Quiet Autumn in the North | Preparing for Winter & Knitting

Summer is slowly fading away and fall is beginning to arrive. The summer here has been cold and rainy but I found something peaceful in its slow quiet days. And now as autumn arrives the rhythm of life begins to change. Before the snow comes there's always so much to prepare for winter. It's an old tradition here in the north and even today it's still part of our way of life. And after months of endless daylight I've been looking forward to the darkness returning. The evenings are slowly getting darker again and I welcome it. As you may know we had our baby girl in the spring and she's now at an age where my time for work and my own little projects is quite limited. But I've been trying to steal little moments here and there whenever I can. I'm making some new socks for our baby since these ones are starting to get a little small. I'm making traditional Finnish wool socks and this pattern is called train socks. And I love the story of these socks. They are called train socks because during the winter war an unknown knitting teacher unraveled her wool sweater to knit socks for a little girl shivering on a train. Since then this pattern has become a beloved classic for baby socks in Finland. I thought I'd share the pattern with you as well since it is freely available online in Finland. It's such a lovely little piece of Finnish knitting tradition. I got to the blueberry place. We are here with the dogs and our baby. But I have to walk around for a bit so that she sleeps first. And then I can pick the berries. I get this every time I'm in the forest or picking any berries. I call it the berry madness. It's just I cannot stop because they're so good. And this is also so much fun picking these berries. I mean before her I could easily spend half a day in the forest just picking and picking and picking. And not taking any breaks. And then just in the evening being like oh I'm so exhausted. They are so good and there's so many. And I'm just thinking about every winter morning when it's snowy outside. And we're eating our sourdough granola and just getting these berries out of the freezer. And they taste so good. But yeah totally berry madness going on in here. Preserving berries and other wild foods has long been an important part of our culture and preparing for winter. During our long dark winters here in the far north fresh ingredients can be hard to come by even in supermarkets. Much of what we find there has traveled a long way. And winter produce is often less flavorful and more expensive. So we rely on the vitamins and goodness preserved in our berries and fruits to help us through the long winter. And of course they bring a little piece of summer back to the darkest days. The long bright nights, the warmth and the magic of the forest. Every time we enjoy something we gathered ourselves we get to taste a little bit of summer again. So you asked how we preserve these blueberries. We put them in the freezer. I don't like this but we have to use plastic bags because they are just the most handiest in the freezer. But otherwise I would want to preserve them some other way. But freezer keeps them best like fresh and they're easy to store there. And we have a big freezer so that's the easiest way. But this is a level two now to do all of these with a baby. So yeah I know, I know, I know. Not the easiest. She won't let me sit. Preserving food is a tradition that still lives strongly in our culture. Even people living in cities with everything available in supermarkets all year round still gather berries and mushrooms and other wild foods for the winter. Perhaps there is something deeper behind these traditions than simply preparing for the cold. They connect us to nature, to the changing seasons and to the generations who came before us. There is something comforting in carrying these little pieces of summer with us into winter. Sometimes in this season of life when my days are already quite full with little one I find myself wishing there weren't quite so many things to do before winter comes. But somehow I always come back to the same feeling. I love this rhythm of the north. The way we have learned to live so closely with the changing seasons. And I hope to carry these traditions with me and pass them on because I love that they still have a place in our lives even as so much of the way we live has become modern.