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!

Catching up!

I was doing SO good at keeping up with a monthly post but part of that was actually having enough to share! But as work has continued to return to mostly normal (i.e. very hectic and busy) and I'm going into the office four days a week (still working from home most Fridays) I haven't had all that much time to stitch or blog. But I do have a few things to show now, so I figured I'd go ahead and write a post.

FFOs

Part of what inspired the finishing frenzy from earlier this year was that I wanted to have the Tower of London finally framed by the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001 (see this previous post for more background) and I sort of managed to do it. I have the piece pinned to foam core and I did a test fit in the frame but I haven't actually laced the stitching yet or mounted it in the frame. But I did snap a picture of what the final object will look like!



And I managed to fully finish a couple of smaller projects: "Nevermore" by Satsuma Street - which I had hoped to finish before Halloween but didn't quite manage to - and "Pizza Slice", another of the million Mill Hill kits I have. "Nevermore" is meant to be a hanging ornament but I decided to make it a magnet instead.





WIPs

I've been keeping up with Temperature Tree so here are the updates through the end of September and October. You can see we started to get a little taste of fall by the end of October, but the really nice, cool weather will start to show up in the November branch.





New Start

For some reason I was really itching to start something Christmas-themed, so I started this "Charlie Brown Christmas" pattern that I bought last year and then spent too long trying to figure out what fabric to use, so it didn't get started until this year. This week I've managed to stitch the little tree and Charlie Brown's hat:



Haul

I had managed to hold off on any shopping sprees for a few months, but I did need a few things and we all know that thread (and beads) cannot travel alone so... (and yes, of course there are some Mill Hill kits in there)



Other hobbies!

I also have finally started dabbling in another hobby that I've been wanting to try for a while and have begun restoring my old Apple IIgs computer! I started with de-yellowing (aka 'retrobrighting') the keyboard and mouse you see here, as well as the 3.5" and 5.25" disk drive cases (which weren't as stark a contrast, so I didn't bother with pictures). Next will be the CPU case and then finally the monitor, assuming I have enough room in the retrobright box I made. In the irony of all ironies, even though I live deep in the heart of Texas, it is basically impossible to get direct sunlight on my patio, so I had to come up with a way to retrobright indoors. I lined a plastic bin with tin foil and then covered the inside top with UV rope lights and then placed the plastic parts (coated with peroxide cream and cling wrap) inside for several hours. I'm pretty pleased with the results!





That's it for this round-up! I'm hoping to get a fair amount of stitching in over the Thanksgiving break and I guess with the fact that there are only six weeks left in the year, I should start thinking about 2022 plans! I bought my usual day planner that I've used for a few different things over the past couple of years, but this time I think I'm going to mostly use it as a combo general journal and stitch journal. Here's hoping a have a lot of stitchy things to write down in it!

February check-in

Well... that was certainly an interesting month! Given the big hiccup in the middle of it, I still managed to get some stuff done! (For those of you who haven't seen old posts, I'm in Texas... more about that below.)

I've continued to experiement with some non-stitchy crafts and I bought a 3-D puzzle kit by Robotime that was supposed to be a British Pub, but ended up being a British Music Shop. Apparently I wasn't the only one who had that issue, as I discovered when I went searching around to try to find someone who was selling the actual British Pub kit. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find one since all of the hits that came up in my searching had people commenting that the item was 'not as pictured' and was indeed the Music Store instead. Regardless, it was a cute kit and I'm glad I gave it a go. I have done a variety of 3-D puzzles over the years but this was the first one I did that was on wood. I also bought one of the dollhouse room kits that I've started to see pop up in crafty circles online, but I haven't started that yet. Here's the British Music Shop all finished:



I've been able to keep up with my Temperature Tree, which is now a record of the incredible weather we had last month. I wrote early last month:

[When] 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.

I'll note that I posted that on February 7, so yes, we already had a good idea that we were expecting some more cold weather at that point. It ended up lasting a lot more than 2-3 days, which you can see clearly in the light pink at the end of the second branch up on the left. So in the end I didn't have to wait until December for a polar vortex blast and a pink branch. We got ice, then lots of snow (about 6" of the light, fluffy kind), then more ice, then more snow, then some melting, but overnight re-freezing... it was a hell of a week. I ended up not having electicity for a little over 80 hours and I had water issues on and off, but I never completely lost water so I was lucky in that respect. We've lost hot water at my apartment a couple more times, including for a couple of days last week, as they continue to do repairs from the storm.



I've also worked a little more on the lighthouse that I started last summer but then set aside to work on autumn/Halloween things. I guess all of that cold weather had me thinking of summery things, so I pulled it out and worked on it a bit more (there's a little more at the bottom if you compare it to the picture back in August 2020). I think I'm going to make it a focus for the rest of this month and try to finish it soon.



I actually managed to start AND FINISH a project in February and early March and I will probably have it fully finished (framed, in this case) today or tomorrow, so I'll show that next time. This is "Lost Opportunity" by SonovaStitch on Etsy - I saw several people posting it on the cross stich subreddit and I knew I had to do it! The was the first time in quite a while that I had done anything on black and I ended up buying a small lightboard to put on my desk under my stand to help me see the holes. I also noticed that black is definitely less forgiving of sloppy stitching, so that is something I'm definitely going to work on more in the future. Even though I've been stitching for 30 years there is still a lot I can improve!



I technically had another start in the month, but I decided to rip out what I had done and start again. I've had Celtic Seasons from the Vickery Colleciton in my pattern stash for ages and I decided to start it on a piece of 18 count black aida but I wasn't happy with how my stitching was coming out so I frogged it (see above about trying to improve my sloppy stitching). I started on the winter section, but after I ripped that out, I'm going to try again on the spring side. I think it's going to look amazing on black so don't want to completely give up on it!

Finally, I did a little brithday shopping from 123 Stitch and got some fabric, some thread conditioner (which I've never tried so I thought I finally would) and a couple of kits. Of course, one of the kits was another little Mill Hill kit! I'm working on that right now, so I'll show it next month since I know I'll finish it pretty quickly. And yes, I already have a ton of fabric but almost all of it is 28 and 32 count and I've decided to start playing around with 18ct aida again because it will make some of the larger projects I've been looking at become a bit more managable (yes, I know I could do 36 count instead but I'm pretty sure my eyes would never forgive me if I did). I've been getting some smaller, inexpensive cuts, such as 9"x13", to see the colors before getting larger cuts if I decide to use it on those projects I've been eyeing. Plus, I like the little cuts for ornaments and other small designs so it never goes to waste!

That's it for the February round-up! Since I'm taking Spring Break off, I expect to get a fair amount of stitching done in March. It's not like there's a whole lot else for me to do since I'm not vaccinated (like a whole lot of Texas) and our governor unwisely decicded to open everything back up starting next week, so I'm going to be extra careful for a while. Thankfully a lot of local businesses are keeping their mask requirements, but I'm still going to be cautious until I get my jabs!

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!