Wonder

and how it can lift our spirits.

Hello Dear Friend,

I hope this missive finds you well and surrounded by the sight of spring’s imminent arrival. Everywhere I look at the moment I can see buds sprouting from the earth, and trees just starting to come into leaf. It really is a magical time of the year. A time of rebirth, a time of dragging ourselves out of the darkness that was winter, and back into the light, blinking at its brightness and enjoying the faint warmth of the sun on our skin.

This week’s Sunday Letter will be a slightly shorter one than of late, I have had a mad week. I had an assignment due to the Open University which I submitted on Friday, and the universe has been giving me lots of nudges to restart my investigations into Ganseys. Specifically in the recreation of an authentically created Gansey based on the designs worn on the Isle of Wight back in the day. I started looking into this in the summer of 2019, but for some reason or other (ahem the worldwide plague) it took a back seat. I will be starting a different blog following my efforts in recreating the Ganseys from old photographs, and I would love it if you followed me over there if you are interested. Eventually, I hope to have patterns, workshops, and who knows maybe even a book. Oh cripes, I have just put that out into the universe now, let's see what happens. The first post is here with another due to go up very soon.

But let’s get started with this week’s letter.

Wonder

Now I am sure someone, somewhere has done a scientific study on how wonder affects our brains and our bodies, but I am not going to bore you with those…

Pure and simple - wonder brings joy and can lift our spirits and minds. When was the last time you felt wonder? What brought it on? Was it a magical sunrise? A bird singing in the trees? The power of the ocean? Or snow on top of the hills?

Whatever it was, just the memory of it can sustain us and lift us out of day-to-day hum-drum life. This topic was sparked by seeing an article about a man called Simon Beck, a 61-year-old British chap who lives in the French alps and is renowned as a snow artist. I had never heard of such a thing. He is a retired cartographer and the designs are created using just his snow shoes, some taking him up to eleven hours to create.

Simon Beck uses a magnetic compass to navigate, and he relies on a rope and stake to create circles. Stomping out the contours of a given design takes about five hours.

From SkiMag.com article

I will just leave you to stare at the images and ponder on the effort it takes to create these amazing works of art…

P.S. I just saw on his Facebook page that he has only once repeated a design…

Things catching my eye this week:

This fascinating article is about how plants, houseplants specifically, can disinfect the air. Now I always knew that some plants were better in the bedroom/living room depending on the amount of oxygen/CO2 they produced, but disinfectant? As I type this I was just wondering if it was an April Fools’ prank I have fallen for, but no, there are several scientific studies showing that the plants produce hydrogen peroxide. Apparently, the plant which produced the most is the humble African Violet (Saintpaulia Ionantha)

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Closely followed by Devils Ivy or Pothos.

Photo by feey on Unsplash

My mum always had African violets growing on the kitchen windowsill, maybe now is the time to get some more… ;0)

Until next time, as ever, may your angels and guides watch over you and protect you until we meet again.

Love and Light,

Tracy

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Links:

Gallery of images of Simon Beck’s Snow Art

SkiMag article on Simon Beck

Simon Beck Snow Art Facebook Page

Plants Article in the i online

Research Paper on Spontaneous generation of exogenous hydrogen peroxide by plants

Isle of Wight Ganseys Substack post

Isle of Wight Ganseys Instagram page

Isle of Wight Ganseys Facebook page

N.B. All of the Gansey pages are in their infancy so do not have much content at the moment.

Anything in bold and underlined is a link to the relevant article or web page. None are affiliate links, just things I hope to benefit you, or people whom I admire and have worked with in the past.

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