moomin mug inspired: snow lantern

"Until at last he saw that it was an ordinary candle, thrust steadily upright in the snow. Around it stood a small sugar-loaf of a house, built of round snowballs. ... On the other side of the lamp someone had dug herself a cosy hole, someone who lay looking up at the serene winter sky and whistling very softly to herself."

 I haven't been building many snow lanterns or snow anythings lately. It's quite concerning how mild this winter has been; basically no snow and it already feels like April! I understand I live in the south now so the winters were never going to be as cold or as harsh. But for the past few years that I have been in the south, winters have actually been pretty decent, there's been snow, the river has frozen (so much that I've been able to walk on it, which apparently happens every five years or so!) and it has felt like a winter. Sometimes it has felt like a really long winter. Now it only feels like a strange kind of limbo between autumn and spring.

And that is why these photos are from last winter. When there was actually snow.

This Moomin mug was a fun one to recreate - because like with the Snow horse I could build some snow things. (The winter ones are often the more fun ones because of the snow and building things out of it, but they're also harder to take since there's so little daylight - especially in Lapland.) I remember being outside for hours with my mum and getting her to sit in as Moomintroll. And she was definitely more excited about the snow lantern.

I myself am Too-ticky who's a great, perhaps a little lesser known, Moomin character. This is when Moomintroll first meets her as she's one of the only people not hibernating and therefore can maybe be seen more in the winter months. She's definitely one of the more practical inhabitants of Moominvalley; someone who knows who they are, what they want and how to go about living the life they want, as well as being helpful to those around. I actually have a striped top a bit more like Too-ticky's that I'll be wearing when I take photos as her again, but for this shoot it would've been too cold to be in just a little top and I decided to go with something that still has stripes and matches the colours of the mug. And I did make her bobble hat! Her look is very iconic, but this time it was more about the snow lantern than the look.

I didn't include Little My 1) because I only had myself and my mum, and 2) because she isn't in the original drawing. After all this is about the meeting of Too-ticky and Moomintroll. My lantern's also not as luminous as Too-ticky's, even though there is a small light in. I thought about taking the photos later on when it'd be darker and the shadows and light would show up better (i.e. basically after 1p.m.), but decided this was both easier and better. Because I did end up liking these pictures just fine! I mean, how cute are little Moomin and Too-ticky?

"'What song is that?' asked Moomintroll.

'It's a song of myself,' someone answered from the pit. 'A song of Too-ticky who built a snow lantern, but the refrain is about wholly other things.'"