The View from My Brother's Porch

Last Sunday, in the late afternoon, Mary called me from Chicago to wish me a Happy New Year and to catch up. I hope you're feeling better, Mary!

I went outside for better reception and was looking around me when I noticed the sky behind the tree at the side of my brother's house was a beautiful mix of pinks and oranges, and it was streaking vertically through the few clouds that seemed to gather in that one spot in the sky just to capture all that light.

I ran back into the house and told everybody that they should come out to see it, and asked my brother if he would take pictures. This is what I saw from the yard:
My brother and nephew came out and I watched my brother snap a couple of pictures. Then they both went back in the house as I watched the sky get darker and the colors get brighter and I couldn't believe they were missing it. Then they came back out with the tripod and disappeared around the side of the house behind the tree and out of sight. They were gone pretty much the whole rest of the time I was talking with Mary. Later, after he downloaded the pictures, I saw where they had gone:
This is what I was looking at while we were talking, Mary! It may be the most dramatic sunset I've ever seen. And all I had to do to see it was walk outside my brother's house. There are many things I don't miss about Austin, mostly the heat, but this is one of the reasons I make sure to come back for a good chunk of time every year.

Later, my brother told me from what they could see in the house (the top picture), it didn't look all that impressive. He figured since I'd been away I had forgotten what a real sunset looked like and was swept off my feet by the first pink sky to come along. Ha. He then agreed that it was pretty spectacular.

The first night I was here the sunset was really pretty, too, so I took a picture to post here. Now it doesn't seem to look quite as dramatic as it did before.
Of course, that could just be my camera skills compared to my brother's. That's a lot of dark blobbiness at the bottom there.

On the knitting front, I've mainly been working on the Koigu shawl. It was such a beautiful day yesterday I decided to work on it outside. That was the first time I think I've seen the true colors on that yarn. I took pictures . . .