Highs, Lows and Aurora Borealis

I think I'm going to have to crochet a new color Northern Lights Snowflake! I bet we get northern lights here in Colorado at least one more time this year! Meanwhile, I sure had fun making blocks for my 2024 digital temperature quilts after actually seeing and successfully photographing northern lights dark and early Monday morning!

The Aurora app on my phone notified me twice very late Sunday night/extremely early Monday morning (and again Monday afternoon, during full daylight) that we had reached K7, which meant low latitude northern lights!!!

The first time, Lizard was still pacing the floor, unable to sleep. I asked if he'd like to go east with me so we could get away from the light polution of the Denver metro north of us, the same direction we'd have to look to see the northern lights. Anxiety is a huge part of Parkinson's, and he was too nervous about going out in the dark, so we went to a nearby hill and crossed our fingers. I could see the northern lights movement with my naked eye, but we didn't get great shots. The cell phone, which actually does a good job with northern lights because it sees more of the light spectrum than we can, just doesn't have a powerful enough zoom. The point and shoot doesn't see everything we see, and even enhanced via Photoshop, it's difficult to see the full color scale we saw with our eyes and thoroughly enjoyed watching for a few minutes.

The second time the notification alarm went off, I woke, but Lizard didn't. I didn't feel like I could leave him home alone long enough to drive and shoot, and there was no way I was going to wake him from a good slumber. So I stepped out onto our front porch with my phone, and my eyes about popped out of my head!!! I could see pink and green, and pretty high in the sky to boot! I was in heaven!

I moved down to the driveway and shot about four frames, uploaded the best one to my community group on Facebook, then went back to bed. The next morning, I downloaded the point and shoot, then tried enhancing both the cell phone and 35mm photos with Photoshop and AI. I created a collage illustrating of the difference between the two cameras and the two different northern lights occurences in my neck of the plains meet foothills. I'm still overjoyed I finally got to see northern lights in person!!! I'll never turn down an opportunity to see them live in person further north (or south, as in Antarctica), but I feel so blessed I got to see them this time around!

I think I dreamed the rest of the night (or, I guess, very early morning) about how I could interpret this celestial event in my digital quilts.

I dug out the old snowflakes made back in... oh, my gosh! 14 years ago!!! Photographed them on the appropriate colors, and I digitally quilted the newest blocks.

Sometimes it feels a bit like pressure to have to keep going with all this year's digital temperature quilts. But after another day of something special, man, I can't wait to see these printed on fabric at the end of the year! The blue is going to make the most awesome dress, I think!

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