But they haven't put their mittens on

[venta]

Pottering around in the snow yesterday, I observed a number of snowmen (and one snowwoman, and one ten-foot-tall snowbehemoth, and a rather lovely snowdog). Almost all were built to the crazy three-ball snowperson pattern. When I were a lad child, snowmen were made out of two balls of snow.

When did this madness involving an abdomen come in? Am I right to blame it largely on Calvin? That's Calvin of "and Hobbes" fame, not the guy who founded Calvinism, who probably thought playing the snow was far too frivolous.

I also note that, in the absence of coal being readily available, the go-to objects for snow-eyes are plastic supermarket milk bottle tops. Mostly semi-skimmed, though I did see one wall-eyed snowman who was full-fat on his left-hand side. Carrots are still big news in the snow-nose world.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Nick Cave - 15 Feet of Pure White Snow.

And thanks for the snowperson bulletin, it's good to know what's happening in the world of grassroots snow sculpture.

[venta.livejournal.com]

One kudo for you.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I have about hundredweight of coal in a bunker, I should sell it at £1 a lump

[ailbhe]

Snowmen in storybooks often had three bumps when I was little, but the real made ones were a sort of heap with a blob on top, rather than ball-shaped anything.

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

3 bump snowpeople indicate are somewhat higher level skill of snow wrangling. Hefting and balancing balls would be too high, heavy and unwieldy for most kids - I suspect adult involvement!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Most of the ones I saw under construction did indeed have adults involved. But even when I was a kid and had adults helping, I don't remember anyone suggesting adding a third ball. I don't remember even seeing one that looked like it had been made that way, either!

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

We would make huge 3-ball snowmen at school, where there was lots and lots of snow, and there were lots of people to help get the head on - so you could make a 6ft snowman easily. At home it was always two or one, because they were only ever as big as we were.

Snow Vogon and Snowdude (in icon) were both one large lump ["ball" would be too generous] with a head stuck on top.

[rabbit1080.livejournal.com]

I'd been wondering what people use for snow-person eyes these days, now that there's not much spare coal nearby.

Confusingly, when I first read "milk bottle tops", I imagined those old foil tops from glass bottles. (Yay for re-reading :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm think that when I was a kid, plastic milk bottle tops hadn't been invented. You either got your milk on the doorstep (glass bottle, foil lid) or from the supermarket (tetrapak carton-style thing, no lid at all to speak of). I wonder when plastic bottle milk came in...

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

When the supermarkets a) got big and b) started selling it.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Really? My memory of the early 80s is that supermarkets sold milk, but that it wasn't in plastic bottles (it was in cartons).

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

When (+where) I was a pup, milk came in pyramid-shaped cartons like this:



I don't think there was anything else.

[venta.livejournal.com]

LJ thought you were a suspicious comment...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Also: that's really, really weird! Do you snip off the top and pour it out like that? Do you decant into a jug straight away?

[zotz]

That's the original tetrapak, that is. And the answer to your question is "either, or drink it from the carton if you like".

[venta.livejournal.com]

Really? Well, that explains why they're called tetrapaks.

Can you drink it from the carton without mishap? I'd have expected it to lead to all sorts of disasters. (I mean, above and beyond the usual run of carton-drinking mishaps.)

[zotz]

The usual cause of mishaps was somebody flattening an empty by stamping and discovering that it wasn't. Spectacularly amusing, depending on your personal identity relationship to that somebody.

They could overflow if you squeezed them, so generally you tried not to.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

They were in many ways better than block-shaped cartons. You needed scissors, but they were much easier to get open. You would grasp them along the flat lip (rear, in the picture) between finger and thumb so they'd be balanced to tip and pour.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I remember being able to get orange juice in cartons like that (Minute Maid?) that you could freeze and eat like a lolly.

[rabbit1080.livejournal.com]

I think we had the same situation (milk bottle delivered, milk carton at supermarket) til, er, the mid 1980s in Australia. It was weird that the packagings were different for a few years.

(All milk was in plastic or tetra-packs after that, although I might have seen an occasional bottle in a UK supermarket a couple of years back. No idea why my initial assumption was of foil milk-bottle tops :-)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Seems to me is only in last ten years or so that plastic has really taken over from tetrapaks. But that's relying on notoriously fallible memory.

(Maybe tied in to the rise in recycling facilities for plastic?)

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

Kew yesterday had a ridiculous number of half finished two and three ball snowmen , a few finished ones, a snow sprite emerging from a hole in a tree and a snow person sat on a bench.
I have photos but not with me in the office :-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Damn. We nearly went to Kew yesterday to play in the snow, but in the end opted for being staggeringly grown up and boring and doing some (rather overdue) cleaning instead.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

In Sheffield they seem to just use carrots for everything. The tops go for eyes and the rest of the carrot is a nose. What happens to the rest of carrot 2 is a mystery. Sometimes sliced up and stuck on as a mouth or buttons.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose at least carrots are less of a problem left lying around when the snowman melts :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Ryan and Bea both made the two-ball type. Stones were used for eyes - I'm amazed that isn't standard now.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Probably due to the difficulty of finding stones when everything is under snow! Maybe less of an issue in your own garden, where you might know where to dig, but definitely a problem in a park :)

(I couldn't even find the footpath yesterday, let alone a stone or two...)

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I think two-ball snowballs have a head and an abdomen, and the extra ball is actually a thorax. Now I want to build a snow-ant^*.

^*Not enough to actually go outside and build one, mind you.

[cuthbertcross.livejournal.com]

We did a snow-doggie in the front garden (not much snow!) and a snow-girl (with trailing honesty for hair and ludicrously long grass arms) in the back. i say "we" meaning R and the girls. I was stuck
Indoors feeding SportySaxon repeatedly.