HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving Day--U.S. style.  Actually, the celebration took place on Wednesday evening in a United Method Church, two doors down the street from the Lutheran Church we are attending. There's a synagogue between the two churches, and they were also invited to the service.  A long standing tradition unites these three houses of worship in a Thanksgiving service the evening before Thanksgiving Day.

It was a very good service, and there was good attendance.  The combined choirs sang "Sure in the Shining Night" music by Morten Lauridsen, words by James Agee.  We in the choir thought it was a strange choice for a Thanksgiving service, but the reason became clear when the pastor of the Methodist Church quoted the poem in her sermon.  Accompanying the choral singing were many very beautiful pictures of the cosmos.  I think they probably were from the Hubble Telescope.  The words and the music are beautiful, but, sad to say, we had only one rehearsal to learn the piece, and though we did a good job of it, that music deserves better than we were able to give it.  Check it out sometime on the net.  There are many versions of it sung by Lutheran Choirs.

The service was followed by a pie social, which was also very good.  My one disappointment, aside from not doing a "bang-up" job on the music, was that there wasn't more of a Jewish flavour to the service.  The president of the synagogue took part in leading the service, but they are of the "flavour" of Judaism that doesn't wear skull caps.  And I had thought we might hear a shofar as part of the service.

Last week I thought I'd show you a few of the activities from here in the village, so I snapped some photos in the three-times-a-week yoga class.  Because it's pretty dark in there (we follow a video on the large screen) they didn't turn out very well.  But here they are:

And also this past week I finished a pair of socks for Jim--the first socks I've ever knit for him.  From a comment he made while I was knitting them I realized that he thought they would be some riotous colour, and that's why he always said he didn't want any.

Well, you can see they are as plain as can be.  He put them on this morning for the first time and found out how cozy and comforting hand-knit wool socks are.  He's quite delighted and won't turn down an offer of new hand-knit socks again!

So, having finished that project, I got out the yarn for the next pair.  This is a Patons Kroy sock yarn in "Blue Rag" and is an evenly striped yarn.  I'd like the stripes to land in the same area of both socks, so I pulled a long piece of yarn from each of the two balls, until I could match up where the colour run began.

These were started on Wednesday and are coming along nicely, up to the beginning of the gusset.