Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone's 2026 is off to a good start, and brings all (or at least, mostly) good things to you and your families, including lots of stitching time!

I don't set out really specific stitchy goals for the year, because that seems like a lot of pressure and it sucks the joy from it for me, but I do have a few projects that I'd like to work on (aside from my goal of stitching one page of HAED Fairytale). I'm signed up for Queen City Stitch Retreat's Chatelaine weekend again this July, so I'd like to start Rose Lights soon so I can have a (slim?) chance to finish it before then:

I have also put my name into the lottery for their retreat in October, which is centered around Teresa Wentzler's designs. While I have a lot of her patterns, I've never actually stitched one--most of them are pretty big, with a lot of blended threads and confetti, so they seem like they would take a long time to finish. If I get accepted, I've decided I'll stitch You Were Hatched, which is a nice, small design:

Another project I've been mulling for a while is to stitch Jim Shore's 2025 set of holiday gnomes all together in a row on a piece of fabric, then chart "Gnome for the Holidays" to stitch below them:

The final project I have in mind right now is Amy Bruecken's Lucky 13:

I enjoyed her Warm Wooly Welcomes so much, and I know I would have just as much fun with this project. 

For now, my goal is to get back on track with Jardin Prive's Histoires de Moutons en Hiver, which had to be put aside while I stitched a Heart in Hand model. I finished part 10 yesterday:

And started part 11:

Part 12 is released on Wednesday, so I should be caught up by then, and then there are just two more parts. Once this is done, I'll probably put Rose Lights in the Qsnaps and see how that goes for a while.

Finally, I can share that one of the Heart in Hand models I stitched last October has been released; it is Cecilia's annual Collector's Heart:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week (and year!)!