On the ninth (reading) day of Christmas

At Relief Society earlier this month, we were given a folder of handouts to help us find imaginative ways to celebrate the season. In 2005, the church published a list of readings in the scriptures, to correspond with the twelve days of Christmas. Some of these scriptures will be familiar to you, as they come from the KJV of the Bible. Others will be new to you, but harmonious with what you already know.

As this is a copyrighted article, I am not cutting-and-pasting each day’s reading into my blog posts. Instead, I will post the link and this notice, and you can just read that day’s portion if you choose. I would love to hear your thoughts and impressions.

Consider these my Christmas card(s) to you.

Run, do not walk, to David Reidy’s podcast of yesterday, 21 December 2008. If you’re not interested in the knitting or his essay [which is wonderfully wry], then enjoy the music that opens it [a fusion of Sheep May Safely Graze and Good King Wenceslas] and head right for the end of the podcast, where Allison Crowe sings perhaps the least reverent and yet most joyful rendition of O Holy Night I have heard in a long time. I don’t think I could listen to her for hours on end, but I love music that is passionate.

David also provides a link to a graduation speech by retiring High Court Judge Justice Michael Kirby on the topic of love. I agree with much, if not all, of what he says. [The Holy Scriptures teach that homosexuality is a sin. As is self-righteousness. As is cruelty. As is gossip. We are all sinners and in need of the Atonement, just as we are all precious children of God, living in a fallen world, and struggling the best way we know how to return Home again.] It is far too easy, as we polish and hone the sins that are most precious to us until we are finally ready to give them up, to condemn others for those sins by which we are not, ourselves, tempted. And to forget that the Savior counseled us quite firmly to focus on purifying the inner vessel, taking the beam from our own eye, etc.

Knitting. There was a lot of it yesterday, happy little stitches leaping from one needle to the other as BittyBit’s scarf grew and grew and grew. The gas fireplace was chortling as I woke up and ran for most of the morning, which I spent on the couch with needles in hand until it was time to get ready for church.

Tan and Kristen referenced the same poem by Christina Rossetti in their posts yesterday. Kristen also included this link to a performance by Sissel and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. President Monson also quotes frequently from this poem in his talks, particularly at Christmastime.

The Christmas chorale in Firstborn’s ward was splendid. No other word for it. Her solo went well [Amy Grant’s Breath of Heaven], and Middlest had a speaking part. I was not expecting to see the Bitties, as that made hours four-five-six of church for them, but BittyBit was particularly well-behaved, and BittyBubba mostly tried to stand on the pew and direct the choir, occasionally singing along. While it is always great to see my Bitties, it also meant that I could not finish BittyBit’s scarf; she would have noticed me working on an orange scarf. So I worked on her brother’s and put four+ inches on it, because he is young enough to be fascinated by the process but oblivious to the product.

Secondborn and 2BDH were wearing their scarves; Lark [ahem!] was not wearing hers. It’s OK; I wasn’t wearing any of mine, either.

I listened to old episodes of Sticks and String while finishing BittyBit’s scarf. It’s marked as a finished object on Ravelry but is one of the projects you won’t see here until after Christmas. And I put another half inch on BittyBubba’s scarf before running up the white flag and frogging it.

I had originally thought of making his 27 stitches wide, but that seemed a little too skinny to me, so I tinked back the first row and added another 6 stitches. After working five or so inches, it suddenly seemed too wide. So I frogged it back to the original 27 stitches and left it at that for the night. I think I can get the job done with half a ball of yarn. If it ends up looking too short to knot, I can always knit in a slit toward the second end so we can pass the first end through.