Today I started to think about our holiday card. This year there's a lunar eclipse within hours of the winter solstice, and I wanted our card to be about that.
I folded blue construction paper into quarters. I used a ruler to find the center of the quartered paper, and then used a compass to figure out where to cut a circle out of the paper and some circular slits. Then I got out a white piece of construction paper and cut out a white disk. I colored part of the white disk black and fit it into the slits in the blue paper. I cut an arc-shape out of the blue paper so I could write legends on the white paper disk.
Viola! Instant move the disk and see when the eclipse takes place (in universal time). I moved the white disk through the eclipse cycle and wrote the time of the beginning, total and end of the eclipse in the arc-shaped window.
I showed Mark.
Me (holding up eclipse dial holiday card): "See?!" (moves white disk)
Mark (mixing pie crust dough): "Hmmm. It looks geometric - it needs to look festive."
Thank goodness for reindeer punches!
Me (two white paper reindeer leaping over the moon window later): "See?!" (moving the disk to the full eclipse position)
Mark (cleaning pots and pans): "That's more festive, but you're going to have to include an instruction manual with that card or no one is going to get it."
Me: "But. But... (points) I put little arrows around the rim of the dial..."
Mark: "I thought were were just going to send pictures this year because you didn't want to do craft project cards."
John: "Well. Yeah... I was thinking of that when I was using a craft knife to make all those little slits... which is why there aren't too many...."
Mark: "See; why don't you make a few for the folks you know will like them?"
Me: "But it's the eclipse!"
Sigh. Maybe I can just print out a link to NASA's Eclipse Web Page.
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