2025 Year in Stitches (and glue)

Since I started keeping a spreadsheet stitch diary a couple of years ago, it makes it a lot easier to figure out how much I've done over the year and how it compares to the other years - and I definitely managed to squeeze in more stitching in 2025. (Probably because my brain needed the decompression/distraction more this year... as exhausting as 2024 physically, 2025 exceeded it mentally.) I had a very full ort bowl this time around!



I didn't set a lot of goals last year, but I did accomplish one that I explicitly stated and I got a little ways towards the other. The first was finishing my calendar magnets, so now I have the whole year all done! I should have changed up a couple of the lighter colors (or used the darker perforated paper), but all in all, I'm happy with how they turned out.



And the other was a partial success - I still have A LOT of things that need to be fully finished, but I did managed to frame three projects, two of which had been pinned for ages. (The other was the Mill Hill "Moonlit Kitties", which was on perforated paper, so pretty easy to slap into a frame.) I also bought a point driver to do the final finishing on the custom frames I've been ordering. So, here are the fully finished versions of "Moonlit Kitties" (stitching finished last year), "Wonders of Space" (stitching finished in 2020), and "Halloween Fairy" (stitching finished in *cough cough* 2010). "Wonders of Space" will be going to work eventually, assuming I still have some room on my office walls for it. And I'm so happy with the frame I chose for "Halloween Fairy"! Oh - and I fully finished "Panic at the Desko", which was my final finish of 2024 (and that one is at work already and has received quite a few chuckles).









I also finished a few WIPs this year, including two of the Cricket Collection seasons, "Spring" and "Winter". I worked on "Winter" a little at the beginning of the year, but then finished the stitching in December. "Spring" was a start in 2023, which I worked on some more in 2024, but then I was able to really get some work on it in 2025 and finish it. Part of that was that I finally figured out the type of stand that I *really* needed to work on these wide designs. And not surprisingly, it was another product from Ukraine! Now I just have "Summer" to finish (which I started this year) and I'll have all four seasons hanging in the closet waiting to be framed. :) I also finished "S'Mores, Anyone?" (started in 2023) and "Mediterranean Flavors" (a Dimensions kit, started in 2021). I switched out the kit fabric on "Mediterranean Flavors" and I now wish I had used a slightly lighter floss for the shading half stitches, but I still think it loooks fine.









I also had a couple of small-to-medium sized projects that I started and finished this year. First up was "Jaws Sampler" in honor of the movie's 50th anniversary. I made a couple of color changes in this one on the guys' clothes to better match the colors in the movie (yes, I actually pulled it up on my computer and paused it and held up colors against the screen... I'm that much of a nerd) and I changed the colors on the waves around the edges to be a gradient since I thought it would look cool (and I'm happy with how it turned out).



And I finally did two small autumn designs that I had kitted up ages ago - "Apple Pumpkin" and "Halloween Pumpkin Silhouette":





I also did four small Mill Hill Kits (and started a larger one, "Spooky Gate") - "Taco", "Enchanted Moon", "Taboo Kitty", and "Fall Fun" (taco picture coming later since it's at work):



And finally, I did the cute little "Purranormal Activity" from this year's Just Cross Stitch Halloween special issue:



I finished the May block in "A Year at Hawk Run Hollow" but haven't started any of the other months yet. Something for 2026! (I decided to put the whole piece of fabric in the photo so I can do similar progress pics as I continue on it - definitely the largest project I've ever done!) I also did a little more on "Sleepy Hollow" but was really struggling with it. I'm kind of tempted to scrap this version and start again on a different fabric, because I think that's what's holding me back from progressing more on it. I really like how it looks on that fabric, but I really struggle with 32-ct linen these days.





And the one major non-stitching project I did was to finally finish the miniature room kit that I started in 2024. I have two more that I purchased last year, but I'm going to hold of on starting those for a while. These are fun to do, but I think I'm going to have to explore some different types of glues and glue applicators before I do another (at least another with the variety of surfaces - plastic, paper, etc. - that this one had). I'm really happy with how it turned out though!





Goals for 2026

I have a couple of other WIPs that I didn't touch in 2025, and I think I can get at least a couple of them finished this year, if not more. After watching some year end WIP Parades on FlossTube, I realize that I have far, far fewer WIPs than the typical stitcher (assuming that's a representative sample), but I do tend to have far *older* charts, kits, projects, etc. than other people do. I have some 30-year-old kits in my stash! Maybe I'll pick one this year and start working through some of them (although I'm definitely modernizing the fabrics).

Most of my purchases in 2025 were from a fabric of the month club and buying DMC and specialty floss to kit up some charts that I hope to start on soon, including some Nora Corbet fairies, more Hawk Run Hollow designs, and a couple of the Cricket Collection month designs (since I'm nearly finished with the seasons). So I'll probably start a few of those projects once I finish getting all of the floss.

Happy New Year everyone and I hope you all have a good crafty year!

2024 Wrap-up!

As I expected, I didn't get as much time to stitch this year was I would have liked, but I did get a little done here and there. And I did a few other crafty things, including finally starting a miniature kit I bought a while back and doing by first book nook. I did have a couple of finishes this year and a couple of FFOs, including a finish of one of my longest WIPS!

FFOs and Other Finishes

I technically finished and FFOd the November calendar magnet at the end of 2023, but I didn't post it in last year's round-up, so here it is, along with the December one (which WAS finished in 2024). I also did the June one in 2024, but I'll wait and just add that to the final photo when all 12 months are done - hopefully by the end of 2025!



And as I was recovering from the all the work leading up to the solar eclipse (and then the event itself - which ended up just being one thing of the most exhausting work week I have had in quite a while), I started this quick stitch. I made a slight alteration in the text from the original and there is a goof in one of the greens, but I was too lazy/tired to unpick it, so I just left it as-is. I painted a hoop to fully finish it. This one definitely went to work!



And towards the end of the year, I FINALLY finished the Mill Hill "Moonlit Kitties" kit that I started about 12 years ago. It was one of several projects that languished when my eyes started going downhill, and then I was having trouble holding it while stitching even once I got the eyeball situation sorted. The last key to me finally getting this project done was seeing on Flosstube - and then buying - these wonderful wooden magnetic frames that seem to have originated with crafters in Ukraine (see below). I've started to see more people making them, but I made a point to get mine from Ukrainian sellers to support them. (It's ironic that I had problems with all three of them arriving safely at my house - not because they were coming from a literal war zone... all of the issues were with the US postal service!) I think I'm just missing one size now, so I'll probably go ahead and order it just to complete the set. :) There was one panic moment at the finish of Moonlit Kitties because I wasn't sure where the pumpkin button was since I had started the project so long ago, but thankfully I found it on a project bag with some other Mill Hill kits.




One final finish, which I put the last stitch in on December 31, is this cute pattern I got from Happy Sloth Patterns on Etsy. Needless to say, once this one is FFOd, it's going to work. I finally pulled out one of the DMC variations threads to use for the rug on this one. I like the effect!



Starts and WIPs (that I actually worked on)

I started The Cricket Collection's "Winter" and worked some more on "Spring" in 2024 ("Autumn" was completed a couple of years ago, but isn't framed yet, and "Summer" is eventually going to happen). You can't really see it in the photo, but the snowman is sparkly! I used whatever blending filament was called for, so I got a reminder in how annoying they can be to stitch with... but in person the effect is really nice.





And for my other big start of the year, I finally decided to start a Hawk Run Hollow design! I started "A Year at Hawk Run Hollow" with the May block, and this was how far I got in the month of May (which was when I took a bit of time off work in a vain attempt to use up vacation hours so I don't lose them).



Other Crafts

I'll hold off on posting a picture of the miniature kit until it's complete, but here's a photo of my first Book Nook. I saw this while browsing and had to buy it since I've become quite the Van Gogh fan in recent years and "Cafe Terrace at Night" and "Starry Night" are my favorites of his paintings.



I'm not going to detail all of the stash aquisition for the year since I'm not even sure I can, other than going through my purchases at 123Stitch and Etsy - suffice to say, there were quite a few of them! But I did want to mention that I joined a fabric of the month club, this time through Be Stitch Me, even though I really don't need a bunch more fabric - I can't help myself! I recently changed the fabric choice from the mix of colors and neutrals to opalescent colors to build up my sparkle collection. I think I'll end the subscription at the end of 2025 though since I have quite the fabric stash now and I'm still not stitching enough to really work my way through it.

Goals for 2025!

I'm going to try to get the remaining five calendar magnets done in the first part of the year - if nothing else, I'll do them in the month they reprensent (January-May). Now that I have the brilliant Ukrainian magnet frames, I think they will go much faster. (Although it's not like they take all that long anywyay... at least they shouldn't!)

One other thing that I'm really going to try to do this year is to fully finish more of my projects, especially framing some of the larger ones. I even already have four of them pinned on boards - I just need to get off my butt and order some frames! There are one or two pieces that I might take the plunge and have professionally framed, assuming I can find a person in town who has good experience with framing needlework pieces. (This is a big town, so I'm sure such a person exists, it's just a matter of actually locating them.)

I haven't really decided what else to single out for my 2025 goals stitching-wise, so like in 2024, I'll probably just go where my interests take me!

Crafty catch-up

I need to start finding more creative titles for these posts. 😁

As I expected, my stitchy/crafty productivity of the early-to-mid pandemic fell off as everything at work started getting back to normal. And by normal, I mean completely hectic. And then I moved in May, which certainly didn't help (especially with a longer commute)! But the positive side of the move is that I finally have a real home office/craftroom/library and I'll eventually post some pictures of that once I get things a little more to the final layout and organization I'm aiming for. It's actually not that far off right now but I'd really like to replace one of the tall cabinets with some shelving instead so I can SEE my stuff all the time. Even if I don't have as much time to use the stuff, I can at least look longingly at it on the days I work from home.

FFOs

I actually have a few FFOs since my last update, several of which were stitched, finished, and FFOd this year. I also finished and FFOd the Sun and Moon Mask by Olga Antropova that I posted as a WIP back in January. I made a few small changes to the backstitching and extended the beading from the design to make the hanger. You can see that here:



My next set of finishes were my Tiny Van Gogh paintings by XStitch Obsession on Etsy. I decided to do them on perforated paper, so I had to make a small adjustment to the backstitching on Cafe Terrace. They are all backed with felt and made into magnets and are currently stuck on a filing cabiet at work.



And an FFO from just last week - yet another Mill Hill kit! This is the second of their butterfly designs that I've done and I'll be on the lookout for more to go with the ones I've already done.



Finishes

I have a few stitching finishes that need to be FFOd, but I'm still making decisions about that. So here are the stitched pieces in the meantime!

First up is Wakanda Forever by Parkhopper Bart. I made one main color change since I really wanted to use this fabric and the original yellow (which I changed to green) just completely disappeared on it. I also changed the original white around the Black Panther mask to silver Kreinik braid. This one will probably end up framed eventually, and maybe I can get it to fit in a standard frame size!



Next is a cute little picture I bought on Etsy from Craft Time in Arkham and it will probably end up in a hoop frame and will go to my office. I made a small goof on this and did the backstitching on the dino in black instead of the dark-grey-green-blue it was supposed to be. And I did the lettering with flower thread since it's a little bit thicker.



And finally, Nightmare Before Coffee, from the 2021 Just Cross Stitch Halloween magazine. I had this nice orange-y fabric from Fortnight Fabrics that I really wanted to use for this, but the lettering kind of got a little lost, so I outlined it in a medium orange color. I probably should have used a slightly darker shade, but I think it will show up okay with decent lightling (which I didn't have when I took the photo). This is the one that I'm still trying to decide how to do the final finishing on, but I'm leaning towards a little flatfold since this will probably end up in my office too, over by my little coffee-making area.



WIPs

I didn't take photos of my WIPs today, but I have a couple of things that I've been working on since I finished the Mill Hill butterfly. I'm still slowly making my way on Mill Hill Moonlit Kitties, which I'm pretty sure I've been plugging away on for about 10 years at this point. (Admittedly, there were several years of almost no stitching while my eyes got gradually worse.) I've also started on a little kit by Bent Creek called Candy Corn of Mischief that I ordered a month or so ago and it just arrived this past Friday. It's stitching up pretty fast so that might be a finish next time!

Haul

I won't detail all of the stash aquisitions I've made so far this year - and there has been quite a bit of it - but I did want to mention that joined the Fortnight Fabrics "Oodles of Ornaments" fabric club for 2022 so I've expanded my selection of fabrics for smalls. Expect even more ornaments in the years to come!

That's it for this catch up post. I'll try to get at least one more update in before the end of the year - which is approaching rapidly!

April stitching round-up

In a reverse of how this usually goes - I felt like I did a lot of stitching this month and then when I went to do the round-up, there didn't seem to be as much as I thought. Maybe because I also spent a bit of time doing some finishing? I do actually have 4 FFOs this month, but they are all pretty small projects. As I continue to try to clear out some old stash, I pulled out 4 small hoops I had and found some small designs to put in them (and I used a few old bits of fabric too!).

First up was this little bonsai tree that I had some fun with. The design is from "The OmniBook of Quickies" that I've had for easily 20 years (more likely 25). I have a half dozen or so Weeks Dye Works skiens that I picked up when my LNS closed that have just been sitting in storage, so I pulled out #2202 "Bullfrog" for the greenery on the trees and used DMC 4130 for the planter. In hindsight I should have chosen a little lighter brown for the trunk of the tree, but I'm still pretty happy with how it came out. The leaves on the tree were charted for two DMC greens and I used a variegated thread instead so I just hopped around the design as I was stitching to mix it up. The range in the colors wasn't huge, but I still like how it came out. The bottom was a variegated DMC thread that was supposed to look like a copper planter, which I think it kind of does.



Next was this cute little penguin that I got from the JCS 2013 ornaments issue. I changed the color of the hat though to something that fellow fans of a certain 2002 sci-fi TV series might recognize. :)



Last weekend I tried my hand at tea-dyeing fabric for the first time. The fabric for both of the next two are on the results. I was using a scrap from my stash and I wasn't sure if it was 100% cotton or if it was a blend, so I made the tea pretty strong. Maybe a little too strong as it turns out since I'm pretty sure now that the fabric was completely cotton after all. But I'm still pretty happy that I gave it a try and I learned a few things before the next attempt.

This design was from the JCS 2012 Halloween special issue and I altered it a little from the original. I substituted DMC 90 for the moon and it came out a little more stripey than I would have liked so now it looks more like the cat is watching Jupiter rise!



And this one was from the JCS 2011 Halloween issue. For this one, I changed out the thread for the "booo" to WDW "Trick or Treat" which I used before on a border for another Halloween design. The lightest yellow was probably a little too light for the fabric, but I'm still pretty happy with how it came out. The more interesting thing was that it was the first time in over a decade (at least) that I've stitched on 28 count over 1 and amazingly my eyes didn't bleed thanks to the new glasses I got last summer and my magnifying lamp. I had a hard time getting this centered like I was aiming for, but after messing with it for far too long, I called it "done". I also left off the "to you" part that was along the bottom since I just wanted it to say "booo" because we had a black cat named Boo when I was a kid. :)



That's it for the FFOs, but I also have a partial finish because I wrapped up the spring quarter of Celtic Seasons. I started it on the first day of spring and finished it a month later (although I wasn't working on it exclusively). I'm happy with how it is looking on the black fabric and I can't wait to see how the remaining seasons come out. I'm not quite sure about some of the backstitching though since it looks like it is getting a little lost in some of the stitching and I don't know if that would have been the case on a lighter fabric.



And I've been keeping up with my Temperature Tree. I usually stitch up the previous week's worth of leaves up on the weekend, so this is complete through the end of April. (sorry the color balance is a little wonky on the photo, I was too lazy to fix it this month!)



I technically had a new start this month... yet another Mill Hill kit... but I'll wait until next month to post more about that. It might even get finished in May, although I'm going to try to concentrate on the "big project" I'm hoping to either finish or get a lot done on this year. And I'm just now touching it in May so.... good luck to me, especially since I'm expecting that a lot of that extra time that I got back in my schedule during the pandemic is going to start to go away in the next few months. I also did some shopping this month (I seem to every month these days!) but I'll share more about the Mill Hill kit I bought in that batch in a future update when I actually get started on it.

That's it for April!

January check-in!

I want to do at least monthly check-ins this year but I realized I didn't actually do any stitching in January. Most years I would get dissappointed in myself over that BUT this time I'm not because instead of stitching I was working on other crafts! Neither really fall under the "whatever else I stitch together" but - eh - close enough. :)

A few years ago I bought a few Metal Earth kits and started into the Hubble Space Telesscope model only to realize that I needed to start with something a little more simple. So I bought a couple more kits and... they all sat in a bin for a few more years. But I decided this was the year I was finally going to do them! And once I got into a groove (and bought a nice little tool set) I managed to finish all four of them. I got a better as I went along too!

The first kit I finished was The TARDIS which ended up being my "learning experience" kit. It came out okay, but I broke the part on one of the doors that allows them to open and close. So now that it's on the shelf - I'm not moving it! But, lessons were learned.



Next up is the Hubble Space Telescope that was the one that I originally started with but hit PAUSE on until I got a little better at these kind of kits. And you can see in this photo that one of the big drawbacks to the Metal Earth kits is all the fingerprints you end up with on your model! Another lesson learned on this one was to be careful with the thin parts that stick up - I broke one of the antennae off (which would be a big problem if that happened to the real Hubble!).



After Hubble, I did the Neuschwanstein Castle kit, which I was pretty pleased with. I had an issue joining the main two sections and getting them to lay flat on the base, but isn't too noticeable. And I didn't break anything on this one!



And last but not least - the final one I did was the Millennium Falcon! Not surprisingly, it came out the best since it was the fourth one I put together. There were still a few tricky bits and I'm glad I saved it for last since I was able to take into account things I learned from doing the other ones. Getting curvy parts into the right shape is - at least for me - the hardest parts of these kits so if I do more of these eventually I'm going to have to seek out some tips and tricks for that. (I suspect that molding it around another object might be the key.)



The other thing I finally tried was diamond painting! Bought a little kit in the middle of 2020 but I didn't actually start on them until right the end of the year and I completed them about a week into the new year. When I went shoppping for a starter kit I kept finding all of these huge projects that I really didn't want, so I ended up with the ones you see below, which are actually meant to be stickers. I put them on index cards and I'm going to glue felt and magnets to the back and put them on my fridge eventully. I couldn't resist this kit of mostly Marvel characters with Supes and the Bat from DC thrown in randomly. I enjoyed trying diamond painting and I'll probably do some more eventually, but probably not any of those huge pictures I see some folks on FlossTune doing. These little things are more my speed (and what I have space for!)



That's it for the January round-up! I have already done some stitching in February, so I expect to have a few things to show in the next check-in. I'm now all caught up with my Temperature Tree for the year so far and once I saw what the temps were starting to look like, I decided to switch to the "Hot Temps" color scheme so I will probably get to use all of the colors. We've had a few days where the high was below the lowest temperature color, but I don't expect we'll have a whole lot more. We're expecting another cold snap next week, but I still think that will only mean 2-3 days with the coldest color leaf. We went through a cold patch a few weeks ago (and had 2-3 inches of SNOW!) and then quickly rebounded back into the 60s and 70s. And I have a feeling I'll be using all of those 100+ colors once we get into the summer months! Of course, with my luck, we'll end up having a polar vortex blast in Dec. 2021 and I'll have a completely pink branch or something. But I'll have photos of Temperature Tree next month, along with a few other things!

September Stitchy Stuff!

I had thought that I didn't do a ton of stitching this month, but when I started to take stock of things for this post, I had done more than I realized! Some of it wasn't stitching itself as much as finally doing some FFOs, including some projects that have been FOs for about 20 years.

First up - the final part of the Wonders of Space SAL is done! There is also a quote above and below the pictures that I need to stitch, but I'm waiting for a thread I ordered to come in. It calls for a medium blue, but I thought I would try a sparkly blue DMC etoile. If I stitch a little with it and I don't like how it looks, I'll just go back to the called for color.



Next up - I had to commemorate 2020 somehow and I really liked some of the plague doctors I was seeing around, so I got the Plague Doctor Ornament by Night Spirit Studio on Etsy and just did the doctor part on black perforated paper so I could keep it small and make a fridge magnet out of it. (And this a photo of it already on my fridge - I just finished it this morning!)



This is another finish that has been a little while in the making! The pattern is "Pumpkin Smiles" by Ursula Michaels from the October 2015 JCS magazine and I made a few slight changes in the DMC colors, but it's still pretty close to the orignal. The reason there was a gap in my stitching of this project was that it is on 32ct. fabric (2 over 2) and I was working on it when I realized that my old prescription glasses just weren't cutting it for working on that small a count anymore (and that's WITH a magnifying lamp). I got my new glasses back in July and started working on this again on and off since then and it's a definite improvement! (Which is good since I still have a lot of 32ct fabric in my stash and I really don't want to have to add even more magnificaiton since it starts to give me a headache after a while.) I took a photo with it still on my q-snaps and tabletop stand, but I did take it off to wash and iron yesterday. Let's see how long it sits around before becoming an FFO!



And here is yet another cute little Mill Hill kit! I really am addicted to them. And judging by the various cross stitch social forums I follow and how often they are sold out on 123Stitch, I'm not alone in that! This one is Moonstruck Manor, which is think is new for this Halloween/Autumn season. And this is an FFO and also already on my refrigerator.



I have one big new start this month - Temperature Tree by Stitchin' Mommy! I mentioned last month that I really liked the temperature record projects I have seen people do, including this one, so I bought the pattern and started on it this month. I decided to go with 18ct aida (2 over 1) since I didn't want it too big since it's going to be sitting around all year while I stitch on the leaves. The fabric is 'Jade' by Picture This Plus that I ordered on 123Stitch just for this project. I had also ordered a couple of skeins of the brown that I thought I wanted to use for the trunk and branches, but when I held it against the fabric, I didn't like it as much so I switched to DMC 801 (which isn't quite as dark as it looks in the photo, but it is definitely darker than the color I was originally going to use). As you can see here, I've done a big part of the trunk and the January branch. I might try to get all of the branches done before the end of the year since it actually goes pretty fast being all one color.



Now - the older projects that I made into fully finished objects!

This first one isn't all that old, since I only stitched it earlier this year. This is the same pattern of The Child that I did on perforated paper and made into a magnet, but I also did on a piece of scrap fabric and did as a hoop frame finish. I'm still perfecting my techniques on hoop finishes, but I think I'm improving!



I also decided that I was going to do something with the various bookmarks that I've stitched over the years. I ended up just glueing felt to the back and skipped trying to add the tassles to the tops of the ones that came as kits. The pumpkins were a relatively recent finish back at the beginning of 2020, but the other three are from old Textile Heritage kits. The Irish Shamrocks and one of the Tudor Roses were from kits that I bought on various trips to the UK and the other Tudor Rose one was a gift from a friend (more about that here... from 2010!)



I also have a bunch of other Textile Heritage kits that I've bought over several trips to the UK, most of which were stitched well over 10 years ago. I think all of these were originally meant to be cards, but I've made the four smaller ones into magnets and two into ornaments. I have a little rack next to my front door that is meant to hold keys, but I hang cross stitch ornaments there instead. I needed some other non-seasonal things to put there for when it isn't Fall/Halloween/Christmas. There are still more of this kits in the "to-be-FFOed" pile, but I know what I want to do with them, I just need to get around to doing it!




That's it for September! Now on to more Halloween and Fall stitching until the Christmas crafy bug bites me!