Minus 15 degrees Celsius

That was the temperature outside when we woke up this morning. Oh, it was so, so cold. You could feel it going straight through your bones.

But the world also sparkled! I have tried to capture it for you in pictures but even my wonderful Fuji camera is simply not equipped for that job. Hope you catch a glimpse of the ice sparkles on the picture above.

My quilt is now sewn together and by some fluke I have enough black wadding (batting) as well as backing fabric to start tacking it together which will be the next step. On the discussion on the Contemporary Quilt Yahoo group the subject of supplies came up today. And yes, I freely admit that I could be snowed in till the end of my days whenever that might be and still not run out of stuff to stitch with. I would die of starvation long before that moment arrived. And what a very good thing too, specially in the present conditions!

We also have enough bird food to keep literally hundreds of birds alive as well as the 3 chickens, as kindly the organic farm down the lane (Whitmuir Organics) has given us another full bag to get on with. It's such a necessary thing as there is no food among the snow at all for all these birds. Among the regular visitors are blackbirds, a huge variety of finches, bluetits, woodpeckers, ring doves, mister pheasant and his wife as well as robins (see picture above). They wait for us in the morning and are now so used to us that they don't even fly away when the food distribution begins!