Latitude 61...Land of the Midnight Sun: The Lunar and Solar Event of My Lifetime...

Actually, it was the event of 5 centuries since the last time a total lunar eclipse coincided with the winter solsice was 1538. The eclipse began here at 9:30 Alaska time and I watched the entire thing by 15 minute increments. It was too cold to stand outdoors to watch it... 0 degrees F. I waited and waited to see the "red" phase, but somehow I missed that. I was probably looking in the wrong place... sounds silly I know, but the moon completely disappeared from view for quite a while, and there are many tall spruce trees around our house. That made it really hard to predict its path ... it must have been behind some trees. I did see it begin to reappear, at least. Here is a link to our local news video shot...

I had one "close call" while walking in and out our door with all the yard lights turned off. Our house had an unexpected visitor. If I had opened the door at precisely the right moment, I would have had a big surprise as would the small moose that was standing almost on our welcome mat! Only one hoof print shows in this photo, near the left corner of the welcome mat, but you can get the idea.

Tonight in our time zone is the actual winter solstice and I'm sure looking forward to gaining daylight again! Since the sun is at such a low angle, and my house is located at the bottom of a hill, that means no sunlight is "touching" our house anymore... only the tops of our trees. We have been reduced to 5 hours and 28 minutes with the sun rising at 10:15 and setting at 3:43. This is sure not my favorite time of year, even with Christmas coming.

The short days and the very long nights does mean that I am getting lot of knitting done. I thought I would have Fulmar finished by now, but the stitches in the collar are so small and tight, that I had to take a break to let my sore fingers heal. I picked up my hibernating Keava and have been having so much fun with that, that I ended up ignoring my Fulmar and my Cauchy socks. Not much to show for a weeks worth of knitting, (from the bottom of the pink stripe up), but it's been so much fun working on stranded knitting again, since it's my favorite type of knitting.