Snow Days

A couple of weekends ago we had a fairly heavy snowfall for our area. It was made all the more exciting by the fact we haven't had a snowfall this deep for a couple of years now with such mild winters, and that it was Finley's first snow!! He was not at all impressed with it and couldn't understand why I kept leaping in and out of the house into all of this giant white rain. 

The flakes were enormous! In the above photo we had only been outside for about three minutes and were already pretty covered - it came down really fast on the Sunday afternoon and caught a lot of people out. Luckily for us (as it turned out) we had noticed a nail in one of our car tyres the day before so were already stuck at home with the puncture waiting for a tyre fixer to come to us the following day to replace it, otherwise we had planned to be out that afternoon too. 

We knew when we moved here that this town gets snow much worse than where we were living but it is much more exciting when you know you aren't going anywhere anyway. It was a good four or five inches deep on our balcony railing, which is partially shielded from the building, and much deeper in more open areas. Our carpark isn't gritted so for the following week any visitors had to battle through the snow to park, and I ended up in a snowdrift helping to push my sister's car out after she came to visit us. (In crocs too so my feet got wet!)

That's our black car hiding under the snowy blanket in the above photo!

We have the most amazing view over Ashdown Forest from our balcony and after the snow it was beautiful to look at. Every day offers a different scene anyway, sometimes mist lies in ribbons over the lower ground which makes it look like a giant lake with a couple of islands poking out the top, or at low light times it just becomes layers of grey shadow in different shades. The colour has changed a lot since we moved here already, especially as the sunsets have changed - whereas the sun used to go down past that tree on the right hand side, now it doesn't even reach anywhere near the trees on the left, our kitchen doesn't get any sun at all!

As we couldn't go anywhere it was a good few days to finish off my December and January ATCs so I am ahead again which is good because I have a lot of jobs to do in the run up to the new year, and also I'd like to catch up on stitching all of our badges to our camp blankets. Finley got given his own camp blanket (with badges already stitched on!) for Christmas so we can start collecting memories for him right from the off! So far he has a badge from when we visited Longleat together when he was only a few month's old, and some commemorative badges from the Queen's death as that was a major thing to happen during his lifetime.

The January, Frosted Dew Drops, card is a simple concept and design and I hope it isn't too different from my usual style. I have tried to create spiderwebs with little splashes of frozen dew hanging onto thin strands using a metallic thread and clear sequins. There's a lot of sparkle behind the web with metallic printed fabric and a shiny ribbon so I hope I haven't overpowered the web itself. 

These cards are backed and finished now anyway so I can photograph and show you them in more detail in their own post!

Frozen Landscape

 

I am desperately waiting for it to snow! Sadly, being in the 'balmy' South of England, we seem to miss the snow most of the time and everyone else gets all of the fun. We were trying to remember when we last had significant snow, enough to stop everyone in their tracks for more than a morning, and we think it was about 5 years ago? Maybe? Time plays tricks on you and as 2020 was a bit of a write off, it may have been longer since a decent snowfall.

So far this year we've just had a couple of frosty mornings and on the first big frost I was out there, all wrapped up, snapping photos to my hearts content. I love it when the frost is so thick it looks like everything has been dusted with sugar crystals. Even the smallest thread is suddenly enshrouded in a mystical crystal cape and solidified for just a moment in time. Because it's been so mild recently we've got quite a few flowers still going in the garden, as well as some super keen Daffodils that have been flowering for the last two weeks already!!

The seed heads have been left up over winter for the birds to pick over, like Sunflower heads, Poppies and Fennel which all of the small birds comb over. We do feed our feathered friends extra over the winter but it's just so easy to leave lots of your seed heads for them to forage and they look so pretty on mornings like this. The frozen spiderwebs were also an absolute marvel! You could really see the patterns woven into them and they looked like a finely worked lace. 

You could imagine a frosty Stitchscape inspired by one of these - covered in beads for that crystalized, slightly sparkly effect!

Snow Day

SNOW!!!!! I love snow although I know lots of people hate it. My particular favourite kind of snow is when it is thick and heavy enough that you know you can't get anywhere even if you want to. I did attempt to get to work this morning, getting up and carrying out my normal routine- even walking to the bus stop- but when the bus arrived the driver just laughed at me when I asked if he was still going to Crowborough (typically one of the worst areas during a snow storm). So I returned home again and have been watching the snow blizzard down ever since.
These photos were taken about three hours ago and the snow just keeps coming so we can no longer see the Snowdrops which are completely smothered in several more inches of snow. I went out with my ruler about two hours ago and it was 7-10cm in places then.

The cat loves snow. It is the only time of year that he blends in and he always pretends that he is interested in catching birds, going through the whole chatter routine when he spots one foraging in the undergrowth. He is currently alternating sitting on the windowsill on top of the radiator and going out into the snow and dashing around, throwing the snow in the air and rolling in it. So sweet.

We have put out some extra food for the birds although they are having to dig for it a little bit as the pellets we put out on the ground and on the flat raised feeder get buried pretty quickly. We are very much a bird loving family and watch with glee as the garden birds visit the feeders positioned outside of our kitchen window. This morning we had Robins, Speckled Thrushes, Blackbirds, Blue Tits, Greenfinches, Wrens, Starlings, Jackdaws, Great Tits, Goldfinches, Sparrows and lots more! Lots of puffed up feathers as they sit huddled amongst the rose bushes or in the relatively safety of the fir tree.

As I look out of the window now it is a total white out! The roofs of the houses opposite have blended in with the sky which looks a bit strange, and there are big fat flakes falling. The last time I can remember it snowing like this was in 2010 when I was at Art College in Brighton. We had been away for a couple of days in Amsterdam on a college trip and on the day we were due to come back we woke up to a couple of inches of snow! The coach driver was very determined and we found ourselves in a coach going 5mph on French motorways, then on the Eurostar to Dover, at which point the snow in England was even deeper and we were in traffic jams all the way back to Brighton. The Parents were snowed in and siblings stuck at friends/relatives houses so I ended up being rescued by a friend's Dad who had snow chains on his Landrover. He managed to drop me off at the main bus station at Uckfield and I had to walk home through thick snow with my suitcase. We were snowed in for about three days after that!

So at the end of writing this post, the snow has started to fall even harder than before and I must go and measure a wall I can see out of the window which looks to have about six inches of snow! I'll let you know. If you are in a snow zone, I hope you are keeping warm and safe- bring out the hot chocolate!!

***** Edit to add**** Been out with my ruler and we are up to 16cm!