Glanalaw - delighting in pure song

I had the pleasure of test-knitting a sweater pattern for  Becky , a very talented knitter and designer whose blog I've followed for the last couple years.  A couple months ago she said she was looking for test knitters for a new design and I thought, hey, I've been wanting to knit another full-sized sweater!  So I volunteered. This is the fastest, easiest sweater pattern I've ever made!  It took less than 5 days knitting to make up - I never thought I'd make an adult sweater in under a week.  The pattern knit up with no difficulty; it was very easy to follow. I used KnitPicks' natural, undyed Wool of the Andes worsted weight yarn, dyed to two different shades of blue using Rit dyes, with the contrast left undyed.  It was my first foray into dyes other than Kool-Aid, and went pretty well!  The yarn is slightly thinner than the heavy worsted suggested in the pattern; I went up a size to #10 needles, which produced a slightly looser, more drapey fabri...

Advent wreath with the Christ candle lighted! Happy Christmas, everyone!  May you all have a blessed day with family and friends, full of peace and joy!  I'll post about our Christmas later, but for today, here is the text of one of my favourite hymns of the season. Thou Who Wast Rich Beyond All Splendour Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour, All for love's sake becamest poor; Thrones for a manger didst surrender, Sapphire paved courts for stable floor. Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour, All for love's sake becamest poor. Thou who art God beyond all praising, All for love's sake becamest man; Stooping so low, but sinners raising Heav'nward by thine eternal plan. Thou who art God beyond all praising, All for love's sake becamest man. Thou who art love beyond all telling, Saviour and King, we worship thee. Emmanuel, within us dwelling, Make us what thou wouldst have us be. Thou who art love beyond all telling, Saviour and King, we worship thee. (F...

Sometimes I'm convinced I live in the most beautiful spot on earth.

Most winters my family travels at Christmas, so we rarely have the chance to decorate a "real" tree.  Our artificial one is nice but certainly nothing like a living, scented pine tree!  This year though we're only going out of town for a few days, after Christmas itself, so we were able to have a live tree. I haven't hunted Christmas trees since I was, oh, about twelve?  This was so much fun.  Snow covered the tree farm, probably six inches deep on the ground, and more drifted down as we hunted.  This being our family, of course, we had to look at every kind of pine and fir they had - very nearly at every tree.  All five of us had a mental image of the "perfect" tree, and while we agree on some things - it must be as tall as possible, straight, and fairly symmetrical - there were differences of opinion on colour, needle length, fat vs. skinny, and endless other things.  We wandered for at least an hour, while my poor dad got more and more frozen (poor...

I know it's not technically winter yet - not by the calender anyway - but the weather certainly has been wintery in the last week or so!  Even in Tennessee at school we've had wind chills in the single digits, and on Sunday even snow flurries.  This was perfect - my church had our Christmas cantata this week and it was so delightful to be singing the Christmas message as snow swirled outside the windows. But it was COLD, so my roommate and I went home and made a fire.  It wasn't terribly successful and it didn't last long, but it was beautiful while it lasted. I am endlessly fascinated by fire.  The colours in it - not only orange and yellow, but the blues and reds, even purple, which appear in the hottest parts of the fire.  The way the flames jump and flicker.  The incredible heat which just a few logs put out. Finals ended this past Wednesday for me, but I didn't get a break; I had a ball gown to make!  A friend of mine from college is dating a boy...