Changes in Time

I'll get the resolutions out of the way...

walking--poor

office--excellent

letters--okay

piano--good

I've been enjoying the sunsets this month.  It seems like most days the sun came up to a gray day with a splendid sunset at the end. 

Of course, since my last post, we've had the time change and after listening to the complaints of Jim for a few hours, and avoiding facebook we passed into the new time and the enjoyment of the longer evenings with a minimum of discomfort.  I complained plenty about the time change in previous years. I don't complain anymore.  As one blogger friend said, "However, I don't have young kids." 

One year, when I was a kid, we didn't change back to standard time and I remember seeing photos in the paper of school children huddled under street lights in the pitch dark waiting for their bus.  

I looked up the date and I was surprised to see that was 1974, I would have been 10. Back int eh days before Daylight Savings Time was ever thought of (actually Ben Franklin thought of it hundreds of years ago, but we won't go there, it wasn't adopted until WW1) most of the country was inhabited by farmers.  Farmers started work when it was light and quit when it was dark.  Construction workers in Arizona start early and finish early to escape the heat of the day in spite of the fact they don't observe DST.  If we didn't change the clocks, people who work outside would need to change their start times to get the most work done in teh early part of the day before it gets too hot. Instead of 7 am for example, it would be 6.  Changes would be made whether the clocks change or not.
And everyone likes the long evenings.
  

Year-round experiment (1974-1975)

During the 1973 oil embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), in an effort to conserve fuel Congress enacted a trial period of year-round DST (P.L. 93-182), beginning January 6, 1974, and ending April 27, 1975. The trial was hotly debated. Those in favor pointed to increased daylight hours in the winter evening: more time for recreation, reduced lighting and heating demands, reduced crime, and reduced automobile accidents. The opposition was concerned about children leaving for school in the dark. The act was amended in October 1974 (P.L. 93-434) to return to standard time for the period beginning October 27, 1974, and ending February 23, 1975, when DST resumed. When the trial ended in 1975, the country returned to observing summer DST (with the aforementioned exceptions). 

I have been wanting to write a tribute book/photo album of my Grandparents for years, but the paper and photo method of scrapbooking this particular album left me stymied.  Enter the digital age, and I put it together with a minimum for frustration.  I'm pleased with the result.  

Foggy Sunrise 

Evidence of Spring 

I worked very hard on an open work sweatery topper thingy last summer, crocheting from a pattern that had been badly translated from Chinese or some other language that uses characters.  (There are some mighty good and free patterns out there written in some other language than English.) It took all the skill I have to read the chart and all the knowledge I have of crochet stitches to make it work.  

I was so careful, measuring as I went, but when I sewed it together it was just a little bit too small, and the sleeves a way bit too small.  The only real problem is it is hard to get into with not much give, but once on, it's okay.  

I made doily coasters out of one of the sleeves. 

More signs of spring, delivered by hand by my hubby to his best girls.  (To the only two that were there at the time, anyway.)