By the Light of the Super Blood Wolf Moon

Happy New Year, gentle readers, a couple weeks late! If the way January has started continues during the rest of the year, there will be much last-minute alarums and just-in-time scrambling in 2019. I sincerely hope not, I was hoping for a tranquil, prepared year. Well, onward.



Tonight there's a total lunar eclipse visible from the continental US, breathlessly dubbed a Super Blood Wolf Moon. It's the only total lunar eclipse of this year, so I'm going to stay up late, bundle up against the cold, and try to get a photo. I'll post the (possibly only blob-like) results above. (ETA: Only a little blurry, not too bad considering it was freaking cold outside and someone may have tripped over the tripod. Anyway, a beautiful copper eclipse moon.)

My first foot of the year is Invitation to the Dance by Caoua Coffee, which was the warmup pattern for Sock Madness 11 (2017). Although I enjoy her patterns for their beauty and erudition, and this one is proving similar to others, I didn't have time to knit it pre-SM and was only a cheerleader for the duration. Maybe this year will be lucky thirteen? Hm.



I'm excited that after a year away the Food in Jars Mastery Challenge 2019 will reprise the excellent 2017 experience, complete with hashtag (#fijchallenge), a presence on Facebook and on Instagram, and seasonal adjustments for participants in the Southern Hemisphere, who currently are awash in stone fruit, a heat wave, and the Australian Open. The (Northern Hemisphere) January challenge is citrus. I have a new marmalade recipe (a friend's family secret!), and I want to try candying citrus slices. In preparation I bought some crazy-expensive organic citrus because edible peel is a feature. So far I've ::cough:: eaten some excellent grapefruit and made some citrus peel vinegar cleaner. Apparently there are "18 Places You Should Be Cleaning With Vinegar" in the kitchen alone. I have a greasy oven (worse than #3) and a stinky Instant Pot sealing ring (#10) to tackle. No-longer-young-hopefully-not-yet-old fogey and neo-Luddite that I am, I don't quite get Instagram, so that's an additional January challenge for me.

Although my phone may be an impediment, and perhaps that's one more thing to remedy in 2019. Hm.

Amazing to relate, last year's last foot, Holly Jolly Cranberry Biscotti, won one of the prizes in the Sock Knitters Anonymous random prize draws for Nov/Dec 2018, a pattern from This Handmade Life. I'm thrilled. I've participated irregularly in SKA for 12 years, and this is the first time I've won a prize. Maybe it's an auspicious beginning to another lucky thirteen (even though the SKA calendar runs September-August)? Anyway, whee.