The Elephant's Child

A Moment of Peace.

If That's All It Takes, Pass The Squeaky Nose And Let's Be Done With It.

 

From Garfield Minus Garfield. There's a book, too.

Sun on The Solstice.

After days of gloom, drizzle, snow, and ice, today dawned with brilliant, sparkling sunshine.  Startling sunshine on the shortest day of the year: the irony is killing me!  With the clear skies came bitter cold.  This morning it was -4 F (-20 C) and very windy. The low tonight is supposed to be -13 F (-23 C).

Many small bright moments today, for which I am so very thankful. 

I was able to arrange a get-together for later this week with our Pastor's wife, a wonderful lady I hope I can get to know better.  Pastor's three youngest are all within a year or so of Sparkle's age. They play so nicely together!  It never fails to amaze me: my only-child daughter will melt into the fabric of a large-family sibling group and play for hours with no trouble, but stick her in a group of public-schooled kids and it's hit or miss.

The ice that came with the storm on Dec 19th has not had a chance to melt.  Everything was glittering and shining in the bright sun this morning.  The trees where tinkling and chattering in the wind.  Sparkle said, "God made wind chimes for us today!"  (I'm not discounting the hazards, though.  On our way home from church, our car was hit with enough ice breaking off the trees overhead to cause some worried looks between me and Mad Musician.) But it was beautiful. I was so grateful for the sunshine, I didn't even care that it was too cold to breathe outside.

Sparkle was an angel in church today, and she was an angel at Bible Class, too.  There was no Sunday School today, and there will be none until the week after Epiphany.  I don't know why.  It seems sad not to have Sunday School on Epiphany Sunday.  There was no way I was going to miss our Pastor's great Bible study (We're going through A Summary of Christian Doctrine), so Sparkle sat with us.  Most of the time she happily doodled in her Growing in Worship.  

The carmel corn I made for our Pastor's family came out perfectly on the first try.  I expected to have to make a couple of batches to get it right, but it's perfect.  Hurray!

I finished a wrap top for myself. It's Simplicity 4074. It's now the third time I've made it, I think I've finally got it right.  The fabric is a loose single jersey in heather grey, off the clearance rack.  I'm sure it's 100% polyester, but it looks nice, like a fine gauge sweater-knit.  The pattern has a 3/4 length sleeve, and a skinny one at that.  I used a trick from my ancient 1940's Singer Sewing book and redrafted the top of the sleeve so it will fit people with normal upper arms, and with a normal long sleeve.  I'll wear it with my oh-so-classy Evan Picone black crepe trumpet skirt. (Thank you, Mom, for getting that for me!)

We prayed Compline for the third night in a row. (Thank you, dear husband!) Mad Musician has had us sing "Creator of the Stars of Night," every night, which I had never sung before.  It's old; very, very old.  I'll have to write the Latin words into my hymnal like I did with Veni Creator Spiritus. 

Many small things made for a bright day.  I pray the rest of the week goes as well.  Lots of packing and organizing to do to get ready for our big northern trip that starts on the 26th.  That is, if we can still find Wisconsin underneath at that "global warming:"