January Reflections and February Intentions

A rebirth, an awakening.

Hello my friend.

February arrived gently this week with the Pagan festival of Imbolc.  The first signs of rebirth visible.  An awakening after the long dark nights of winter.  Imbolc marks the half-way point between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox.  Most of us in the northern hemisphere are starting to witness longer daylight hours, and signs of plants coming to life.  Snowdrops are emerging, beautifully blanketing the ground.  Daffodils starting to awaken.  Although we are still deep in the middle of winter, there is a sense of rising energy around us.

January is traditionally a slow month, a hibernation.  I like to immerse myself in slow activities, reading or working on a craft project or two.  As the evenings are still dark I spend some time catching up with my favourite series’ on Netflix, and YouTube.  It’s also a month when I like to contemplate and think about my goals and intentions for the coming year.

As we begin a new month I thought I’d share with you some of my highlights of January and then some intentions for February.

Favourite moments

I’m blessed that my little craft/writing room faces west, so when the weather is right, I am treated to the most glorious of sunsets.  January has shown us some of the most amazing displays of red and gold covering the skies above. 

There are gentle signs of nature waking up.  I’ve spotted clusters of Snowdrops emerging from the crisp ground beneath, waking from their slumber.  Birdsong appears to be getting louder in the darkness of the early mornings as I arrive at work.  A truly welcome sign indeed.

Although I am not Scottish by birth, I have a deep love of Scotland, extending back many years.  I have spent many a holiday there, both as a child with my family and together with Anthony, my husband.  Burns night is a tradition we love to immerse ourselves in each year.  With the compulsory Haggis, Neeps and Tatties accompanied by a wee dram of Glengoyne whisky and our favourite Scottish folk band Skippinish playing in the background. 

I’m proud to say I finally published my third story for Substack in January.  My writing withered a little towards the end of last year which I’m ashamedly blaming on festive activities. But during a writing course over the Hush between Christmas and New Year, a passion was rekindled and I began writing again. 

Reading

Here are a few books I’ve been reading and will be taking with me into February.

Sacred Seasons: by Kirstie Gallagher.  Kirstie teaches about the wheel of the year, the best times to reflect and go inwards and the best times to take action.  Broken down by season it is straightforward to follow.  She recommends journal prompts and rituals to follow within each season too. 

The Way of the Fearless Writer: by

Beth Kempton

.  I love Beth’s writing style having first discovered her via her Calm Christmas book.  Fearless Writer breaks down the barriers of writers block, and looks at opportunities to help remove the fear, as the title suggests.  It features a lot of writing exercises to practice on throughout the book.  I’m gradually working my way through this book and I am loving it.

Days Like These: by Brian Bilston.  365 humorous and thoughtful poems, one for every day of the year.  Inspired by an event from each date in history. 

The Minimalist Home: by Joshua Becker.  How to methodically turn your home into a place of peace, contentment and purposeful living.  I’ve taken this description taken directly from the Audible summary as I couldn’t put it any better.   Although it’s a book I have read several times before, it’s one I like to re-read every now and again. It keeps my mind focussed on keeping our house in some kind of order.  Ordered house, ordered mind right?

Watching

January is the month when I like to hunker down in the dark evenings and watch some of my favourite series.  Here’s some I’ve been watching.

Friends:  I’ve always been a big fan of Friends.  It’s easy to watch, the characters are familiar and it’s the perfect “pick me up” after a day when one needs a few minutes of distraction. 

Numbers:  We both love this show.  If you’re not familiar with it, it’s about two brothers and their dad.  One of the brothers Charlie is a genius mathematician and the other, Don, an FBI agent.  It’s a fascinating insight into crime solving using maths.  Great storylines but it focuses mostly around the characters, namely the relationship between the two brothers.

Pride and Prejudice (BBC 1995 Version):  A compulsory watch for me during January. The characters are just wonderful.  One of my favourite quotes from this, apart from the infamous Mr Darcy proposal one of course, is “I find myself quite content” from Charlotte.  How lovely that feels, to be so perfectly content with your situation in life. A great reminder to practice daily gratitude don’t you think?

YouTube

Early Retirement Wanderlust:  A lovely couple, Richard and Jackie who retired at 50.  Their passion is travel and with their campervan Nelson they take us on their adventures around the UK and Europe. It’s a highly informative channel, and for someone looking to get a campervan I recommend this one.  We love it.  

Hippy Highland Living:  This channel follows our very own Molly from

Slow Scottish Stories

and her beautifully calm slow living life.  She lives in a charming tiny home, in the depths of the Scottish Highlands.  Surrounded by nature and with her lovely dog Skye, Molly takes us on a journey of slow and simple living. 

Jonna Jinton:  Jonna, a creator living in the north of Sweden.  She’s a film maker, artist and singer, and her husband Johan, a jewellery maker.  Together they show the highs and lows of their life in the harsh but beautiful land they call home.

Living the Skye Life:  Following Willie and Sarah and their two gorgeous dogs Jack Spaniels and Nori on their recent move to a new home in the Isle of Skye. This channel shows the realities of Skye life, with lots of humour and fun added to the mix.

And the last one I want to mention is SewRayMe UK.  I’ve followed Rachael for number of years.  Her channel was one of first ones that inspired me to start thinking about an alternative life away from 9-5 working.  Beautifully curated, Rachael shows us a life of handmade loveliness and tons of nature thrown in.

Crafts

I have several projects on the go, but in January I chose to focus on just a few.

Cross-stitch: I stitched and completed a Tartan and Thistle lavender sachet.  A gift for my friend and neighbour, whose mum kindly donated a lot of her craft stash to me last month as she’s no longer able to use it. 

Knitting:  In December I started a pair of socks using some gorgeous wool I’ve had in my collection a while.  The wool is called Winterberry Wreath by Norah George, beautiful cream with varying splashes of winter colour added here and there.  They are almost done, just a few more rows until I can finish off with the cuffs.  I prefer to knit socks two at a time on the one circular, so they’re completed at the same time.  I’ve just about developed the knack of not getting the wool tangled up between the two socks.

Crochet:  I’ve got varying oddments of chunky pink wool in my stash so I thought I would make a blanket.  Not sure how big it will become yet but I’ll know the moment the wool runs out.  I’m thinking it will be an over the knees kind of size. 

February Intentions

It’s still winter, so my intention is to tread gently through February and continue to emerge slowly as nature intended.

Planning and organising will play a big part naturally.

Allotment:  Go through our seeds to plan what we are growing this year and create a list of what we need to buy.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Crafts:  Finish January’s projects, namely the blanket and socks and then to go through my other WIP’s to decide on the next projects.  

Reading:  This year I want to focus more on reading.  So my intention is to complete three books this month, including at least one seasonal novel.  Taking inspiration from Molly, I plan to read more seasonally this year.

Writing/Substack:  I plan to dedicate more time to my writing as well this year as we head through February, and start publishing more essays.  As winter starts to withdraw I also want to complete Beth Kempton’s Winter Writing Sanctuary.  My aim was to finish this in January but that didn’t quite happen.  It’s not the end of the world but I do want to finish it before we dive headlong into spring.  It’s been a wonderful course, and instrumental in getting me back in the swing of writing.

Tell me in the comments below how you plan to spend the remaining months of winter.

And so my friend lets enjoy February and ease ourselves gently and slowly into spring.

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Until next time

Debbie xx