Wick (Moss & Diamonds): Week 8, 2 February

As frequently happens, this week was much like last week.  The weather has been the same, except perhaps for an added seasoning of brief glimpses of blue sky.  I did the same things and went the same places.  The sewing project has changed from a jumper/pinafore to a velvety dress.  The jumper/pinafore has quite a long hemline and I’m delaying hemming as long as possible.  The velvety dress is being made using a pattern from a new-to-me company based in Berlin.  So far, I’ve only sewn the pockets, and that took an afternoon of multiple pinnings, hand bastings, and removing bastings.    

So I’m afraid I’ll have to fall back on ‘what happens today’.  The most obvious, of course, is Groundhog Day.  The internet, that fount of useful and useless knowledge, also informs me that two other rodents share the day – hedgehogs and marmots.  Marmot Day is celebrated in Alaska, where it became an official holiday in 2009. Other animals also have their day today, notably brown dogs and sled dogs.

For those of you with a musical bent, it is National Ukelele Day.  In the UK, 2 February (or the first Monday in February), has been designated ‘National Sickie Day’.  This was coined in 2011 after research showing that it was the day workers were most likely to be absent.  More recently, other Mondays have supplanted 2 February.  Last year it was 6 January.

But before all these ‘fun’ holidays came about, there was Candlemas.  This day, one of the oldest ‘holy days’, denotes the end of Christmas, the Presentation of Christ in the temple, and the Purification of Mary.  Secular celebrations take various forms.  In France, crepes are consumed, in Mexico, tamales.  In Poland, candles were placed in windows to ward off storms.  However, the focus of the holiday is to celebrate the Virgin Birth, a central tenet of Christianity.

Shot of a lifetime, 2025 – a gull’s shadow on a slate upright

Various interesting events happened on 2 February.  In 1653, New Amsterdam became a city.  It was later renamed New York City.  In 1848, the first Chinese immigrants arrived in San Francisco.  Four years later, in 1852, the first public men’s toilet opened in London.  In 1876, the baseball National League was formed, with teams from Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, and St Louis.  But the patent issued today in 1892 is probably the one that affects us most.  This patent, granted to William Painter, was for the bottle cap.  While it can an inconvenience when we can’t find the tool to lever it off, the new cap was more reliable than other methods used at the time.

The gansey has been coming along very nicely, despite a minor reversal last week.  I’ve put in long talking book sessions to fit in more knitting, and am pleased to say that the back is now complete.  The stitch pattern isn’t complicated, and once it’s set up there’s no need to refer to a chart.  This speeds things up too.