Spring is on its way

One of my favorite things about winter is the chance us knitters get to check out all kinds of knitwear all the time. Literally everywhere you go people are wearing shawls and scarves, mittens, hats, chunky sweaters and wooly socks, sometimes all at the same time. Just going grocery shopping is fun when you're a knitter in the wintertime because you never know when the coolest earflap hat you've ever seen will be waiting for you in the dairy section. I so enjoy winter because it really is high season for us knitters to show off our work and admire that of others.
Yesterday I went to a cafe downtown, and I couldn't help but notice that spring is on its way. It's not that it's suddenly gotten warmer or anything like that, but it's more of a gradual thing. The coats people were wearing weren't as heavy as those I saw a month ago, and while everyone was wearing scarves, not that many people wore hats. I also noticed yesterday that it's still light out at 5 pm. Spring is definately just around the corner.
I have mixed feelings about this. I would hardly be human if I didn't enjoy spring; the daylight, nature coming back to life, ducklings (sadly, still a couple of months away). But the warmer weather kind of makes my inner knitter sad, if you know what I mean. Away go the beautiful mittens and shawls and in come the ratty t-shirts and shorts. The view definately changes, and grocery shopping no longer provides an opportunity for admiring good craftsmanship. So really, this time of year, when us in the northern hemisphere are saying goodbye to winter and welcoming spring is really a time of mixed emotions for me.
However, this fear of spring really only takes its hold when I'm here in Denmark. Denmark is one of those countries where it actually gets warm, no, hot even, in the summertime, and I'm really not a warm weather person, so I think that my dislike of temperatures over 20 °c has alot to do with how I feel. But I'm fortunate enough to be spending my summer in Iceland, a wonderful country where it never really gets warm, and so I guess don't have that much to complain about. Beautiful sweaters are on display year-round in Iceland, even if we do put our mittens away for the three brief summer months. I'll even get to ride out a good portion of spring in Iceland, as I´ll be going home for some massive research from mid-March to mid-April. I can't wait. Lopi is sooooo cheap in Iceland, as it should be since is simply necessary for our survival in that climate.
Last year I stayed in Denmark throughout the spring, and then went home to Reykjavík to work in early June. By May it had gotten really warm here in Copenhagen and I'd taken to wearing light summer dresses all the time, and foolishly, those were the only kinds of clothes I packed to take with me to Iceland in June. When I got home the temperature in Reykjavík was around 8°c, and it was raining, and that's how it stayed the whole summer. I was literally forced to knit two lopi sweaters in a hurry to wear over my summer dresses, just so I wouldn't freeze to death walking to and from work every day. I'll probably be faced with a similar scenario this summer, so I would do well to remember to pack warm clothes for my summer in Iceland. But maybe I should forget all about the Icelandic summer weather again, so I'll have an excuse to knit up some more Lopi sweaters.