Advent Calendar - Traces (in the snow)

Day 22 of anuk's Advent Calendar - Traces (in the snow)

Charles Dickens has a lot to answer for - the idea that Christmas in London should always be accompanied by several inches of snow on the 25th December being one of his greatest crimes!

I spent last week in SNOWdonia and didn't see any snow, and so far the indications are that this year will be a (truly) traditional Christmas for weather - relatively mild, damp and foggy, with no trace of snow in sight.

So it was off to dictionary.com to confirm that my thoughts regarding meanings of the word were in fact correct - it was, albeit at No 21 of 29 meanings.

Tomorrow I am going to a bring and share lunch with a number of friends, I have agreed to take a pudding, which will be a cheesecake. I decided that I would like to decorate it in a more Christmassy manner so I thought I would cut up some pineapple into shapes and put them all into the shape of a Christmas tree, with a few sugar stars to add decorations. Obviously I needed a bit of practice at doing this, so I made 2 cheescakes, one for a pudding tonight for me and my son and one for tomorrow. Pictured is my trace of the tree, on tonight's pudding (now half demolished), all ready to be repeated tomorrow morning on the other one.

TRACE
noun
1. a surviving mark, sign, or evidence of the former existence, influence, or action of some agent or event; vestige: traces of an advanced civilization among the ruins.
2. a barely discernible indication or evidence of some quantity, quality, characteristic, expression, etc.: a trace of anger in his tone.
3. an extremely small amount of some chemical component: a trace of copper in its composition.
4. traces, the series of footprints left by an animal.
5. the track left by the passage of a person, animal, or object: the trace of her skates on the ice.
6. Meteorology . precipitation of less than 0.005 inches (0.127 mm).
7. a trail or path, especially through wild or open territory, made by the passage of people, animals, or vehicles.
8. engram.
9. a tracing, drawing, or sketch of something.
10.a lightly drawn line, as the record drawn by a self-registering instrument.
11.Mathematics .
a. the intersection of two planes, or of a plane and a surface.
b. the sum of the elements along the principal diagonal of a square matrix.
c. the geometric locus of an equation.
12.the visible line or lines produced on the screen of a cathode-ray tube by the deflection of the electron beam.
13.Linguistics . (in generative grammar) a construct that is phonologically empty but serves to mark the place in the surface structure of a sentence from which a noun phrase has been moved by a transformational operation.
14.Obsolete . a footprint.
verb (used with object)
15.to follow the footprints, track, or traces of.
16.to follow, make out, or determine the course or line of, especially by going backward from the latest evidence, nearest existence, etc.: to trace one's ancestry to the Pilgrims.
17.to follow (footprints, evidence, the history or course of something, etc.).
18.to follow the course, development, or history of: to trace a political movement.
19.to ascertain by investigation; find out; discover: The police were unable to trace his whereabouts.
20.to draw (a line, outline, figure, etc.).
21.to make a plan, diagram, or map of.
22.to copy (a drawing, plan, etc.) by following the lines of the original on a superimposed transparent sheet.
23.to mark or ornament with lines, figures, etc.
24.to make an impression or imprinting of (a design, pattern, etc.).
25.(of a self-registering instrument) to print in a curved, broken, or wavy-lined manner.
26.to put down in writing.
27.to go back in history, ancestry, or origin; date back in time: Her family traces back to Paul revere.
28.to follow a course, trail, etc.; make one's way.
29.(of a self-registering instrument) to print a record in a curved, broken, or wavy-lined manner.