Five weeks till the solstice

This hat comes first because I made it before the other two, and it's already been through the wash, hence the fuzziness around the edges.

Because my chickens need some sun! And I need to appreciate the lessening daylight just like I adore the lengthening days....

It's also five weeks until the last Sunday in Advent, but I didn't know that until I checked the calendar, finding that the solstice coincides with Advent. Which isn't so much what this post is about, but it is fascinating.

Anyway.... What made me think about the solstice was the chickens. They get so little sun these days, and that won't improve significantly until, well, February. Lol. Poor chickies, not that they know any better, but I do and.... And there's very little I can do about it, other than let them into the garden when the garden is getting sun, then waiting. We live amid plenteous tall trees, and not until this year has the lack of winter sun been an issue, as thankfully I don't suffer from SAD. It's a drag, I'll allow, in that the treeline holds in the cold temps, unless a true gale from the south is howling. But not until this year have I actively fretted about the lack of sunlight. Again, the chickens don't know any differently, and it's not about the lack of egg production; we knew going in that summertime chicks aren't known for wintertime eggs. It's just knowing how much they enjoy sunbathing, outside dustbathing, etc, and none of that is happening for many, many moons.

Snapped at 6.52 PST this morning.

I bring up the moon because this morning, amid dark cloudy skies, the crescent super moon shone for well over forty minutes! On and off it permitted observance, and maybe I saw a flicker of a star during that grand show, which truly amazed for how cloudy was the rest of the sky. A blessing, definitely, like how I was able to make one last hat from some gorgeous variegated yard, with merely a smidgen of the skein to spare.

This is the last hat; my goodness I would LOVE to make a quilt from these colours!

Currently hats are figuring prominently, about as strongly as the dearth of sunshine in my thoughts, which in the grand scheme can be classified as a major win! If all I'm pondering are the state of my sunless chickens and some rather beautiful head adornments.... OKAY! Which also doesn't lend itself to what I truly wished to analyze within this post, but whatever!

Lots of exclamation points dangling about, LOL! (You saw that coming, no exclamation point required at the conclusion of this sentence.) Five weeks of late mornings for light, early evenings for dusk, then darkness, then a Sunday that combines the pinnacle of winter's minimal daylight with the final Sunday of Advent, Christmas then four days later. What does all that mean to me? Well, it means my chickens probably won't be laying eggs, and hopefully they'll be dustbathing in the large box within their coop, the buggers. It means once again humanity in the northern hemisphere has made it through months of lessening daytime light, not that the end of December and January are that much brighter, but finally the accumulated seconds start going into positive numbers, albeit it mere seconds here and there.

One more hat. I adore them, but will give all three away, how I roll.

It means hats are necessary because by then it will be COLD outside even if southern winds are blowing. It means I might be making more hats with versatile and surprising hues of variegated yarn which act like surprises from heaven as said yarn is pulled from the skein, a little less shocking if I can't find the end within the skein and have to unravel yarn from the outside. Still, I can't imagine how a hat will emerge until it's done, and thankfully these are quick finishes, two made this morning, a third finished after a start last night. It means that for as much as I prefer spring and summer and autumn, winter (or what I consider winter even five weeks before winter officially arrives) needs to be acknowledged for the sheer fact that we made it this far in a pretty meh year, that the chickens will be FINE (Lol, fine!), that every end of January as slight increases of light are noted I always think, "Wow, it's already the end of January, and it's light till whatever time it's light till (although the mornings still seem super-dark out) and I never really took stock of how dark it was getting at the end of last year."

That's what this post is about, Charlie Brown.

If Linus could spend a thirty minute animated special about five weeks till the solstice, that's how he'd end it. Instead, he spoke from the book of Luke, Chapter 2, then noted to Charlie Brown that was what Christmas was all about. Not chickens or hats or yarn or the moon or the solstice. Is this post about the reason for the season or all my dithering about? I don't know, but there it is. Five weeks until it's nearly time to celebrate the Savior's birth, set near the shortest daytime-portioned slot in the northern hemisphere calendar year. And truthfully, in the proverbial time it takes to BLINK it will be January, and I'll be sighing over how I didn't properly pay attention last fall as the daylight became less and less and less.

Or will I, Charlie Brown?

Maybe not this year. This year is different, chickens you know, and hats. And a sense of how grand is this life, dictatorial governments and severe traumas elsewhere notwithstanding. Because as a Christian, I claim that Jesus Christ overcame death and the grave, proffering a victory unsurpassed in human history. And while perhaps that's more aligned to what is celebrated in spring at Easter, what is the true meaning of Christmas if not the birth of a baby in Bethlehem? What better gift is there than that!

If I don't get back to this topic until, say, the end of January, consider it analyzed. Five weeks left of fall, five weeks until the solstice. Five weeks until the last Sunday of Advent; five weeks.

In the meantime, have a beautiful rest of the weekend or a wonderful start to your week!