Attempting to break out of my artistic doldrums, I suited up and braved the cold weather to try some snow sculpture.

This cat is about three feet tall, with eyes and nose of stone, and whiskers of white pine.

The day was sunny for the first time in a long string of dark days, so I thought the snow would be prime for sculpting. However, it was still very powdery, and not packable. I had to bring buckets of water to mix with the snow to get it to stick to itself. I had a blast (by myself!) and managed to learn a lot about making non-snowman objects out of snow.

I started by shoveling a mound, then adding buckets of half water/half snow to the pile and stirring it up before it would congeal into packable matter. After that, I made additions by wetting both surfaces to be joined…