Cultural: Winter in Poland

When we first came to Poland, I thought it would be freezing cold all winter long and people would need to look like this:

and the men would have hats like this: It would be freezing COLD all winter long.

Back in our early time in Poland, I saw in one shopping trip to the mall (before 1998), 13 full length fur coats and numerous short ones. I was taken back after being from FL and back then in the states, real "fur" coats were definitely looked down on.  But they are very warm and people here wore them - not for anything particularly special - but just to the shopping mall/center.

Since then the proportion of "real fur coats" seems to have diminished somewhat.

I've seen some locally in a second hand store lately. These were taken in December when I went with Lydia and Daniel thrift store shopping. 

They range from $30 up to about $200, second-hand.

Anyway...back to the weather. We found out it isn't quite as cold as we had thought it would be. It sometimes warms up in the middle of winter and everything thaws. As in our case this winter, we didn't even have to turn off the outside water spigots until mid December!

My husband, who originates from Alaska, actually loves cold weather. He especially found the propensity of Poland's winter weather to freezing and thawing to be somewhat frustrating. He said it's like having "spring thaw" all winter long.

So, while it is cool or cold here for 7 months of the year - normally we need heat from October through April - it isn't necessarily extremely cold all that time.  We may or may not have snow.  In years gone by we had very cold December weather - but the last couple of years, we've had a warm-ish November/December.  Usually we get one very cold snap - sometimes up to about -30C (-22F).  We don't usually have colder than that, and we've not had this in the last couple of years. This year we've barely had cold weather. Seriously.  It feels like we've gotten by without winter until just recently.

picture taken Jan. 2016

We did have one snowfall in November/December 2017 and then just this week we've had some.  As I'm writing this, we are expecting snow to fall until 3 pm on Friday. It's a very wet, moist snow - even slush, as it is just hovering around freezing or a tad bit above.

A little bit of research shows you that our average winter temps look like this:

October - high of 13 C, low of 4 C (55/39 F)

November - high of 8 C, low of 1 C (46/34 F)

December - high of 2 C, low of -3 C (36/27 F)

January - high of 1 C, low of -4 C (34/25 F)

February - high of 3 C, low of -4 C (37/25 F)

March - high of 7 C, low of -1 C (45/30 F)

Norwegian Snowflakes - a free pattern here.

April - high of 14 C, low of 4 C (57/39 F)

While I really dislike driving in the snow, I certainly like "looking at" the snow. Our kids liked playing in it when they were young - at least the first day or two of it. After a few days, it just becomes "ho hum".

I've made several "snow" themed quilts - three that come to mind right away.

A traditional Single Irish Chain with alternate embroidered blocks.  It took forever, but I love the look!

This one was made of embroidered blocks. I used a snowballed block as the setting. :)

And that's it.  Winter is great quilting weather. I love the warmth of the quilt on me as I'm quilting - as my sewing room can be cool.

Whether or not you have snow or tropical weather, be sure to check out what my sis has for you over in the store! She's been super busy putting up new fabric in the store!

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