Polar vortex
We’ve been waking up to unusual cold and beauty.
A sight we’re not accustomed to, on our east-facing, tree-sheltered, a few-meters-upwards-from-the-stream hillside.
Although we have frost here and there during the season of long and dark nights, it is not a very constant visitor.
Except this year.
I’ve bid farewell to my pea plants, and came to terms with not having young pea pods this early spring, this year.
But that’s ok. The garden is sleeping now, apart from a few odd cabbages, and I do believe it needs a season of rest too.
Just like us, who have been feeling the Season of Hibernation hit stronger this winter. It’s hard, sometimes, to be at peace with the fact that we’re not doing much. Reading, sipping tea, going outside just sometimes, for a quick bike ride with the little one, and running back inside. Late-stage capitalism and its concepts of productivity - ever-going, never resting - are hard to shed away.
But shed we must, and rest we must. Just like the garden plants, and the forest hares, and the very Sun itself.
Today, we woke up to tiny and delicate snow flakes falling and twirling from the sky.
It was beautiful. I’m not accustomed to snow, this might have been the second time I’ve seen snow falling, at all. I felt like a child, in delight over something so exciting and yet so mundane. Well, I had the best teacher by my side - little one was in awe, pure awe.
It wasn’t that much, really, but lasted the whole day. The tiny flakes (I didn’t know they looked so much like the white, cold leaves of a delicate plant) melted as soon as they lay down to rest on the ground. But it’s nighttime now, and who knows, maybe the dark long night will gift us with something else tomorrow morning.
I’ve finished this beautiful jumper in time for a picture among the snowflakes. Can you see them?
This is Knitosophy’ Milkweed Sweater, of which I’ve been one of the test knitters. The pattern will be released in a few days.
Like a beautiful promise of spring, after this long season of rest.
Warmly,
Cat x
PS. I’m not sure if I’m still on social media or not, but in the meantime, while I make up my mind, I’ll be here. Maybe I’ll start a newsletter, I don’t know yet. But I’m enjoying feeling what it’s like to listen to my own voice, and have my own ideas. It’s a rather difficult thing to do, personally, when I’m listening to so many other voices, and constantly distracted by a wee screen. Instagram has been a wonderful source of joy and connection, and creative work and opportunities, and it’s pretty challenging to re-imagine what it can be like, as a creator, not to be on that platform, especially when there is an already well-established “audience” there. I guess that is part of what scares me, the what if. To think that so much of my life depends on a single money-driven platform isn’t a very comforting thought.
So here I am, willing to explore, dream and create something that serves me and those around me, but I don’t know yet what that will look like.
