by Kat | Feb 23, 2026 | General, Words
It has been a curious month, my friends and here in the south hills of Pittsburgh, it has been a snowy one. In fact, we had more consecutive days with snow on the ground since I moved here almost 14 years ago now. And while most of my neighbors have found this phenomenon upsetting, I have loved it deeply.
I have often heard talk of the nostalgia of snow, the way that we always imagine our childhoods to have been snowier than they actually were. — Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
This statement rang profoundly true for myself as I navigated February… and the snowy month helped tremendously! I wandered down the halls of the memories of my Winter’s Past in Holland, Michigan… a place that is much snowier than Pittsburgh will ever be… and I delighted in the brief encounter with winter I could enjoy this year and we even got some snow overnight! I will take a check on the snowiest February in recent Pittsburgh history chart!
But in this deep winter month, I also began to see (and feel) changes… more noticeable daylight, the return of birdsong, I watched the snow from earlier in the month melt, and welcomed new coverings of snow more than once, I saw bulbs begin to sprout, and then over the weekend… I saw snowdrop blossoms opening in the crisp February air… all good things and this latest blanket of snow won’t hurt them at all. I felt very much these outward signs mirrored my inward feelings. Some days I felt lighter and some days did not but all around me the world was helping me move forward.
I also spent some time learning this month… stretching my brain, trying new things that feel awkward and uncomfortable in my hands. I attended a talk by Mark S. Burrows, Ph.D on “The Outward Gaze: Rilke, Rodin and the Conversation Between Poetry and Sculpture.” (this was so incredibly good…I will be jumping at the opportunity to do this again!) I took the Alabama Chanin Beading workshop that MDK offered and was dazzled (or is that bedazzled… HA!) by what I learned. (One brief side note… can I just say that if MDK announced that Natalie Chanin was going to lead a class of her reading the phone book, I’d sign up… honestly, her voice is the most soothing, calming thing ever.)
And yes… I knit almost an entire yoke of a sweater only to have to rip back to start again. But I learned that sometimes row gauge is crucial… and I have “mathed” out the solution and have slowly begun yoke knitting again.
The thing that keeps circling back to me about this month is this… I am not certain I would have done any of these things in any other time. I needed to be immersed in Deep Winter to have the space to contemplate these things… to go deeper with Rilke, to slow down and pick up the thinnest needle, thread it, and begin to… stitch by stitch… add some brilliance to a piece of fabric in a way that is entirely unfamiliar to me. And to have no other distractions to sit down and math out the solution to my “row gauge” issue.
Things that could only be accomplished with no other distractions calling made me see a new value for winter and I am tucking away ideas of things that might be interesting to contemplate next winter!
Finally, I will close with a poem by Nikki Giovanni… it is a poem of hers that was part of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Art in Transit program:
Winter Poem
by Nikki Giovanni
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kiss
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower
And that, my friends, is the most perfect way to wrap up winter. Next month begins spring and while there might be some back and forth days as winter gives way and spring takes over… spring will eventually win! I’d also encourage you to check out how Cathy and Carolyn did this month!
I’ll see you all back here on Wednesday!
by Kat | Jan 27, 2026 | General, Words
“I recognized winter. I saw it coming (a mile off, since you ask), and I looked it in the eye. I greeted it and let it in. I had some tricks up my sleeve, you see. I’ve learned them the hard way. When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself like a favored child: with kindness and love. I assumed my needs were reasonable and that my feelings were signals of something important. I kept myself well fed and made sure I was getting enough sleep. I took myself for walks in the fresh air and spent time doing things that soothed me. I asked myself: What is this winter all about? I asked myself: What change is coming?” — Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Winter arrived early for me last year… and though I did not see it coming I recognized it clearly when it arrived. And though I did not greet it warmly, I did let it in… and, as I wrote in my journal, I had some instructions for myself:
Sink into wintering grief and stillness.
Sit and listen and observe.
The path forward is there…let the fog clear.
I spent most of this month rereading Katherine May’s book, Wintering. It is a short book that I believe one could read in an afternoon or two, which I have done previously. But with this reading I decided to Yutori it… I read it slowly not with the goal to rush through but rather to sink into the wisdom Katherine shares in the pages… and there is so much there. Despite finishing it last week, I have gone back to passages and read them again and I am leaving the book on my desk to pick up as needed. I am thinking the February pages will be revisited frequently next month.
Every January I spend some time defining my new word, and I did that again this month. Surprisingly, the definitions were varied and so interesting. Things I knew and things I had not considered like this beautiful permission:
season : noun : an indefinite period of time
This idea really got me thinking about seasons not being simply set by dates on a calendar but rather freeing them from those constraints. This is not something that ever occurred to me… and yes, I am sure I read that definition before and likely many times before! I think this was one of my best “aha” moment of the month… permission to not constrain season and to just let it be indefinite.
All this sinking in to winter feels exactly right… in this time and space. I have gained an appreciation of the pace of the days. There is a delicious slowness to them… no urgency to rush to this thing or hurry to that thing. Just savoring the season… in all its glorious stillness. I have stepped back from the digital distractions as well… Steve now asks me if I saw that “thing” he sent to me, and the answer is usually that I did not. (He is not amused but I might be!) But it feels good to have a bit of a January digital detox!
What there has been is a reinvigoration of my daily stitching and a delight in the beginning of my third 100 Day Stitch Book. Rather than feeling like I am crunched for time, I have instead leaned in to sitting quietly, listening to that quiet voice in my head and, observing… and without really having a “plan” for my squares or a concrete plan for the stitch book outside of utilizing a well worn sock… ideas began to form over the course of the days. It makes me so happy to feel my creativity having a bit of a spring renewal… here in the depths of winter… maybe I am finding that path forward!
So yes, January was a very good start on my year leaning into season.
I know there is no link up this year, but Cathy and Carolyn are my word companions this year… I’d love it if you stopped by and see how their journeys are beginning!
Header photo by Alexander Kovalev
by Kat | Jan 5, 2026 | General, Welcome
And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been. — Rainer Maria Rilke
I really am feeling like I need to set a few intentions for this month and year because I fear if I don’t the Great Wallowing in Aimless Days will consume me. I am really struggling to find a focus each day, I am not sleeping well… which might be contributing. But neither waking hours nor sleep seem to be good companions of late… so what’s a person to do in all this but to set some intentions with the hopes of redirecting myself a bit.
In 2025 I did not spend any time at all spinning and as I began to review the year in the last weeks of December, I thought about “what was missing” in my 2025 days… and spinning jumped right out at me. I have been thinking about spinning quite a bit since Full On Sweater Weather arrived… I have had a “sweater spin” that has been knocking about in my head, and it became a bit louder since I have been wearing this sweater. The spinning of the yarn for that sweater did not happen overnight and it certainly won’t happen at all for a new sweater if I don’t make a plan to do some spinning. So yes, spinning will be A Thing in 2026. I think the added bonus will be the very meditative quality that spinning provides will be a boon to my mental health.
I finished my 2025 Year of Stitching on NYE, but I have yet to sit down and begin my 2026 stitching project. I had intentions of getting it all prepped in December but that did not happen. I have added it to my list this week… perhaps the thrill of “checking it off” will be just the inspiration I need. As for last year’s stitching… it needs a bit of a wash and some gentle pressing before I can completely finish it. But I am excited to get it finished although my idea for how to use it has changed dramatically, I want to get it finished and tucked safely away.
Over the course of December roughly a half a dozen pairs of socks sprung holes with several more wearing very thin… so I am declaring 2026 Operation Sock Drawer Replenishment. I began a pair in late December and am moving down the leg of sock two. My plan for the year is to just keep going on socks… at least until the Sock Drawer reaches the correct volume of socks.
I had spent a good bit of last year thinking that 2026 would be the last year I focus on a “Word of the Year” and I thought it would be a good finish to circle back to the word I began this journey with – joy. I really did not understand or know what spending a year contemplating a word could mean and, as the year began and unfolded, I felt like joy and I could spend a good bit of time together… but then in August a new Emergence volume appeared and, while I ordered the new volume and companion book, I did not veer from my plans for A Year of Joy. But then as November brought life to a crashing halt… I realized that I could not stomach spending a year finding joy at all. So this year, it feels exactly right to contemplate Seasons as my word. I feel like this will be the exact journey I need to begin in this moment.
Finally, this whole blogging thing has really been a struggle for me recently because most days I do not feel very cheerful or upbeat right now. I have started a few blog posts that never went beyond the starting points. Forced cheerfulness is not an easy place to write from. The only posts I feel up to writing currently are the Unraveled Wednesday posts. Those will continue in the exact format they are currently… there will be a post every Wednesday with a link up for all those who want to participate. The community of making and reading bloggers is one I am so grateful for… I cannot promise that every Wednesday I will be cheerful and upbeat… but there will be socks, and stitching, and some spinning, and of course… reading. That being said, I don’t know if I will be posting anything at all beyond the Wednesday posts, although my thoughts are that I will share an update of how Seasons and I are getting along sometime near the end of January.
Whew, for not thinking I had anything to say… this sure got wordy and fast! If you are still here… thank you. I wish you all the Happiest of New Year’s and a healthy January.
I will see you all back here on Wednesday!
Header photo by Pixabay
