Ornamental lace mandala design on paper

The pattern came back from Mrs Fairburn's on Tuesday with the dot chains all wrong, so I've spent three nights unpicking them by the lamp while the men come up the hill from the colliery with their faces black as the coal they've been hewing. You'll laugh, but I keep thinking of you saying the lace was a kind of map, every loop a road out of Eastwood. I can't see it that way. To me it's just the same circle drawn over and over until your eyes ache.

Mr Oddy the overman says the new seam at number four is running wet and they'll be putting on a double shift from Monday. Dad won't hear of me going down to fetch the wages, so I've taken the finishing work instead. Ma sits by the range with the bobbins in her lap and tells me the trick is to keep your breath steady and let the thread decide where the curl wants to go. She was always better at that than me.

I did the central medallion last night, the one with the pale round at its heart that the lamp catches. Mrs Fairburn wants it shaded so it looks like a moon rising over a pit wheel, which is a strange thing to ask for, but she pays by the piece and the piece pays for your boots. I've put the leaves round it like the willows down by the beck, and tied the droplets off the bottom so they hang as if the rain had just stopped.

Come home at Christmas if the railway allows it. I'll have the whole set finished by then and you can tell me which curl is wrong.

Your loving sister, Ada