Winter…What to Do?
I’m a natural overthinker, a condition exacerbated by the winter months when I’m indoors more. January and February of 2026 have turned an otherwise manageable condition into one that feels less like my normal pensive mood and more like a diver descending into a hot spring, deeper and deeper, getting hotter not colder, eventually losing a sense of direction and reality, seeing unclassified glowing fish, maybe glowing from nuclear contamination that seeped in, who knows, and then the diver emerges delusional, having no clue what the world means anymore. I’m shamelessly cribbing imagery from my favorite essay by Joan Didion (“On Morality”) because it feels to me like the perfect analogy for what it’s like to wake up to a reality devoid of all meaning, which happens every morning when I read The Times. The fact that I call it “The Times,” glossing over the “New York” bit, and that I read it every day, already outs me as someone who’s statistically likely to be morally apoplectic about its contents these days. Faith neatly condenses it into the four F’s. Fake shit everywhere. The Financialization of absolutely everything. Straight up Fascism. And it’s friggin’ FREEZING. That about sums it up. I have no idea where to find meaning in the world right now. Sidenote #1: Even in the NBA, which I love, a host of teams are purposefully tanking their seasons in hopes of being the best at being the worst to improve their draft lottery positions this summer, because the draft system incentivizes it. NBA games are fake. Games, in general, are supposed to be fake. That’s the point of games. They’re fantasy-adjacent. But now games are out-faking fakery? It makes no sense. You see my dilemma.
On top of that, it’s unconscionably cold in Connecticut this February 7th, 2026. It’s been nearly this cold for two weeks running, day after day below freezing, but today, it’s cold as all get-out. ICE is everywhere (you knew that was coming). The Times has been running a series by a journalist in Antarctica, writing and shooting videos about how cold it is, about the ice, the knife-like wind, etc. Like we don’t know. Minus 6°F is the AccuWeather RealFeel temp right now, but the 24 mph wind gusts are putting us around negative 20°F periodically. Antarctica is obviously harsher, but read the room, Times people. Send the journalist somewhere warm, and for the love of God, tell me about that instead.
Before the seemingly never-ending storm system rolled in, we made a trip to Parkerville Lumber to stock up. There are massive, beam-sized hunks of cherry, walnut, sapele, and hard white maple resting docile and lonely in the barn, developing abandonment issues. The shop heater can’t compete with this kind of frigid weather, and besides, it would cost a thousand dollars a month in utility bills to give it a fighting chance.
What to do?
The timing isn’t all bad. Faith and I both started a new semester of teaching at our respective higher ed places of learning - or AI faking it (see above for what this added layer of nonsense fakery is doing to my mental health). Faith is a newbie, which means a lot more work. Plus, Faith has three metal pins in the left hand and a splint from an accident that required surgery. This is a good time to recover, since we can’t do much else. But still, what to do?
For me, the answer was … leather. On our way back from Parkerville, we stopped at Tandy Leather, walked in, and I said, “I don’t know jack about leatherworking. Tell me what I need to know.” We left with a bundle of scraps, some shears, knowing the difference between vegetable-tan and chrome-tan leather, and a sense of what other tools would be needed (not too many, and smaller and way less expensive than woodworking tools). The big, tantalizing bonus was that I could do it inside the house. My office desk became a mini-leathercrafting workshop in a matter of days.
I’ve been mulling over ideas about incorporating leather into my woodworking projects for a while. I’ve used leather to line playing card boxes and as a backer for a phone stand. I’d like to try using it for webbing on chairs and stools. Working with leather in these simple ways inspired my imagination. It reminded me of the assembly-ready stools I bought from a hardware store in Pasadena decades ago, which turned out to be a gateway drug into making furniture and, eventually, into finish carpentry. Leather feels good. It just does. I’ll admit to being a little weirded out by seeing full hides with little holes (eyes and ears) and the obvious shapes of limbs and whatnot. But I won’t deny that there is a deep sort of visceral pleasure in the look and feel of leather, a pleasure not even closely rivaled by the look and feel of pleather. Leather, like wood, is inimitable. You can’t deepfake it.
I’m honestly not that sorry to my cherished vegan friends and readers (that’s a tautology) about saying this. From an ethics standpoint, cows and pigs are killed and die naturally all the time. We may not love it; we might wish it weren’t so. But it’s the reality. What’s better, to let their remains go to waste in a landfill, decomposing amid all the toxic plastics and other crap we toss away, or to give them a new and durable life? Isn’t that what woodworking is about? Giving new life to trees in a way that’s enduring and beautiful? I don’t see the difference. It shows respect for nature by not treating their lives as wholly and cheaply disposable. But I might be overthinking it. I don’t know. I don’t know what anything in this world means right now.
As with woodworking, there are genres of beginner leathercrafting projects that initiate you into the basics of the craft. The basic beginner project I settled on was a journal cover for the cult fave Field Notes. Like me, my friend Scott, whose name has appeared in this blog before, likes these little notebooks. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re pretty standardish 3”x5” paperback notebooks. The inside cover contains boxes with the following charming prompts for the owner to fill in: “This Field Notes Memo is Property Of:”; “Pertinent Coordinates:”; “For Internal Records:” (with spaces to enter the start and end dates of the journal’s use); and “In the Event of Misplacement:” (including boxes to check indicating that there is or isn’t “a handsome reward waiting” for whomever returns it). Shall we place a polymarket bet on whether the Times journalist on the Antarctica beat is using a Field Notes journal? Ugh.
For years, I’ve purchased cheap, black notebooks of a similar variety. I use them daily to jot down to-do lists, shopping lists, writing ideas, project sketches, meeting notes, etc. Scott does similar stuff with his, but I happen to know that he also aspires to get back into drawing.
His mother is a graphic designer, and he inherited the knack. Sidenote #2: In the 1970s, she was a big Kris Kristofferson fan. She designed a shirt that said, “You can leave Brownsville … but you can never get Matamoros outta your soul.” I don’t personally know the reference Kristofferson-wise, but I presume he said or sang it. After she presented it to him at a concert, he was seen wearing it on more than one occasion. When Scott told me this, I immediately internet-sleuthed the shirt and bought one on eBay because I was raised in Houston, Texas, and my parents lived near Brownsville for several years after I left for college. I’ve been to Matamoros more than once, including the time I walked across the border with my kids at Christmas one year to shop in the market. Sidebar within a sidenote: I contacted the eBay seller and informed them that Scott’s mom designed the shirt and was due royalties. Unconfirmed whether that came to fruition.
Kris Kristofferson
Scott is good at botanical drawing, and we have done umpteen bikecamping trips together in backcountry settings where botanical stuff and downtime at camp are plentiful. I want him to get back into it, maybe even collaborate with us on a project. The thing he also does with the notebooks is take notes about anything and everything I tell him concerning what’s going on and coming up in my life. On or right before the day of something significant, he texts me. Because he wrote it down in a notebook.” I hope [your kid’s] first day of the new job goes well today. Tell her I said she rocks.”; “I’m sure you’re excited about [your other kid and their gf] coming up today for Christmas. Enjoy it, brother.”; “I know today’s a big day for you with that meeting at work. I know you’re probably hella anxious going into it. Try not to sweat it. You’ll do fine. Let me know how it goes afterward.” He’s that kind of friend.
I used the scrap veg-tan leather bundle from Tandy and a template I found online to make a journal cover. I bought cheap tools and thread, did my best, and it came out not so shitty that I wouldn’t use it myself. And I do, all the time. It replaced my wallet (it has card holders). I bought some softer oil-tanned leather and made a second one for Scott. The stitching was straight, the sizing was perfect, and the enclosure was way better (on mine, I used one of Faith’s hair ties; his uses a strap and an antique brass button stud enclosure).
The thin white lines (bottom left) are not scratches. They’re hairs, contributed by our dogs, Bo and Momo, neither of whom were harmed in the making of this photo. Per the sticker on the package, the cowhide used for the journal cover is from India, where many regard cows as sacred. Unclassified whether this particular hide is from a naturally deceased cow or from one of India’s industrial cow farms.
Re Field Notes: Note to self. Wait until leather conditioner has completely soaked in before inserting Field Notes, so as not to cause oil stains on the cover, as shown above.
More to come, I imagine, on the leathercrafting front. For me, it’s like a hot toddy, a mildly intoxicating way to keep making and to stay warm when it’s brutally cold outside. However you manage it, I hope you, like me, will take a tip from Scott and be present for your people. Make note. Reach out. I’m at a loss about most things right now, but here’s what I do know: this is the stuff that means the world.
