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This morning we awoke to the most snow anyone in this area can remember for around 20 years!  It is sooo beautiful!  I am so lucky that I work from a studio next to the house, so I only had a short passage to clear to the workshop door, and the woodburning stove had stayed alight all night so the room was already warm!  Bliss!! 

The first job today is to get steaming.  No, it’s not the Christmas pud – it’s my Christmas cards!!  Well – not the cards themselves, but the woven contents…  I have woven them with polyester weft so that, once steamed, they will not flatten out or take on another shape once I cut them all apart. 

One thing I learned from my shibori samples for the monograph (Woven Shibori for Textural Effects) was that I need to line my stove-top steamer with a muslin cloth or something similar, to prevent the fabric contents getting scorched.  Actually, one of my husband’s cotton hankies is just the right size and thickness for the job!  So far so good.  It’s going to take roughly 3 hours with each group of 3 strips taking 2 x 10 minute sessions, and 9 motifs per strip.  So in the meantime, I can do other little tasks that have been silently screaming for attention over the past few days – like cleaning (groan!!) and tidying. 

There is an amazing diffused light in my workshop today because of the snow, and you realise when something in your usual environment changes, that the way you see things changes too!  Now in my studio, I can see things that need doing that normally I don’t even notice! 

The fields looked so different in their topography today when I was walking Charlie.  Hillocks that I wasn’t really aware of before are suddenly visible, and a hidden dip that I have never seen before in the fields was so obvious today… 

The school children are out making angels in the snow, although one little one almost disappeared beneath the 10″ or so of snow!!  They are having a wonderful time, pulling each other on sledges that must have been gathering cobwebs for quite a few years, and throwing snowballs at each other and anything that moves… 

A couple of teenaged girls were walking around with their cameras, mouths agape, in awe and wonder at the beauty of the scenery of familiar landscapes made unfamiliar.  We got chatting and they have never seen as much snow in our village in their lives.  They were so excited at seeing how the snow has landed and sculpted on various trees, shrubs and marsh grasses. 

It is so invigorating to see how such experiences mould people, and these youngsters will remember this time right into their older years!  The magic of such days stays with us forever, and become treasured memories.  It’s a lovely feeling to feel that our shared experience will live on past the end of my life because of their memories….