We made it to the shortest day of the year, side questers. Tonight the Wild Hunt will ride, some of us will burn our Yule logs, and tomorrow, the sun will return and the days will grow longer.

I, for one, will not be tempting the Wild Hunt in the year that has been 2025.

But the legends do say it’s a good tradition to eat something yellow on the solstice, to invite back the sun. My version of this will be drinking a cup of the chamomile flowers I grew this past summer, my comfort tea, with a splash of honey. I remember thinking of this every evening as I picked the flowers, and as I kept my lone chamomile plant watered despite the drought we were having. It’s gone now, the garden a skeleton of brown things patched with snow, but the chickadees still flutter there, happy for the birdseed I scatter in the mornings. Feeding birds feels like fighting back the dark as well.

I’m still side questing in bookbinding, though I have extended myself into dying the paper I’m using in more fun and textured ways. Most of this is happening with different types of tea.

It’s easy enough to do: first I blot the pages with the wet tea bags, then I hang them to dry around the woodstove. Once dry, I iron them, though they’re never quite as flat as they once were.

I experimented with soaking the paper on soy milk beforehand, which, I was told, would help the pages absorb pigment, but the paper was so fragile by the time I got to the tea stage, I abandoned the effort.

Because tea is acidic, particularly black tea, this method isn’t exactly archival quality; the acid in the tea will eventually eat the pages, but we’re talking a few decades. I’ll admit this would have given me pause when I was younger, dreaming of becoming a celebrated writer after my inevitable demise. In my jaded present, I can’t help but think of the mountains of garbage we all leave behind that will never decompose and suddenly leaving more seems an almost immoral decadence.

That being said, one can cut the acid by mixing baking soda with the tea when dying the paper.

I’ve gotten some lovely grey-blue pages from hibiscus tea, and shades of textured brown from black tea.

It’s the texture that captures my attention. After I discovered what was possible, I made a few of what I’m calling ‘composition notebooks’ – a few couplets of signatures stitched together without a cover, made from tea-dyed legal-sized printer paper, and alternating the two shades of colour.

After struggling to write in the more “proper” notebooks I made, I kept these composition notebooks small enough that they’re flexible while writing. Since I’m left-handed, I was taught to write with my page sideways, which can mean some notebook covers will stab me in the chest when I’m writing on the left hand side of a page. To avoid that discomfort, I usually use coil-bound books, but I’ve always wanted a handmade alternative and I think these are it for me. I can fold the notebook in half without damaging it and write comfortably, even while sitting up in bed. And I can easily redo the stitches and give these composition books a hardcover once they’re full.

There’s also something to be said for reaching for a notebook that I’ve already been creative with. There’s no fear of the blank page, because they don’t feel blank, they feel heavy with creative history. They feel safe and welcoming for untested stories.

or a few days, before the snow blanketed everything in winter, a pileated woodpecker kept returning to this well-rotten log on the woods across from where I usually park the truck. There’s nothing strange about seeing one of these birds, as they are often flitting in the treetops, but I’d never seen them on the ground before and I was struck by their size. I thought they were robin-sized, but no, this one was closer to a pheasant’s size.

They were likely feasting on carpenter ants from the old log and I was able to take a few blurry photos of them. I didn’t get close for clearer shots, as I didn’t want to frighten them off. Not an acceptable risk when I can otherwise watch them from afar for however long they’ll let me. And he did seem to be having a merry feast.

I first learned about these birds long ago when I was studying to be forestry technician. They’re what’s considered to be an indicator species, because their presence signifies that the forest is healthy and mature enough to sustain them, which is a fine thing for the Enchanted Forest to be, especially after a difficult drought year.

It felt like a good omen going into the end of the year.

I had hoped to bring you an announcement of my latest published story, but this particular publication keeps meeting up with delays. Hopefully soon! This is short piece, a sort of fictional essay that ties into the book I’ve been working on and I’m very excited to have it out in the world.

In the meantime, I wish you all a festive Yule, keep safe from the Wild Hunt tonight, have a very merry Christmas later this week, and enjoy the longer days ahead.