Hey Everyone, welcome back to Coffee Talk Saturday.

Wool and synthetics are how I keep warm in the winter months. My favourite wool clothing is from Ice Breaker. Ice Breaker is a New Zealand company that uses 100% pure Merino wool in all the clothing they make. I am a huge fan of Icebreaker clothing and have many different pieces.

I should probably tell you a story about how I learned the hard way of what keeps one warm and what doesn’t. Growing up in a small rural city of Saskatchewan where the winters are cold one would think that they knew how to dress for the cold – boy was I wrong. When I moved to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories I found out just how wrong I was in a very short period of time.

It was February of 1997 and I set off from Calgary at -30 degrees Celsius to start my new job as a flight nurse in the Arctic where the temperatures when I arrived were in the -40 range. I was there two weeks and had to take a winter survival course – pretty much mandatory for us who flew around the north anytime of the year. In case of an emergency, we needed to know how to survive in these extreme cold temps.

After a nice hearty breakfast we set out for the spot where we would spend the next 24 + hours learning how to build a Quincy (snow hut), lean to, make fires and send smoke signals as well as survive the frigid cold.

During the day it went up to -24 and the sun was shining. With all the physical activity we were doing we were soon sweating inside our huge Canada Goose parkas. My problem was that the clothing I was wearing under the parka was cotton which just soaks up the sweat and stays wet. This tends to make one uncomfortably cold when they stop moving.

I thought I had all the right clothing and soon discovered I was ill prepared for those temps and conditions.

I did survive the survival course and once I recovered from the weekend I went shopping. Layers of wool and fleece soon became my clothing of choice.

When I discovered Icebreaker clothing I was in heaven. All kinds of different weights for different degrees of warmth – I go for the heaviest weight usually seeing how I am always cold. They have socks, mitts, toques, short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts, long underwear, leggings, pull over sweaters, jackets and much more. All in great colours, styles and non itchy.

I even wore and purchased much of this clothing when living in Australia. I have never been so cold as I was in the winter in the Outback. The desert holds no heat and when it goes below zero it is cold especially when your house only has one tiny little heater on the wall in the living room which is suppose to heat the whole house. That was hard to get use to when I came from a place where the houses had central heating. I survived those winters too thanks to Icebreaker.

Even though I never want to do another survival course again in my life it was wonderful because I created a friendship there that still goes strong and the northern lights that night were absolutely amazing.

How do you stay warm? What are your tips and tricks?

Happy Quilting!

Disclosure Note: I buy and use the products mentioned in this post and write about them without influence from the designer or any other commercial interests. I have included links to the products at Icebreaker and may receive a small commission if you purchase from these links. This doesn’t cost you any more to purchase these items but it does help me maintain this website, so I hope that you will please use these links.