Moville Christmas Tree

Tonight was the tree lighting in Market Square. Bill had read that it was at 5, so we took the 2 minute walk down there a little beforehand. Even though we knew it would not be right at 5, because you always have to add an 'ish' to any given time here, we wondered why there were so few people around. Bill wished he'd worn a heavier hat, so we walked home and he changed to a different one. We walked back. By then we figured we had the time wrong. I heard my name being called and turned to find Gerard, who was arriving to set up the library for the tea and biscuits, music, and face painting that was happening after the lights were turned on. We walked around a bit and then suddenly, he was back. He suggested we come into the library and wait there, so we did. There were a few other people gathering, so we had tea and chatted. Here he is, plating the lemon puffs, a type of biscuit (cookie).

At about 10 minutes to six, we went back out into the square. Our postman stopped to say hi and he said, 'Well, William, you could be Santa and you wouldn't need a costume,' referring to Bill's white beard. Shortly after that, Santa arrived on the front of a fire truck. The 'regular' lights in the square were all turned off. Everyone counted down from 10 in the darkened square. And then the lights were all switched on and everyone cheered. It was a nice little community event.

Happy Christmas from Moville!

Share

Christmas Crochet Beanie

A few months ago the postman delivered a surprise parcel of yarn that Bill had ordered for me. Among the skeins was one in Christmas colours, with a silver metallic thread wrap. I decided to make a simple Christmas beanie.

I thought it was kind of fun to see how how the colour patterning changed after the first several rounds, because I did nothing different--used the same hook and the same stitch pattern from the beginning chain to where I started the rapid crown decreases at the top.

This is a very lightweight hat and extremely simple to make with any yarn you have and an appropriate hook.

I chained enough stitches to go around my head loosely. I knew that the fabric would pull in slightly because of the chain spaces, so I made sure it was not tight to start with. My goal was a multiple of 3, so I ended up with 78, using this yarn which is a DK (sportweight in the US) and a 5mm hook (H). If I was using thicker yarn and a larger hook, I would have had fewer stitches, while thinner yarn and a smaller hook would have required more.

Join your beginning chain into a ring, being careful not to twist the stitches. Sc (dc in UK terms) in same chain as joining, chain 3, skip 2 chains, *sc  in next chain, chain 3, skip 2 ch* and repeat around. You will end the round with the chain 3 and two chains left. Skip those and make a sc in the first sc of the round.

Once you've done the first round, simply work around and around without joining. Sc in each sc and ch 3 in between.

Once the tube is as tall as you want it from brim to start of the crown, do a few rounds of sc in each sc and ch 2 in between. Then a couple with 1 ch in between. After that sc in ea sc with nothing in between. Finally, do a round or two of sc2tog.

Cut yarn, leaving a long tail, which you can thread through a tapestry needle and use to cinch the top closed. Weave in the ends and that's it.

I often use stitch combinations that involve a lot of chain stitches in crochet. They help create a really nice drape. Depending on how you place the other stitches, you can end up with a very lacy fabric or one that is not thick and dense, but provides good coverage even with the chain spaces. By stacking the single crochets, there is little space between chain rows. I made myself a bed jacket/sweater thing with mohair using this stitch pattern and I was well pleased with how that came out. I use it all the time.

 If I had placed the single crochets in the chain spaces, I would have ended up with a very different sort of fabric. It still would have had good drape, but would have been a more open, lacy design. I used this stitch combination in this way for the borders around each square in this shawl, and you can see how open it is, even with the thinner thread.

The new hat and the bed jacket/sweater, however, with the same two stitches--sc and ch--results in a very different fabric simply because of where the singles are placed.

This is one of the things I love about crocheting--I can grab a hook and some string, play around with where I put stitches, and get something different every time 😃

I think today I will be returning to a larger project that I set aside in order to work on time sensitive items. I still have quite a bit--possibly even half--of the Christmas skein left, so I might get an idea for that too. Since I cooked our supper overnight in the slow cooker, I have extra time to play with today, so who knows what I'll get up to!

Happy Saturday!

Share

A Splash of Colour

Even on wonderful days like today, when the sun does not shine and the sky is grey, it seems that the sun makes a brief appearance just before setting. We look out our window and some part of the sky is orange. It may be most of the sky and it may be just an orange strip between the grey sky above and Lough Foyle below--each sunset is different and each one is beautiful.

This afternoon, just after 4, I was feeling a bit peckish. I decided to make a cup of cocoa instead of eating something. I glanced out the window and saw the orange stripe in the sky and the water beneath. I made my cocoa, lit a few candles, and sat by the window watching the sky and the water change. It was so quiet and peaceful. I felt so calm and content.

I made a quick supper tonight and have prepared the slow cooker to make suppers for the weekend overnight. I put in some mixed dried beans and barley and some red lentils. I chopped a bunch of veg and put those in. Once it is 11 and we switch over to off peak electricity rates, I will turn on the slow cooker and let the soup cook overnight. In the morning I will add some herbs and we will have soup for a couple of nights. I got a nice brown scone loaf at the shop today and that will round things off nicely.

I even remembered to go into the other room and cut some celery. I often forget, but it is growing like crazy and needed a trim.

This is what the season is all about for me--enjoying peaceful moments, hot beverages, nice bowls of hot, hearty soup, the early sunsets, the quiet, and having lots of time to just be.

Hope your Friday has moments of calm contentment too

Share

Happy December!

I love December. I look forward to December all year. I am so happy that December is here. I spent this day contentedly meandering from thing to thing.

I woke up and noticed the heaviness of the blankets under which I was snuggled and I smiled because it did not matter what time it was. I had nothing to do and nowhere to be for the rest of the day. I stayed in bed a little bit longer.

I finished a book I started yesterday.

I completed a gift project and photographed it and some other things.

I watched a weird version of A Christmas Carol on you tube--1949 and narrated by Vincent Price.

I listened to Christmas music from the 20s, 30s, and 40s while I joined small scrap balls of yarn together.

I heated up some leftover (plain) pasta and cream of veggie soup and we had that with breakfast burritos for supper. I chopped bell pepper and onion sauteed in some olive oil, added eggs beaten with a splash of milk and scrambled. I put a piece of smoked cheese on a wholemeal tortilla, topped with the egg and veg mixture, and added a few red jalapenos.

Tomorrow I will go to the library and probably to the shop, but tonight the only plan is for more meandering from one thing to another.

Hope this first day of December is a relaxing and peaceful one for you too.

Share

The Glass Shore

Last year, Bill bought the book, The Long Gaze Back for me. It is a collection of short stories written by Irish women, spanning more than a century. It is an excellent book and was widely praised.

As a result of the publication of that book, the editor, Sinéad Gleeson, was approached about doing a sequel of sorts, that would be a collection of stories written by women from the north. The result is this book. It contains 25 stories written by women from the geographic north of Ireland--not limited to Northern Ireland. The Ulster region is represented across borders.

I loved this book. The stories are wide ranging in style and substance. Many are concerned with women's experiences of both leaving home and staying home, crossing borders, navigating difficult cultural norms, resistance, and finding ways to live a fulfilling life in spite of outer circumstances beyond individual control.

When I began the book, I was immediately drawn into the first story, a Gothic tale by Rosa Mulholland, an author I'd not heard of before. She was born in 1855 and was encouraged to write and publish by Charles Dickens. I searched for her on Project Gutenberg and found one of her books, so I downloaded it. As I recall, that one is a novel, but I would love to find more of her short story collections and will keep my eyes open for them.

As always, I liked some stories better than others, but there were none I really disliked. I also enjoyed the brief biographies of each author that precede their stories.

This is a book well worth reading.

You can find a review of the book here.

Share

Post-Conversion Scroogey Kind of Day

It was quite a pleasant day. We called on veg man where I was happy to discover that he still had pink lady apples. I bought a couple more bags, even though I still had several of them in the fridge. Bill likes galas, and we bought a bag of those too, but I love pink ladies and I know that they will not be around forever. Happily they keep well, so I can buy extra while they're around.

We filled our basket, went to pay, and started chatting. Veg man was happy that the frost was gone and that he'd gotten his Christmas shopping done and dusted. He was laughing as he told us about trying to get stuff inside the house and hidden without his wee ones seeing. He was enjoying the memory and I was smiling as I imagined it. It was such a lovely moment--standing outside in Market Square on a chilly, grey day, with our bag full of fruit and veg, listening to someone share a story about a joyful holiday moment in his life.

We came home and after I put away our food, I went off to my studio/study room to work on a small piece that I've been thinking about for a long time. I have been going back and forth about how to do what I wanted to do and I finally decided the best thing to do would be to just start. I did. I decided on a different route and took a break for lunch. I tried another thing and decided I was complicating things too much, so simplified. That was the answer! I ended up in a completely different place than what I'd envisioned, but the main component was the same and I am happy with where the unexpected path took me. I can't put a photo up just yet, but I will when I can.

After that, I borrowed Bill's computer to watch a DVD that a friend had sent me for either Christmas or my birthday last year--it contains two very old and previously thought lost versions of A Christmas Carol. I am mad about that story and although I am not a movie person, will watch several versions of that each festive season. I will also listen to different versions and read the story itself, which I did the other day. I used to have a book that went through the history of various media productions of the story and the ones on this DVD were mentioned, but it was thought they no longer existed. One was made in 1923 and one in 1926. Both are silent films, so that was interesting. The gestures were all so exaggerated and at times, comical. It is always interesting to me to see which features of the original story are left out and which are emphasized in the different film adaptations. These were short, so much was cut out and a lot was condensed. In one of them, Marley's Ghost announces that he is there 'to represent' the Ghosts of Past, Present, and Future. In one, Scrooge simply sleeps in his office and the ghost(s) visit him there. It was interesting to see how they created certain scenes, given the limited technology they had, and the words they used to tell the story.

In both films, in the scene where the small boy comes to sing a carol outside the office, Scrooge picks up something--in one version it was his ledger book--and goes outside and actually strikes the child in the head! It was a scene that I do not think would go over well like that today.

In the 1926 film, called 'Old Scrooge,' they first put up some educational text and photos, talking about Dickens himself and the parallels between his life and the story. Then they introduced Old Scrooge by showing his face in a circle. I laughed when I saw it because he made me think of a character in an old, bad Western who was waking up after overindulging in bad tequila the night before. He even limped as he walked. Then as the story went on there were other weird moments. After Bon Cratchit leaves for the night, Old Scrooge closes the curtains, blows out the candle and removes his bag of gold from its resting place. The text comes on the screen telling us that there was nothing Old Scrooge liked better than being alone with his gold. He cradled it like a teddy bear as he sat in his chair and fell into a dramatic slumber, before being awakened by Marley's Ghost. At that point, Old Scrooge arched his back as though shot and slid off the chair and onto the floor, where he spent much of the rest of his time with the ghost. He was able to express a lot of emotion from the floor. This was definitely one of the weirder versions I have seen, but I am so thrilled to have it and the 1923 film.

Thank you, Karen!!  😀

Hope you had a pleasant and productive Tuesday, too!

Share

The Tree in Market Square

They've put up the Christmas tree in Market Square. Tree lighting is Sunday. Earlier this year, when I was looking for information about Moville before we moved here, I came across an article about how, last year, the tree had been snapped in half by high winds and had to be replaced! Remembering that, I was particularly noticing all of the chains and cables used to anchor the tree, as well as the fun 'girdle' around the trunk! Each side has a different scene.

And just in case I needed a reminder that seasons are fleeting and I should enjoy this one while it's here, I only had to look at the planters in and around the square. The flowers have been removed, but not for very long! The bulbs are sprouting.

So I will celebrate the fact that 'the festive season,' as it is referred to here, has begun and I shall enjoy it while it lasts.

May we all have a wonderful end to what has been, in so many ways, a difficult year!

Share