2025

I want to acknowledge that 2025 was a rough year for so many people. I’m lucky that in my day-to-day I haven’t felt much of the chaos, but I know that’s not true for many, many people. Below I’m going to talk about the things that brought me joy thoughout the year becuase I think it’s important to acknowledge these things, especially in dark times.

Favorite Makes

This year for the first time since I started making my own clothes I feel like I hit my stride. I made things, for the most part, that I love and wear a lot. Getting really honest with myself about what I love to wear and doubling down on making those types of clothing worked.

Here’s a photo, taken by G, of a typical day for me and what I love to wear and it’s all clothes I made.

A woman stands in front of a doorway with her right hand in the pocket of her trousers, she's smiling, almost laughing, and she's wearing white plastic frame glasses. Her hair is curly gray blond, she's wearing a striped gray cardigan, a green t-shirt showing underneath, and blue wide leg denim trousers with blue and orange socks and gray brown tennis shoes.

My Stria Cardigan is an older make that is probably my most worn sweater. Under it I’m wearing a Core T-Shirt, a tried and true pattern for me that I’ve sewed so many times. On the bottom are the Chanterelle Pants with the zipper expansion. I made these in November and heavily modified the pattern and I love them. I’ve worn them so many times since they came off the machine and I’ll be making another pair for sure. These pants aren’t perfect (really wish they were a bit longer) but those are all things I can refine as I sew the pattern again.

Other things I’ve made that have gotten a lot of wear or use that I’ve already posted about are: the Maeve Skirt, the Palisade Pants, and the Stella Quilt Cushion.

Favorite Trip

We didn’t travel nearly as much as we did in 2024, but we did get out about on the west coast a few times. My favorite trip was our drive along Highway 1 in Northern California on the way to San Francisco. We added on an extra day at the last minute and stayed in Ft. Bragg, a town I’d never heard of until we decided to stay there. It was really great. We ate a great meal, the downtown was cute and walkable, and the breakfast place was so good.

The sky is large and there is blue to the top right but also gray, foggy clouds. A rocky cliff that isn't too high is scene leading out to a point where a white lighthouse sits small in the distance, to the right of the lighthouse is a tree.
Point Arena Lighthouse

Favorite Reads

I looked back through my reading posts over the past year and two books jumped out at me as being ones I thought about after or particularly enjoyed. As I said at the time about Margot’s Got Money Troubles:

As the story moves on Margo starts to see people and the world and how things work so clearly and her perspective is really great.

The second is Demon of Unrest about the start of the Civil War in the US, where I learned a lot about the origins of that war. I’ve found this year that I’m drawn to reading and thinking about both the Civil War and Revolutionary War periods of US history. So much of what is talked about in relation to both of them is romaticized and inaccurate. I’ve enjoyed reading more about them both to find out what really happened, how truly difficult and awful it was, and finding more nuance in the events than what I’ve learned in the past.

2026

I don’t have resolutions but I do have a few things that I’ll be focusing on in 2026. The first is travel, specifically outside of the US. A few things have happened lately that made me realize that you gotta live life and seize the day, so we’re planning to do that.

The other thing I’ll be doing is changing the engine that drives this little site from Jekyll to Eleventy. I’ve known for a while that I’ve needed to do something, but a week or so ago I started having problems building my site on Netlify. That led me to realize that I gotta make the change. If things are quiet here for a bit it’ll be because I’m in the thick of it. I’ve been reading and I don’t think it’ll be particularly hard, but I do need to take the over 1000 posts and get them divided up into collections, by far the biggest task.

I’ll see you here eventually, hopefully from a site that is easier to build and organized a bit better. Take care friends, 2025 has been rough and I’m not sure 2026 will be much better, but I hold on to hope in the midst of it all.