Dragonfly and mandala tattoo on upper back

The mill pond has gone gold again and the dragonflies are out over the reeds, so I know you will be cross that I am writing instead of pricking pattern. Mrs Thorne came down the lane this morning with the new order, forty yards of collar lace for a wedding in Ely, and she wanted the dragonfly done the old way, wings open, the body hung with those little fringes of thread that Grandmother called tears. I told her the pillow was yours to finish. She said she had never seen a dragonfly fly sideways in a lace pattern before, and I said that was because you had been cheating.

Father has stopped asking when you are coming home. He sits by the window with the card you sent, the one with the cathedral on it, and turns it over the way he used to turn a bobbin. I do not think he is cross. I think he is counting the nights.

I have kept your bobbins in the tin under the stairs, the ones with the brass rims that were Mother's. The mandala you started last winter is still pinned on the pillow, the round one with eight spokes. I have added two more rings to it, nothing clever, just the stitches you would have used, and it looks less like a wheel now and more like the moon seen through pond weed.

When the wedding lace is finished I will send you the first piece for your own, the wings only, folded in tissue. Keep it somewhere the damp cannot find it. Hold it up to the window in the evening and it throws a shadow like the real thing, and then you will know the pond is still there without needing me to tell you.

Your loving sister, Bet