Last Look Back & Best of the Year

I got a lot done in December, starting with this holiday-themed bag that I made and filled with sugarfree treats for our brother-in-law, whom we visited at his assisted living facility for Christmas. He's 86 and still going strong.

The back of the bag. We had such a good time talking about our younger years, when we would all get together to celebrate special occasions. It was a really nice day.

I made some homemade furoshiki (with admittedly mixed results) for wrapping gifts sustainably.

I mended this Calvin Klein sample shirt that I got in a lot of mendables from Fabscrap. The shirt is a man's but fits me perfectly, so I'm wearing it this winter. :)

I mended and embellished an old crazy quilt patchwork block to make a top for this storage box.

I cleaned and framed this vintage cross stitch Santa sampler that came in a thrifted lot of fabric.

I also cleaned and then finished stitching this cross stitch sampler from the same lot.

It really looks nice framed, too.

I crocheted this winter hat to match my favorite crazy quilt tote because I love the color palette.

After I finished the hat I used the rest of the skein to crochet this scarf in V-stitch.

I patched over a large cut out in the back of this Calvin Klein sample shirt to make it into a pajama top for me.

I crocheted a mini amigurumi rabbit from a UK crochet pattern book.

My final project for December and 2024 was finishing my crocheted calendar mood blanket. I ended the month with six happy days and five creative, with only four negative mood days. I had to add new colors for happy and busy. My final row was the color for grateful, because I learned so much about myself while making this project.

I can see how I've grown this year looking at the colors. I started out 2024 in pain and dark moods, but over time my emotions lightened and I was able to focus on things that made me happier. This project also taught me to be more mindful of my moods, and to work on getting over negative moods so I don't end up wasting time being depressed.

The blanket measures a bit bigger than the pattern at 111-1/2" X 64" I think because of some of the yarns I used, and the fact that I do crochet a bit looser these days due to the arthritis in my hands. I was able to use 47 thrifted skeins of yarn to make it.

The only color that I didn't use at all? The one I picked out for lonely. I'm going to give the credit for that to my guy, my favorite person, and my friends. All of you kept me from feeling lonely this year.

Because I loved this project a lot I've decided to keep the blanket, and take it out on the coldest nights when we have a burn in our outdoor fire pit. It's certainly big enough to wrap up me and my guy. :)

To see an album with pics of the best projects from everything I made in 2024, along with notes about them, click here.

After much thought I've also decided on my calendar project for 2025. I will be making one 5" X 7" mini quilt per week rather than per day, and at the end of the year I'll hopefully have 52, which I plan to sew together either into a book or a wall hanging.

So why am I not trying to do 365 mini quilts as per my original idea? Several reasons: I have a day job, my arthritis is getting worse, and I don't want to spend my entire year making mini quilts every day. By doing just one per week I'll be able to do other creative projects, too. Taking the pressure off myself will allow me time to figure out what the design should be and gather my materials before I start working on it, and then space out the hand work over seven days. By scaling back my ambitions I think I'll be able to do a better job, too, and still make it a year-long project.

I was trying to decide which project I did this year was my favorite, and while there were many contenders I kept coming back to the brooch holder I made from a crazy quilt block I repaired. The fact that it was unique, completely my idea and recycled something beautiful from the past definitely factored in.

Test Run

To check and make sure I have enough cutter quilt pieces to use for next year's calendar project idea, I hauled out the bin and rifled through it.

I think I have enough, but I also have some unusable, unremarkable patchwork pieces in my stash that would also serve.

I took one piece of a presewn quilt that came in a thrifted lot of fabric and decided to try making one embroidered and beaded mini quilt in an evening.

Rather than use this busy floral side, I decided to flip it over and use the blue underside. I let the idea come to me and just played with it.

Here's the finished mini quilt, which took about 3 hours to make. This idea will take about twice as long as my crochet calendar mood blanket to make every day, and I probably won't have time enough every day to do all the embroidery and beading I did on this one. That's not discouraging to me; I want to do more quilting. My arthritis may become an issue, but then I can use the sewing machine instead of doing hand work.

It took me one night to make up seven different foundations for mini quilts out of cutter pieces and some vintage embroidered linen scraps. I could make up 365 of them if I work on that every day from now until January 1st. Only now I'm thinking, what am I going to do with them once I finish the project? Back to thinking it over again. :)

Wannabut Yarn

The 9lb. yarn lot with many colors I needed that I was able to thrift for a minimum bid arrived last month. Let's see if it was worth what I paid for it.

There were 30 skeins and balls of yarn in pristine condition with no smell; a lot more than I thought I'd get when I bid on the lot (I had counted about 20 in the auction listing photo.) In keeping with my promise this year to thrift everything I can I needed some specific colors and weights of yarn for some holiday projects.

That one jumbo skein of white and metallic spakled chenille might be enough for a wreath, and costs $7.44.

It's a fun mix of bargain and expensive yarns. This striped Just Cotton costs only $1.25 per skein, and will be perfect to use for gift wrapping.

The original owner bought this pricey Opus specialty yarn on sale; it runs $6.99 per skein. I've never worked with this type of yarn but I should have enough to make a winter hat for myself.

I tracked down the price for this handpainted merino/bamboo/nylon fingering weight yarn, and it's $32.00 per skein. Not kidding. Specialty yarns from small farms like this skein are super pricey.

I have no problem pricing the rest of the skeins at $5.00 resale. Added to the figures for the skeins I've already mentioned, the lot is then worth $170.41. I paid $9.99 for it. Savings: $160.42.

Materials Ahoy!

One reason I'm choosing to do mini quilts as my calendar project for 2025 is that I have all the materials I need to make them, like this vintage patchwork pillowcase. It's too fragile to be used for its original purpose, and repurposing it would give it a new life.

The same goes for a lot of the Victorian-era crazy patchwork pieces I own that are shattering. This would make a couple of very cool foundations.

Likewise I have an entire bin of vintage linens that includes about a hundred embroidered napkins. These would be perfect to repurpose for the project.

I think the most comfortable size for me to work on in a single evening would be at the most 5" X 7". I don't know if I want to make my minis all the same size, either. Still mulling that over at the moment.

I could not sew together 365 5" X 7" minis into a single quilt; it would end up being large enough to cover a couple of beds. I've also been questioning the wisdom of sewing together so many fragile textile pieces to make a quilt, as I'd never be able to use or wash it. So: no quilt out of my minis. Alternatives: I could make each month of minis into a wall hanging, or sew them together into a book. I'd like to decide this before I begin so I know what I'll do with the project when I'm finished.

In 2025

I have been thinking long and hard about things I might do for my annual calendar project next year. While I have really enjoyed crocheting my daily mood blanket, which has made me more mindful of my emotions, I think one blanket is enough for someone who lives in a humid subtropical area. In 2023 I did my calendar scroll embroidery project, but my arthritis has gotten a lot worse, and I think my days of hand stitching anything are just about over now.

I finally got my inspiration from 14carrot, one of my favorite sellers on Etsy, who makes these wonderful mini quilts out of old quilt pieces, bits of lace and embroidery as tags.

I love her work, which always inspires me, and made me consider making my own mini quilts. Small, less ambitious daily projects are more my speed now, and if I can't hand sew I can always use my sewing machine. I might also draw or paint on my daily tags.

Unless something more appealing comes to me before January 1st, I think this will be my calendar project: one mini quilt per day (I also need to test and see if I can make one tag in an evening, but I'm pretty sure I can.) At the end of 2025 I might join them all together to make a wall hanging, or find a big enough box to store them like my scroll.

This is one I made a while back, which is about 4-1/2" X 6-1/2", and the coverlet for the little cat is actually a pocket. That's the kind of thing I can do in a day, and would be a lot of fun.

Beach Christmas

For the last two years my guy and I have thrown away all our previous traditions of celebrating Christmas when it's just the two of us. We've both devoted our entire lives to making other people happy during the holidays, and I have had nothing but horrible luck during mine, so we think we've earned it. This year we went wandering again, did a few interesting things, and ended up walking the beach at Daytona.

It was cold, almost entirely deserted and quiet. The ocean was fairly rough but the sound of the waves crashing was music to my ears. At times I felt as if the world had turned into a giant opal. I took pics with my phone and sent them to Kat, who sent back pictures of her island where she was hiking with her boyfriend and his mother.

We came across the Florida version of a snow man, which made us both laugh. Then we decided not to look for a place to eat dinner, came home and ate leftovers from Christmas Eve. Perfect end to what is usually a terrible day for me.

I am trying to keep that promise I made last year, and honestly my lifelong hatred of the holidays is easing up a bit. That's not because of the promise (which, I admit, was along the lines of that promise you make to God to go back to church if God saves your ass.) I really have chosen to take back the holidays from all the awful memories I have of them, and try to make some new, better, happier ones. It's working.

Wishing You

Merry Christmas from Valerean.

Work Crew

So that I'm not tempted to grumble about the holidays when they arrive, I thought I'd tell you a story today about a pretty remarkable work crew.

I'm writing this post on November 4th, a couple of days after we joined four other people to clear debris leftover from Hurricane Milton. Me, my guy, our next door neighbors and two other men from our neighborhood with a tractor and a dumpster-type trailer with a heavy duty truck came together to remove a tree that had fallen on our next door neighbors' property. It was a huge old oak that probably weighed several tons, and it was a definite hazard to anyone who went near it. They've tried for weeks to get a tree service out here to remove it but they're all backed up now for months.

It took from 10:30 am to 4:00 pm for the six of us to chop up and haul out the debris. That pic up there is the pile of branches, wood and tree trunk pieces that we removed and placed for county pickup on a vacant lot; it's half a block long. It was heavy work, and not much fun, but by steadily working together we got everything but the bottom of the trunk cleared away (it's so large the guys couldn't get their chainsaws through it, and too heavy for the tractor.) Our neighbors later tried to pay us, but we all laughed and refused the money.

In the days immediately after the hurricane those same two neighbors came over and helped us pile up our debris from the storm. Not one of us is under 50 years old, (my guy turned 75 this month), and this is really hard work that no one wants to do. Except us. We're neighbors.

Here you can see the bit of trunk that is left. I still have a few sore muscles, but only happy memories of that long, arduous day. We worked in pairs and everyone gave it their all. We laughed with each other the entire time, too. We got scratched up (I had to treat two people for gashes) and a little sunburned. My guy and I went to bed very early that night, too, but it was a marvelous day working with wonderful people.

It's funny that we worked so well together when we're all so different. We live in the same neighborhood here, but that's all -- we're friendly toward the neighbors, but not really friends or part of their circles. Our two neighbors are very active in their church and have a busy social life; my guy and I are pretty unsocial and prefer our empty nest with just a few family members visiting now and then. One of the men was a former deputy sheriff; the other just had back surgery not too long ago (you'd never know it from how hard he worked.) I think the two things that we all have in common is that we love this neighborhood, and we're not afraid of hard work.

I try to remember to be grateful for the people in my life every holiday. This work crew will top my list this year.

Reeboks for Him

My guy has a terrible time finding affordable shoes. He prefers to wear sneakers, and I was successful at thrifting a beautiful pair of Nikes for him at the end of summer. So I tried to do it again for his Christmas present, and eventually bid on and won a pair of Reebok sneakers.

They don't have a mark on them, which suggests they were a display pair donated by the store. I looked up on the Reebok website the name of the sneakers from the box they came in, and besides finding out they were super nice, I learned that they retail for $83.99.

That made me extra happy, because I thrifted them for $13.00. :) Merry Christmas to my guy!

Wannabuts Results

Let's see what I won from the latest round of things I wanted to thrift but only for the minimum price, like this 9 lb. yarn lot. One pound of yarn retails for $8 to $12, btw, so this could cost up to $108.00 new. I wanted to pay $9.99, and yep, I won the lot for that price without any challengers. Since this lot has several colors and weights I need (and probably would have cost me $100.00 retail new) I'm quite happy with that.

The blue Vera Bradley purse that I wanted for a special outfit went to: me! I got it for $9.99 with no challengers. It's a retired pattern which costs anywhere from $30.00 to $45.00 used.

The 50 year old lavender wedding ring quilt sadly did not go to me. Bidding was quite heavy, and the final bid came in at $55.00, which is still a pretty nice price (just more than I wanted to pay.)

I'm pretty happy that I won two out of the three lots; last time I didn't win any. The point is, you should only bid at auction what you're willing to pay, especially on thrifted items. You might not get what you want (and I'll show you pics when the two listings I won arrive to see if I did.)

Image credit: all of the images in this post came from the original auction listing on ShopGoodwill.com.

Festive

To kick off December (and to get in some walking) my guy and I spent an afternoon in Winter Garden, which is all dressed up for the holidays.

I love this little town, and how they go all out for Christmas. We'll definitely pay another visit before the end of the year.

I stopped by Writer's Block and picked up two more blind dates with a book as a Christmas gift to myself. These will go under the tree for Christmas morning. I wonder what they are . . . .