The Tasha shawl continues to crawl along, and I put in a row or two every so often on the Ombre sock.

On top of all of this, I busted out and started a Pi Shawl, just out of curiosity because there isn't a really detailed pattern but rather a mere suggestion of a pattern and a description of how to do other things with it. You can buy a kit to make one (with detailed instructions, I'm sure) from Schoolhouse Press but I'm more interested in figuring out how to do it than having the shawl itself. Does that make me a process knitter?

The Pi Shawl is a circular shawl based on the geometric formula for "pi". It's composed of ever-widening concentric sections, each one twice as many rows wide as the one before it. You can make it plain (use only stockinette between the yarn-over rows) or you can work in lace patterns that fit in 9-stitch repeats. On mine, the 24-row section will be Vandyke Lace, and the 48-row section will be dotted with cat's paws, a traditional Shetland lace pattern I tweaked to fit in the nine-stitch pattern. I don't know what I'll use after that, but there's plenty of time to figure it out. For yarn, I'm using the sport weight heathered purple Misti Alpaca that I bought eighteen months ago to try my hand at a lace shawl, and it's soft and just beautiful (but just a little bit splitty). The needles of choice are Susan Bates Quicksilver, no.7, in both dpns and circulars. This new project will not (will not, do you hear?) stop me from finishing the Sienna Cardi before I head back to work on January 2.

I can't wait to see this movie. The critics are giving it a so-so review, but I love the premise so much I'll be sure to have a good time no matter what.

*From the song, "Ring Out Solstice Bells" by Jethro Tull