Winter Conservation Volunteer Opportunities and Creative Projects

I tend to like to hibernate this time of year. When I had livestock, I appreciated the warmth of the barn and the munching sounds of them eating hay while I swept down their manger. I get frost bite easy from too many early spring lambings/kiddings and have developed a science of socks. Aside from chores, I did make a big effort a dozen years ago to make sure that I signed up for winter activities to keep connecting to other adults.

Conservation Projects

This winter I signed up for two conservation volunteer opportunities. One is to be a Road Salt Monitor in a local watershed. In this role, I take routine samples of water in a local watershed to monitor road salt use. I chose a section on the Fort River near two roads and a condo development. I know I can access this easily and a friend can join me while I do this. It is near her house and we walk in a rewilded golf course near there with a den tree we both enjoy that we named Darrin.

The Connecticut River Conservancy sends a testing kit to participants. We send in the latitude/longitude of that location to register a location. There is a simple FAQ and training video that they send us to learn how to do this. The link is not my watershed, but is an excellent resource to learn what this is about and what my local River Conservancy sent us.

I have experience taking water samples, but it is always important to make sure that you follow the exact protocol that is recommended in each water testing program to standardize their data collection. If we all do something different, then it does not make the results of this testing valid.

The goal is not to stop salt use on roads, but to monitor it's impact in a specific watershed during certain times. Sometimes it helps inform brine, salt or other alternative road management methods if there is routine excess salt in a particular watershed. Click here to learn more. I will share more details once I receive the test kit.

I also signed up to be part of the Great Backyard Bird Count. This is a four day event, February 14-17 where volunteers around the world take a minimum of 15-minutes a day in a particular location and identify, count and upload those data. I use Merlin as my App to help identify birds. I plan to do this near my house. I am on the verge of suburbia and a farm.

Anyone can sign up to do this anywhere in the world. Citizen science projects like this are super helpful. You get the added bonus of a reason to get outside, learn more about the world around you, ease into middle age by learning more about birds (ha!) and meet other people.

Creative Projects

To incorporate these conservation projects into my daily sketchbook practice, I plan to also record what I see over the winter in a sketchbook. The goal is to see the seasonal changes near the Fort River and to work on sketching birds during that 4-day challenge. I did a Neighborhood Birds zine for a creative challenge in 2023. I recoded the birds I noted on the 1st of January while walking my dog Fern.

I signed up for "Become and Artist in Just ONE Week" workshop hosted by TobySketchLoose on YouTube. I found him last year when I was working on sketching humans and liked his approach to teaching. He does a loose ink and wash style that I think may be helpful. His is more urban sketching, which I hope will help with my needing to learn perspective.

One of my big goals this year is to improve my watercolor "wash" in my ink and wash sketches. I appreciate Toby's lose style and found a similar lose style for flower sketches by Camilla Damsbo which really helped my ink work. I was still frustrated with my washes. I tend to get tight and overthink details.

I want to grow beyond my current stage of sketching. I tend to do best with 2-14 day programs/challenges. I could use some free workshops for a little longer... I will share my results at the end of the course.

For fiber projects, I was determined to complete projects last year and got 70% there. I decided to frog two of them because they were not bringing me joy. I now have a manageable number of WIPs and do not feel overwhelmed.

Last year, I planned to up my skills game and came up with projects that helped expand my technical skills in brioche crochet, mosaic crochet, short row in both crochet and tunisian crochet. I left a tab on the website with a gallery of some of my 2024 projects.

I struggled some with my brain at times, but I felt pretty good about some skills and what I can and cannot do during certain brain fatigue moments. Like my To Do list, I decided to break my WIP's down into projects that I can switch back and forth between depending on where my brain is at that moment.

This year, I want to expand my skills in tunisian, brioche and mosaic crochet some more. To see some of the Projects I have in my 2025 Goals pile, click here. It is a Ravelry bundle/folder. Not all of the patterns I have collected are on Ravelry. I believe I can add them to the queue as I make them and will try that as I approach those projects.

Last, I have a goal of making and donating 12-hats per year to our local library. I donated 14-hats. They give them to children in the school district my daughter went to. I have completed two and was almost done with a third when I noted the yarn scraps I have would not go with this in that yarn type or weight. I will set it aside and use yarns from this years projects to do that. I have three more hats in the queue with cute patterns that are free. I will share those with the links to their patterns.

Lordy, I wish that the free pattern websites did not have the insane pop-up ads. My devices HATE them. I get it, creators need to be paid. I just wish ads were set up like a magazine or newspaper and not some sneaky pop up or move it around so you accidently hit it type of thing. I think people would visit them more often if they were not super hard to navigate with the pop-ups. I am glad it helps creators share content and get some pay for their labor. I hope to be able to purchase some of these patterns later in the year.

If anyone wants to help support the hat donation project, I have a tip jar. Proceeds go towards acquiring yarn or patterns. If you know someone with a yarn stash that they want to get rid of, I would be interested in that as well. I would love to make more than 12-hats a year, but that is about where my budget lands.