On Boxing day, we woke up to the amazing ice storm I showed you the other day….
It definitely wasn’t a good day to go out (not that I was planning to), but it was a good day to stay in and play in the studio. I had a couple projects on the go that I hoped to clear out before the new year.
The first was the batik Log Cabins
They just needed to be arranged and sewn together into a top. It actually didn’t take very long.
The weather was so crappy, I kept Furby in for the day. He protested by joining in on the sewing process. Burton wasn’t overly thrilled with his participation, but we still managed to get it together and put a quick border on it.
The boys were all pretty excited about that.
It finished up at about 50″ x 72″. So a nice lap size. I have a nice littlev white/grey batik for the back, and some pretty pink for the binding. This is all packed up in a bag – ready to head to Mom’s for quilting!
That basket is overflowing with all the little Leader/Ender two-patch postage stamps turned into four patches. Yep – we worked our way through them all already! Burton, is not nearly as excited about that as I am.
But… now that we have four patches…
We can turn them into eight patches! That certainly sounds exciting to me!
I mentioned ages ago that I really wanted to get Rupert the Squishmallow Shark pet bed. But I refused to spend $50 on a pet bed he likely wouldn’t use.
Well… last week, Dave and I were running post-Christmas errands and stopped at Shoppers. There… on clearance…
Yep. A Hello Kitty Squishmallow pet bed. And as you can telll. I bought it. Why? After refusing to get the shark one…
Hello Kitty!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was on clearance – just $15!!!
For that price, it was worth the risk. I brought it home, put it in one of Rupert’s favourite sleeping spots and hoped for the best.
Hello 2026! It’s always exciting to welcome a brand new shiny year!
Like all years, I hope this year brings health and wellness to all my loved ones (including all my dear readers!).
For the house, I hope it brings us a chance to finally start tackling the rooms inside. As many of you know, this house is stuck somewhere between 1960 and 1970 when it comes to walls and floors. When we first moved in we managed to update just two rooms – the lower living room and Dave’s studio. Then we had to focus on bigger/costlier projects (drying up/insulating the basement, replacing all the windows, and updating the HVAC). That left us with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, the upper living room, dining room and kitchen left to update.
Our mortgage will be refinanced in June, and I’m hoping that will help us consolidate some things and free up some cash to do a couple of rooms. We’d like to start with my office and Dave’s workout room/guest room. I think two rooms is a good goal for this year.
For my gardens, I hope it brings rain!!! As you know, last year was very dry, so some better weather would be great. I didn’t expand the fence borders as I’d hoped, so I plan to that this year. But as I noted last year – not to buy more plants, but to spread out the ones I have a little better. I am going to start lots of seeds in seed snails this year. I’d like to promise that I won’t buy ANY new plants, but we both know I’d be lying. Maybe I can limit it to one or two new roses that I don’t really have room for…
For crafting…
First, I’d really like to clean up my rage craft table. I’m hoping to do one project a weekend this winter before gardening season gets under way
Second – continue knitting from the stash. If I can complete at least 12 knit projects this year, I’ll be a happy lady!
Third -for quilting… like my knit projects, I’d like to complete at least 12 quilts. I did eight last year, so squeaking out 4 more shouldn’t be too hard if I set my mind to it. I will also be using only stash – because I am literally tripping over fabric in my studio. I really need to pare it down to a more manageable level!
Well, here we are on the cusp of a brand new year. And what can I say about the old one? 2025 wasn’t a bad year…. but it wasn’t a great year. It was just a year.
We lost Relic, but gained Furby. Everyone in our circle is in pretty good health. Careers are doing their thing. We had some small adventures – trips to Toronto, our favourite petting zoo, a museum. I spent lots of time doing what I love – gardening and crafting. Life just continued on.
As noted, we didn’t do any house projects, as the furnace/heat pump/water heater we installed ate up all our house fixing budget for the year. That said, I am very happy with the purchase. My utility bills have dropped significantly, and as predicted, it was so nice not having to install “window shaker” a/c units, nor to listen to them all summer. The heat pump has been great for keeping the house cool in the summer. And in the winter it still does most of the work – the gas furnace doesn’t kick in until the temps hit -10C. Other than the siding, we’ve done all the “big” jobs in the house. The rest is just making the rooms pretty (ie updating walls and floors)
We didn’t put as big a dent in our debt as I’d hoped, but we managed some. We are certainly no worse off than we were at the start of the year.
Last January, I said I hoped to expand the fence borders in the garden. I didn’t do that. Instead I expanded the front gardens. It certainly wasn’t my best gardening year, but it wasn’t a bad one. I planted lots of seeds, but of course, I bought many new plants, even though I said I’d try not to. (Not going to lie, I didn’t try very hard)
I did manage to knit exclusively from the stash as I’d planned. Quilting… not quite, though it wasn’t terrible. I mostly used stash, only buying new fabric for some backs for Christmas quilts. The rest of the fabric purchases were just thrift finds I couldn’t pass up, so I don’t think they should really count.
I didn’t do a Tiny Needle Year in review because there were really only two projects this year. The first was Relic’s Wildflowers, which I started in January.
and the second is, of course, my witchy sampler, which I’m still working on and will be well into 2026.
For the last weekend in 2025, I had the honour of two stitching helpers (Burton is that black blob in the middle of the photo – it’s a little hard to make out features in all that floof).
With their help, I made excellent progress. Second witch’s sleeve was complete, along with her raven, and all the little woody/tree bits at the side.
And, we even had time to add the orange bits to this section (ravens’ eyes, buttons, hat bands, and candle flames) so you know what that means….
Next time I sit down to stitch, I’ll be moving the hoop up! Now that’s some real excitement for New Year!
It’s unusual for my knit output to exceed my quilting output…
But I completed 12 knit projects in 2025. There are only nine pics, because there are two kitty-cat hats just not two pics, and the set of orange/burgundy socks are each a project.
And the last project I finished up yesteryday!
I started these socks for myself the day after finishing Dave’s Uncle’s hat. They are made from some Opal yarn I had in my stash. They look almost identical – but if you look, the sequence is off just a couple rows between the two socks. I did not do this on purpose, they just knit up that way. I love Opal yarn for socks. It’s not the softest, but it’s VERY hard-wearing. Which is good. Part of the reason Imade these it because I tossed three pairs of worn out socks just before Christmas.
So yep they are for me. And you may be thinking…. but Valerie, don’t you prefer ankle socks? I do. But I also like being able to do this with my socks!
Now… back to the year round-up stats:
As you can see…I mostly knit hats and socks this year. Six socks, five hats and one bulky scarf. I was so happy to make the Deathflake hats at last – I’d had the yarn and plan for ages. And I’m always thrilled to knit another kitty cat hat and continue that tradition.
All projects, with the exception of the shorty socks and the Opal pair, were gifted.
My knitting time is mostly week night evenings after dinner, so I like to keep the projects nice and simple. Socks, hats and simple scarves are ideal. This trend will probably continue into 2026. Though part of me is itching to knit something light and lacey….
… with just 8 quilts finished. That’s compared to 14 last year. And 24 the year before.
There’s a couple reasons for this. 2025 was exceptionally busy workwise. There was no sneaking in an afternoon here or there to sew. I also spent a lot more time in the garden in spring, summer and fall. And I don’t regret that at all.
Unlike previous years – there’s only one baby quilt (the penguins). The rest are lap size or larger. So they definitely take longer.
Of the quilts above, four were gifted, one I kept, and the rest went in the shop. There’s still one top to be quilted (Relic’s quilt) – but Mom is doing that one for me. It will probably be the first finished quilt of 2026 – though probably not until February or March.
I’ve also got my Kittens in Cups to finish up, the log cabins, and I’ve got a new baby quilt commission I’m soooo excited about! I think 2026 is going to be a great year for quilting!
Now is the time of the year where I like to pause, and take a look back at my hobbies over the last year. Lets look at the garden first…
2025 in the garden can best be described as “Interesting”
Spring burst onto the scene, bold and bright and early! We got our first bloom (a snow drop) in the first week of March. It’s not quite a record – 2024 saw snowdrops in late February, but it’s still earlier than most years.
But then around late May, things took a little turn
While the irises did bloom, they didn’t do as well as they normally would. It looks like my collection got hit by the iris borer moth. The foliage looked terrible, I didn’t get as many blooms as I should, and by the time I realized what was happening, I’d lost about half the rhizomes. Happily, I have A LOT of irises, and by the end of summer (after I’d removed the dead stuff) they all started to recover. They should come through just fine in 2026.
Summer itself seemed to get off to a pretty good start. We seemed to be getting rain frequently (every other day or so). But then I noticed something. While it was frequent rain – it was never a lot of rain. It was a downpour for a half an hour followed by sun and heat.
Not enough to really do much for the garden. For the flowers, it wasn’t so bad. I have a fairly drought-tolerant garden. I only watered when we didn’t get rain for a week. But for the veg garden… that’s where I really took the hit.
By the time I started watering it regularly, it was mostly too late. That’s not to say it was all bad. I got a fantastic harvest of carrots, potatoes, garlic and shallots. The snap peas did ok, but I’ve definitely had better seasons. We got something like five nice sugar baby watermelons, which was great as they were a new one for us. But I only I got one eeeny weeny zucchini, and we didn’t start getting green beans until almost the end of the season. The leeks and green onions were also a write off.
I was finally able to grow yellow tomatoes – and for once we weren’t overrun with them. But that’s a sign they had a harder than normal year too.
I grew mutant inedible squash (though that had nothing to do with the weather – just my own lack of knowledge). I got a handful of baby pumpkins, a small basket of gourds and the cucumber harvest was definitely poor.
But lessons were learned and will be taken into the new year.
The effect of the drought on the garden didn’t really start to show until late summer into fall. The Susans and Asters bloomed but had a very short season. Even the Coneflowers were a little lack luster. The Cosmos I planted probably struggled most of all. They are usually the stars of the end of season but not this year.
The roses had another tough year. Though not quite as bad as the previous. They handle drought pretty well once they are established. And I managed to keep on top of the darn Rose Sawfly for the most part. The #(%@ing Japanese beetles were another matter. We battled daily and I won’t say I completely lost… more like we came to a stalemate.
The roses don’t bloom well in the really humid, melting heat of July and August, so their best time is June, then September and October. It’s one of the reasons I always pick roses that bloom more than once.
If there was one major success this year, I’d say it was the sunflowers. I grew some absolutely beautiful ones this year and hope to do so again next year.
In terms of actual garden work. I feel like I stayed on top of the weeding, mostly. I expanded both the front garden and island garden, and redid the garden along the side of the front porch. I added a new garden along the back fence. But that was it.
In the new year, I’d like to widen the gardens around the catio and down the side fence in the back yard. But not to add new plants – just to make some better room for the ones that are there.
I had great success with seed snails, so I think we’ll be starting lots of seeds here come April. Hopefully 2026 will bring a beautiful, bountiful garden!
Wandering Cat Studio 