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Avoiding hibernation

It can be tempting for those of us in cold climates to stay indoors most of the winter, relishing the technology that heats our homes. Several locations that you would generally count as outdoor eagerly provide opportunities to visit when it’s cold, with a variety of both indoor and outdoor activities.

A snow-covered pond with grasses in front and a variety of trees in the distance.

Morton Arboretum, for example, hosted a Chocolate Weekend last Saturday and Sunday, featuring a variety of local chocolate vendors – who knew there were so many? – many of whom were offering samples. That, not surprisingly, was an indoor event… convincing vendors to stand outside in 25 degree weather would probably be difficult. (Well, at least after the Christkindlmarket season.)

They have a chili cook-off at the end of the month, and assorted specialty food and drink events including a “Winter Whiskey Tasting” in March. They also have outdoor events, such as a Conifer Walk, and they offer snowshoe and ski rentals when there’s four or more inches of snow on the ground. Not that you’ll want to use those shoes or skis on the mostly untouched snow in this photo – that’s actually a pond. The only footprints on that clearly belonged to a small animal.

Similarly, Brookfield Zoo offers an assortment of events throughout the winter. Both locations have holiday lights leading up to New Year’s, both offer Valentine-themed dinners, and as things warm up, Brookfield Zoo is hosting a lantern festival some evenings from mid-March to mid-May. Brookfield has many indoor exhibits as well, so it’s reasonable to spend a few minutes outdoors viewing the animals that enjoy the cold before popping into a building and shedding the coat and gloves for a while.

What other outdoor venues do you enjoy visiting this time of year?

An eclectic selection for Capricon’s art show

I’ve mentioned Capricon here a few times, particularly last year when I volunteered as co-chair. I have far less work for the convention this year, as a staff member, panelist, and volunteer, which means I had time leading up to the convention to craft things for the Art Show. Traditionally, most of my art for sale has been crocheted items, and this year is no exception to some crocheted items being available. That said, I’ve been experimenting with watercolors for a bit now, so I decided to include some paintings as well. Three of the thirteen pieces that I’m listing are pictured below… come to the convention to see the others.

A watercolor spiderweb various colors of shiny paints between the web pieces; the web itself is made of white yarn. — “Shiny Spiderweb”

"Fuzzy Wuzzy is a dragon. Fuzzy Wuzzy has a flagon. This may, perhaps, explain the 'wuzzy' part." This crocheted plush dragon is gray with white highlights, holding a flagon on one arm. — “Shiny Spiderweb”

Thoughts on The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association

The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association is quite the handful for a book name, and I’m delighted that this book by Caitlin Rozakis lived up to that handful.

Our local library typically hosts summer and winter “reading” challenges, providing sheets to track your checkouts and rate them. Anything available through the library counts, whether books (in various formats), games, DVDs, or even “how to” kits that they have available. I’ve found these challenges offer a great opportunity to explore what’s available at the library, from movies we haven’t seen yet to picking up books off the new fiction or the recommended by staff shelves.

That’s how I found The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, on the new fiction shelf, as it was just published in May 2025. The basic premise is that Vivian and Daniel are struggling with their integration into a magical community after their daughter, Aria, was bitten by a werewolf. As mundanes, Vivian and Daniel are entirely out of their depth, lacking so much magical knowledge that the rest of the community takes for granted. This is, of course, an ideal perspective for telling such a story, as the readers are exposed to the worldbuilding along with the characters.

Having relocated to be closer to the exclusive Grimoire Grammar School, one of a handful of magical schools in North America, Vivian, as former accountant turned stay-at-home mom, throws herself into the school’s PTA and the parents’ WhatsApp group in an attempt to fit in. To her dismay, she discovers that the prophecy of doom overshadowing this hidden magical town sounds distressingly like it’s about Aria, and the town’s welcome becomes remarkably chilly as more signs of the Reckoning emerge. In the midst of that mess, she and Daniel struggle to prepare for the required testing that will allow Aria to remain at the school, particularly after discovering that other magical schools rarely mix different types of magical creatures and are much less likely to admit a werewolf with human parents. Navigating parent cliques and suppressed controversies from the school’s past, Vivian struggles to find where she fits and how she can express her experience to her mundane therapist without her sanity being questioned.

This is a refreshingly unique take on magic schools and how people interpret the concept of the Chosen one from a cryptic prophecy to their own advantage. And while it’s a standalone novel (for now?), our library has the author’s other book, Dreadful, which also sounds like a distinctive approach to a fantasy setting.

Temperature Tree and Temperature Blanket: Scavenger Edition

Back in October, I mentioned the discovery of a Temperature Blanket group on Facebook, and some related ideas, like a Temperature Tree embroidery kit. Since my embroidery skills are not at the same level as my crochet skills, I went ahead and bought a kit, which has the tree pre-printed on the canvas. As this is strictly a calendar year project, I went ahead and started it, despite not having finished my blanket, which is running from mid-February to mid-February. One of my New Year’s Day activities was to organize my embroidery floss colors for the tree, grouped in 5 degree temperature changes. I have a second organizer – also labeled with the temperature ranges – for the section of thread I’ve cut off for use.

The second photo above shows the 2025 temperature blanket as of late December, with Arwen walking on it and showing how large it is. There are three more rows – another 45 days – to be added after that photo.

A sensible person probably wouldn’t start yet another crochet project while still working on a project that size. But as people were posting their year end blanket photos, I saw one that jumped out as a pattern I wanted to try, and it will be significantly smaller than the 2025 sofa-encompassing blanket. The pattern links crocheted circles together in lines, connecting them again with a border, so I decided it would be a fun way to track the 2026 temperatures. The third photo above shows my progress so far.

Why is that the Scavenger Edition? Like many practitioners of yarn crafts, I have what some (particularly those who don’t partake) might describe as an excessive quantity of yarn, and as it happens, I just reorganized my collection after purchasing a yarn organizer that hangs over an inside door. (This does not hold all of my yarn; only my current projects’ yarn.) Rather than buying more yarn, I decided to use only yarn I already own, with the understanding that the selected yarn needed to be similar in size and texture for this to work. Like last year’s blanket and the temperature tree, I set up a spreadsheet to track the daily temperature and the color ranges to track what I need to do and mark when I’ve completed it. Yes, that does mean that I’m currently updating three spreadsheets daily as I complete each task. In a month, that will drop to two!

If you’ll excuse me, I need to go work on the dragon I’m crocheting with yarn that was gifted to me at the holidays. It’s a side project.

Setting my 2026 Side Quests

What are Side Quests, you ask? Well, I used to refer to them as Goals, but really, “Quest” is more fun as a concept, at least for us gamers. I don’t accomplish every quest I give myself, and sometimes I add quests during the year based on circumstances. For example, the year I got laid off, getting a new job became my highest priority quest.

For the most part, I try to spread my quests across various categories that I’ve deemed important, such as Garden, Fitness, and Finance (among others). Obviously, these will vary by person… one of my categories is “Garden,” which may be entirely irrelevant to you. An important factor is always making sure these quests are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. The SMART aspects helps in planning for achievable goals rather than setting your sights on something that may not be feasible in the time period you’re looking at. To use martial arts as an example, a white belt working towards a black belt in an achievable quest, but setting a deadline of a single year is not likely to be attainable.

I find that tracking my quests is also useful, so at the beginning of the year, I set up a document on my Google Drive listing them. Over the course of the year, I pop back into the document to make notes and mark when I complete items. Then at the end of the year, I copy that document for the layout as my base for the next year’s quests. In some cases, quests that I didn’t get to may be carried over to the next year, like some of the sorting and furniture rearranging that I didn’t get to in 2025. I’m kind of in a house organizing phase at the moment, so if I keep it up, I may complete that quest early this year.

What do you want to accomplish in 2026 and how do you track it?

Thoughts on the Universal Yums Advent Calendar

As I mentioned in my previous post about Universal Yums, we purchased their Advent Calendar for this holiday season. Unlike the location-specific boxes, this was entirely sweet: candy and chocolate, as indicated on the box cover, and from a variety of locations. The back of the box (not pictured) has the entire ingredient list for all 24 varieties of candies, particularly useful if dealing with allergies.

The box opens up to reveal (not surprisingly for an Advent Calendar) 24 squares to open leading up to Christmas. Each one is decorated in a way that relates to the contents. For example, the box labelled 1 has illustrated pomegranates, and the candy was a pomegranate-flavored jelly candy from Greece. Each square contained 4 candies (except for that one with 5… yay, us!), mostly of the same flavor, though a couple squares were described as “assorted flavors” and came with a couple different flavors of the same candy to try.

The accompanying book included the bracket pages and information about each candy in order. My one complaint here is that the candies weren’t numbered on the information pages, which would have been useful for the elimination bracket. There is a QR code on the brackets pages to a PDF version, so each person participating can have their own copy to work through. This was helpful; our brackets diverged in several places, and ultimately resulted in different winners.

In my case, the finalists were a Lithuanian blackcurrant and melon-flavored candy and an Italian multi-colored chocolate square that included dark, milk, white, and hazelnut chocolate. Despite the inclusion of white chocolate, the “Novi Cuadro Quattro” was the winner in my bracket. I liked all of the candies to some degree – even the salty licorice caramel – and will be delighted to see what their future years’ Advent Calendars include.

Christmas Stocking Memories

In college, I spent a year abroad at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, which was a fabulous experience is so many ways, including my first Live Action Role-Playing (LARP) adventures. That’s not what comes to mind this time of year though. As the dorms closed over break, I went with the guy I was dating to his parents’ home near Edinburgh for most of the month we had off (with a fun-filled week in Paris for New Year’s). His parents were amazingly welcoming to this strange American he dragged home, including me in the family Christmas traditions.

A collection of stocking stuffers wrapped in an assortment of different wrapping papers. (The wrapping paper is actually double-side, so six different patterns is only three rolls.)

On Christmas morning, I woke to find a stocking lying at the foot of my bed – rather than hung by a fireplace (not that we did that in Miami either) – and was amazed to find that every gift inside that stocking was individually wrapped! I recall being delighted as I unwrapped each gift, many of which were small Lego sets. (Oddly, I owned no Lego at all until that year. I certainly made up for it over the next few years.)

This year, in the midst of dealing with the delightful homeownership issues that I mentioned, I decided to do the same for my daughter… wrapping all of the stocking stuffers, that is, not the Lego sets part. (Don’t worry, we have plenty of Lego in the house.) I’ve thought about it in the past and never got around to it. After wrapping all of them, I realized that she’s the same age I was when I woke up to a stocking full of wrapped gifts, so I guess this was the perfect year to do it.

Homeownership is not for the faint of heart

Almost two weeks ago now, it snowed – again – bringing our accumulated snow to a whopping 11 inches early in the season. It was warm enough that the snow was melting on the roof even as it was falling, causing an annoying drip drip drip outside my bedroom window, which I unfortunately noticed in the middle of the night. I suspect the persistent dripping off the edge of the gutters is partially due to the smaller width of the gutters after the siding and gutter work early last year; this was not a problem we had encountered before. A few hours later, I was sitting in the living room sorting embroidery thread and realized I could open the curtains for better lighting, as it was a sunny day and reasonably warm (for winter).

Snow, not content to pile on our roof, garden, and driveway early this winter, melted into our house, leaving a puddle in our bay window. (Alas, poor Olaf.)

The ceiling of our bay window shows water damage.

I was definitely not prepared for what I found! There was a puddle on the bay window bench and water damage on the window’s ceiling. I scrambled to clean it up, then move everything we had near the window out of the way, discarding a couple cardboard boxes after relocating their (fortunately undamaged) contents. It was a while before I returned to sorting my embroidery thread, followed by waves of cleaning, and as the snow continued melting, the realization that the afternoon heat (I use the term loosely, it was in the mid-30s) was causing a steady drip of snow melt and I wanted more than just a pair of towels in the window to mop it up.

Monday morning found me on the phone to the window company, who installed the window back in 2018, followed by reaching out to the company who redid our roof, siding, and gutters last year. The consensus is that nothing can be done until after the snow melts (did I mention 11 inches of accumulation?), my towel/bucket approach was the necessary approach for now, and the cause of the leak (likely the gutter work) needs to be fixed before the window can be. As the weather shifted back to cold (and colder… last Saturday’s high was 8 degrees), the drip temporarily abated, though it did return this afternoon in a sudden burst of warm weather (high of 48!). Hopefully enough has melted to clear the gutters of ice, though we’re not keeping the warm weather for long, so I’m not sure of the repair timing.

Another disaster struck Friday morning, at least for someone who works from home… our internet connection vanished mid-morning! Our neighbors use the same service, so I was able to verify that it was isolated to our house, and now know that the wire bringing fiber into our house can freeze at the box if water gets into the wrong spot, pushing the wires apart and breaking the connection. On the plus side, they were able to send a technician out that evening, though the poor guys were working in the dark by the time they got here.

As the title says, homeownership is not for the faint of heart. On the plus side, there’s chocolate. On the downside, I wonder if that’s why my glucose count was higher than usual on my annual blood test last week?

Universal Yums, round 2 at the library

Over the summer, our local public library hosted a Yum Club event with treats from Taiwan. Having enjoyed that, we prioritized signing up for the next one when it was announced and were delighted to discover a variety of treats from Mexico.

Part of the introduction to Mexico sheet from Universal Yums.

Similar to our exploration of treats from Taiwan, Universal Yums provided full ingredients lists for every treat, as well as a paragraph with a detailed description and context for each of the treats. For example, one of the items was “Japanese-Style Coated Peanuts,” which is described as “an international fusion snack” and explains that they were created by a Japanese man who immigrated to Mexico in 1932. They’re quite popular, Mexico produces over 30,000 tons of them each year.

Most of the treats in this box were sweet, with only four of the thirteen items being savory. One of those, the Snacker Norteñitos Corn Chips with Chile placed first on my list, followed closely by the Las Sevillanas Obleas, a Caramel Wafer Cookie with Goat’s Milk. There were several people attending who didn’t care for caramel, so that cookie ranked low for many of the other attendees. My third choice was the Lupy Lups Sour, a Sour-Flavored Challenge Cotton Candy – easily the best pre-packaged cotton candy I’ve had. (When I was younger, I’d buy fresh spun cotton candy at festivals in Guatemala, and that’s hard to beat.)

All in all, a delightful experience, and an excellent precursor to the Universal Yums Advent Calendar that we’re currently working through. I expect I’ll share details about that adventure in the near future.

Touch snow, the grass is covered.

It feels like just yesterday that Cassandra posted about touching grass; it was actually two weeks ago, and the seasons have definitely shifted more towards the snowy side here in Chicagoland. In fact, the only place grass is visible in our yard is where we cleared paths to necessary areas, such as the birdfeeder and composter.

That said, it’s awfully pretty in a different way. The square lumps of the six matching raised beds amuse me, the leaves that fell after the snow (about 10 inches of shoveling, only 8 currently remaining), and the cluster of birds around the birdfeeder, scattering seeds all around it. It is the ideal time of year to appreciate the beauty of our garden… from the comfort of a heated house.