Sun pillars

Good morning! The power has been reconnected! Hurrah! There are still things to sort out, but it’s very good to begin to get back to normal. Let’s start with the Making Light surprise I’d planned for over the weekend: a brand-new bonus pattern, Sun Pillars

Honestly, there is nothing I love more than designing a yoke, and once I’d knitted up Ciar and Sonsie, I knew that a reversey version of this motif had to be on the cards.

When looking at this motif, the eye is drawn, I think, to that central blank row, which breaks up the vertical / diagonal continuity of the pattern. Around the body of Ciar, this row reads visually merely as an interruption, but around the crown of Sonsie it creates a satisfying circle, which really enhances the pattern’s geometric interest.

I knew that this horizontal framing effect would work really well around a yoke, which is all about its circles. The line of interruption runs right through the centre of the motif, and, when worked at the correct proportions (in this case, at a row gauge that consumes the entire yoke depth), there is something very pleasing and balanced about how the pattern works both close up. . . .

. . . and from a distance

For these proportions to work out, the gauge has to be 3.5 stitches to the inch, which in the case of the sweater I’m wearing, meant using yarn held double. I’m not complaining.

This supremely cosy, cushy sweater has not been off my back during the cold days we’ve just spent without electricity! This is definitely a depths-of-winter knit to wrap up warm in!

We took these photographs a few weeks ago at a very special Kintyre location – Westport Beach. It had been a clear night, and, as you can see, the full moon was beginning to set on the western horizon.

At the same time, the sun was rising in the east, lighting up the sky with pinks and blues.

Seeing the sun rise is surely one of January’s great distinctive pleasures: not least because you don’t have to be up at a crazily ungodly hour to witness it!

On this particular cold January morning, we watched the moon set, and, as it did so, the colour of the sky changed from pink to peach

There’s definitely something uniquely uplifting about getting out and about during a winter’s dawn!

Just one of my recommendations for making light of this time of year!

This sweater takes its name after another natural phenomenon which you can only see during cold winter weather, and which (much like the patterns of this yoke) is reliant on the interaction between horizontal and vertical geometry: Sun Pillars

Sun Pillars are the vertical beams or columns of light which you can sometimes see on a cold sunny day when the air is saturated with moisture. These conditions allow ice crystals to form in the atmosphere which, when illuminated by the sun, create startling vertical reflections.

It’s an appropriate name for a graphic cold weather sweater, with vertical patterns and horizontal reflections.

It also happens to be the name of a truly beautiful track on my current favourite album, by the Fergus McCreadie Trio.

I heartily recommend listening to this joyful and uplifting piece for some instant January cheer. Perhaps on repeat. Perhaps while you are knitting your own Sun Pillars!

If you would like to knit a Sun Pillars in Ooskit, there are kits in the shop, and if you are a Making Light member, your pattern will appear in your Ravelry Library or inbox later today.

Club sign ups are still open, if you’d like to join us.

Happy knititng!