Shine a light

First - I have ripped my first attempt at a sock with my custom dyed yarn, it was coming out way too large and I am totally fed up with toe-up socks again. Because of the shape of my feet, I can't do the thing that most people like them for, namely try them on as a WIP - works for me better the other way around. And for the same reason, they simply don't suit my feet, I need a pointy toe to fit my pointy foot! (Yes, boggle your minds!)

OK, that is the sum total of fibre activity - well, nearly. A smidge more braid-practice, a tiny yardage of spinning. This is getting desperate.

On the other hand. We went to the flicks last night, to an excellent film that I will probably never want to see again. The Last King of Scotland. Despite being massively hyped, it was quite superb, the acting was magnificent. But it had you on the edge of your seat constantly, waiting for disaster to befall, and although the film-makers did not do any unnecessary dwelling on the horrors (neither IMHO did they shirk their responsibility thereto) it was pretty grim. Well worth seeing - the once.

Now, today's weather is quite appalling, strong winds and rain lashing down on to the windowpanes. Even the DSM has not gone out for his constitutional.

But last night when we came out of the cinema, the sky was perfectly clear and the total lunar eclipse had started. So, we drove up on to the moor, quite close to the University Observatory in fact (and we were not the only idiots so doing, I was quite glad to see.) It remained clear, and although the wind was bitingly cold we couldn't resist staying out of the car to watch until totality (and the onset of frostbite....) This does not, of course, have quite the same grandeur as a solar eclipse, but it was fascinating and beautiful. The shadow of the earth appears reddish across the face of the moon, and even when completely covered it looks like a remote ball hanging there in the sky. This was unexpected, as in the solar eclipse, it was exactly as if someone had cut out a hole in the sky to show the blackness of infinite nothing beneath. And of course, the other thing is how bright the stars then seem, after the light from the moon is gone. going up on to the moor reduces the light pollution somewhat - not much - so the stars look better anyway, but we could see things we wouldn't normally have noticed, like maybe a galaxy lurking "in" Orion, and different constellations.

We don't, him and me, know enough about astronomy, but we do, as they say, know what we like.

I couldn't find a picture of last night on the web, but this site is quite informative and has some images.

And to briefly return to fibre - in checking to see if the wonderful Brenda Dayne had another episode of her podcast up, I tripped over this entry on her blog. Scroll down aways, to "Milk Carton".....

Cor.