Snowdrops

 

Can you spot one of Matt's recent projects?

 

 
 

 

A Handmade Christmas Gift for my sister-in-law.  I made this pattern up, trying to work out something in my head.  It wasn't quite what I had envisioned, but still lovely.  I bought the buttons (one of the only supplies I needed to buy for all the handmade gifts I made) and fell in love with the sparkle.  They remind me of of glistening snowflakes on a blanket of white.  I call it the Snowdrop Cowl and maybe wish it were my own.  ;-)

 

 Last week, the earth around Hopestead was covered with the most glorious white, drifty snow.  The snowflakes danced downward, spiraling into one another and clasping hands into clumps of crystal as they fell.  We were quite snowed in, as a matter of fact, or felt as much as the hill remained unplowed for most of the day(s) that snow fell.  And then, a few days later, when night fell the rain did too and the winds howled outside our door and beat against our windows and rattled their panes and me.  Nothing more shivery than wind gusts in winter.  I was thankful, then, to have Mattie to snuggle into and walls around and quilts over top.  Positively surrounded with goodness. 

The next morning it was gone, all gone.  All the snow drifts and sparkles, all the piles and piles and miles and miles of white.  In one night, white had turned to brown. Matt had to go out of town for the week...he left me like the beautiful snow.  And then.  THEN.  The winds grew bitter and brutal and cruel.  The windows became so frosted, they were opaque with sparkles."35-below with windchill", my neighbors told me.  "Don't be out for more than 15 minutes or you might get frostbite!"  they said. And no husband to warm my feet in his or to snuggle the chill right out of me. 

It's been me who has had to stoke the fire, over and over, trying to get the chill out of this drafty house, an impossibility.  Our breath billows on the second floor and we wear robes over our clothes and we eat warmth for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  It's been I who has had to go to the barn to comb down bear-like ponies and fluffy cows, with their thick winter fur and their frozen whiskers.  I've had to break ice, haul water, shove hay all-around, with frozen white fingers that lose their circulation in the cold.  Winter chores are no fun and especially so in the bitter, cruel gusts of below zero and a Mama stays very  busy trying to do it all.

Even so, I am okay.  Chores are just a small part of a big day (at least there is no milking yet!), the thermometer promises to creep slowly up soon, the days and minutes pass until I can see my Mister and I have rainbow colored eggs at a certain time each morning (Who can say that?!?) thanks to a bit of cut glass against windowpanes.   

 I have decided I am going to collect prisms.  I am going to fill an entire window with them and then have a whole room filled with dancing rainbows.   If that seems cheesy, who cares?  Gaudy?  Probably.  But then again- I don't think a person could ever have too much sparkle in their life.

Especially when they have to wear Carhartt brown at chore time.