I’ve been making things this winter.  Georgia’s hat was featured in this week’s round-up at CRAFT Magazine.  There have been requests over the intertubes for a written version of the pattern, so now I’m working one up for submission to Ravelry.

It’s been quite refreshing to put my handwork out in the world and see it received with pleasure.  The most fun part of being a vendor this winter was talking with people who were delighted by the entry into their lives of something warm, sturdy, and perhaps a bit whimsical.

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Any cleverness in the title is not my own doing– I grabbed it from a gracious invitation sent to me during my stay in Atlanta last winter.  The event heralded by that hand-stitched card was a winter solstice hosted by a soulful, rooted, chewy, and diverse clustering of Southern feminists.  That time of renewal was marked by a call toward nourishment for our hungry places, and balm for the muscles that bear the hard, daily burdens.  That event made me long to spend more time with activists, teachers, and healers in the South.  Their supportive acknowledgment of colleagues and peers, their images of life and work as being distinct partners in a queer and poetic dance, was very different from my experience of the Chicago non-profit scene, itself so embedded in the silo-ed politics of fiefdom.

Thought we’re a good bit past the shortest day of the year, Winter is still a long tunnel winding ahead.  Lately, I’m following a red thread towards creation and perhaps wild, even embarrassing, expression.  This year, the inwardness of the cold season also seems like a call from a gray world to bring forth creatures to fill the silence with color, and music.

To that latter end, I’m working on a character act that will involve an Elvis impersonation, Sufi love poetry, and political discourse for the local Valentine’s cabaret…book your tickets now.