I had returned to get on with the work, partly to warm up, partly out of a frenzy to lay the gold thread.

I had started lighting my fir tree of small knot stitches with two windings: the gold wire is too ‘dry’ to hold three knots. The knots would be swollen and uneven. I had long since learnt to avoid even the old gold muliné skein, which would flake off, literally, by running these knots.

As always, I pulled the thread tightly onto the fabric and tightened it around the needle, before slipping it under the surface of the fabric, which I now visualised as the blanket of snow dispersing as far as the eye could see beyond the glass.

Tightening the last knot, I lingered in that moment when ideas are gathered, between the end of one sequence and the next, and I cast my gaze over the landscape, but without really focusing, simply following the course of my thoughts.

An improbable play of light disturbed the scene!

My thoughts had vanished and my eyes had regained control. They were pointing straight at the thousands of tiny golden lights that were lighting up all the fir trees in the village and, in particular, at the din of flashing coloured lights, violently stealing and plundering the scene. I saw the man holding up an interminable trail of crazy lights and, behind him, a procession of little boys and girls who, apparently very amused, as if they were playing a joke, were holding up the long snake of indecent lights, laughing their heads off.

I shrugged my head giggling and dashed out, to play my role.

When the entire tallest fir tree (the one right in front of my window) was enveloped in that web of outrageous abundance, the first stars began to dance over the evening.

I took the last walk of the evening, listening to the notes of that music emerging from the branches and made the decision to embroider them in gold.

Thrown stitch for dots, backstitch for rods, taking care to stop the thread and restart it, each time between notes.