Blackberry winter

As I walked to my office this morning in near-freezing temperatures, bundled in hat, scarf and gloves, I met a colleague going in the opposite direction with head down and hands in pockets.  "Blackberry winter," he opined in response to my greeting.

Even though it's not a phrase with which I'm familiar, I knew instantly what he meant.  The opposite of Indian summer -- a cold snap after spring has seemed well underway.

A little blackberry winter is not unwelcome.  Scarves and other warm woolies can come back out for a day or two.  I even managed to use it for an object lesson at the Brave New Media conference yesterday.  I used the Ravelry notebook page for my Helleborus Yoke as a case study, and wore the sweater to the presentation, causing several double-takes as the audience realized that my cardigan was my own work.

Nippy temperatures also make it easier to work on those leftover projects from winter, like the socks I'm in the middle of.  And when I finish a scarf, I can head outside to model it and feel appropriately dressed, while my photographer shivers.

This afternoon the sun came out and made us think again of spring, after days of cold, fog, and rain.  I was not at all uncomfortably warm in my alpaca neck wrap and fleece hoodie, but as I walked through campus I saw that others had shed layers at the first sign of blue sky.  In my wintry garb I walked for a few minutes behind a student in a sundress, with bare shoulders, exuberantly flinging out her arms as if to collect as much vitamin D as was on offer this chilly blackberry-winter day.