Crafting with Kids

Last winter saw some of the worst weather that we have seen for a few years, for a period of a couple of weeks where the temperatures in lots of place never got above zero. Although these three weekswere over the xmas time and the government told people not to make any unnecessary driving, many people had to work, and see friends and family, and also make sure they had all the gifts and food for festivities. For much of this period the main roads were kept clear by regular gritting and clearing by snow ploughs, which then meant people could make journeys safely as long as they were careful.

I was one of the people who had to travel by car a regular basis, as I live about 15 miles away from where I work, and as I worked for a large store it was important that I turned up to work at this busiest time of year. The first day’s journey took me an extra hour and 30 minutes to get to work, and I usually manage to do it in only 20 minutes. The first day was so bad because I had to stop and help dig out a couple of people who had got stopped by the snow and were blocking the roads. Luckly for them, I live in a hilly part of the country and had loaded a spade in the boot of my car along with some warm shoes and some warm clothing. I had done this mainly because I did not leave work until 10 PM and I knew that if more snow came down in the evening it would not get cleared, and this would make it difficult to get up the hill to my house.

After several days or so of this I noticed that my wiper blades had started to split and I kept finding that the ice was forming on the wiper blade frames overnight. This meant that in the morning I had to remove the ice from the frames so that the wiper blades could follow the contours of the wind screen, which got frustrating some after a while. At least the overnight covering of snow could be brushed off easily and the remaining ice could be cleared with de-icer and a wipe of the wind screen wipers if they had not frozen up. As the stores were not yet closed for Christmas, I decided to pop round the car maintenance stores and get some replacement wiper blades before work. When I got there it looked like I was not the only person who had had their wiper blade fall apart as there were a couple empty spaces on the replacement wiper blades stand. I looked at the size of the wiper blades that I needed and then checked the stand and there were none left in the undear part of the stand, so I looked in the more expensive part and there were a couple of replacement wiper blades in that stand which were the right size. They were flat wiper blades made from silicone, they were dear but they could operate in temperatures as low as -60 BC and were resistant to UV exposure, ozone, salt and came with a one-year guarantee. I thought I would give these flat wiper blades made from silicone a chance as the flat wiper blades have a frameless design, so I would not have the problem of the frames icing and not following the contours of the wind screen. I fitted the flat wiper blades to my car in the car park and set off to work and I instantly noticed the difference, as they were clearing the snow on the wind screen extremely effectively. I’m still using these wiper blades eight months later and they are still clearing my wind screen extremely effectively.

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