More Words for the Year, Books, Movies Tracked

Even though my intention word for the year is: Alignment, here's a fun one that came up on the Merriam-Webster Dictionary account on Bluesky to predict what's in store in 2026 for me. Of course I had to go look that one up even though I kind of knew what it meant, something to do with electricity...

gal·​van·​ic gal-ˈva-nik 

Synonyms of galvanic

1

a

: of, relating to, or producing a direct current of electricity

a galvanic cell

b

: caused by galvanism  

—used especially of the corrosion of metallic objects as a result of electrolytic action

2

a

: having an electric effect : intensely exciting

a galvanic performance

b

: produced as if by an electric shock

had a galvanic effect on the audience

Just a fun prediction for the year ahead. I don't know if I really want to have an intensely exciting year, or maybe just one where the electricity actually stays on! 

Okay moving on to books, as I talked about last year, I decided to switch over to The StoryGraph for tracking my book reading. I quite like it, much quieter and less ad focused than GoodReads. 

That's a pretty good number of books read for me in a year. Next is a long graphic of all of the covers of those books pretty much in order of how I read them through the year.

It's a visually fun scroll to see all those covers together in one image. I'm again reminded of the Granny Squares quilt idea I had last year.

Also on TheStoryGraph, they have an easy way for various challenges to be tracked, so I did the 52 Book Challenge. And yes, I got 100%, some of them were a little hard to figure out which book to read, or how to fit it into a prompt, but just a fun diversion, made me pick some books I might not have read which was a good thing to get me out of my reading ruts.

Then there's the movie tracking website, Letterboxd, where I keep track, sometimes review and enjoy reading what other viewers have to say about movies. That's an even longer list, 154 movies watched, so I'll spare you the year's graphics on that one and that's just the last part of the year.

Why is tracking so fun? 

Final Advent Update

 Time to catch up on the Advent FQ "calendar" goodies from Global Fiber Shop. I haven't posted about them since the middle of last month. I love all the great patterns in these fabrics. But I especially love the red/purple woven with the great texture.

The orange one in the right bottom corner is just a lovely shade and the pattern is terrific.

I like this little notepad, it's so pretty, and it makes me want to make that block. Also, "Let It Sew" is super clever and I haven't seen that.

I really love these two, especially together. Soft and peaceful but still interesting.

Oooh two FQs on the 25th! I love that twelve days of Christmas print, so cute.

There they are all stacked up together. I think these would all work together well in a scrappy sort of looking quilt. There are only a couple that might need to be removed to really work. Would I have picked out all  100% of these fabrics? No, definitely not. There are many that I would have chosen, but I do like that they feel cohesive overall which is pretty tough to achieve with this variation in patterns and colors. The main thing was to give myself (and friend Jaye too) a little surprise present to open up every day. 

So, adding all 34 of these FQs into my fabric tracker for 2025 I ended up with these totals: 

• 103.3 yards bought/brought in 
• 71.3 yards used in projects/quilts 
• for a net of 32 yards

As I haven't tracked my fabric before I don't know if that's a lot or a little for me, so I'll keep tracking this year and find out.

Waiting Snake

 

Yesterday was a traveling back from Spokane day, with an almost three-hour flight delay. At least I got this beautiful picture in the morning on Tuesday in San Francisco. Those glowing red squares are so interesting, especially with the offset squares and additionally offset circles inside them That plus all the lines on the pavement. A great start to a possible quilt design.

In the extra time I had to sit around and wait for our plane to even decide to show up, I got a whole lot of the sky stitched on the Snake in the Garden quilt. Just one more section of green left to go on this!

Wandering Wednesday- Coyote Hills

 As our traditional New Year's Day hike was not happening due to the weather and other scheduling issues, we put it off just one day and got to go to Fremont's great park, Coyote Hills on the southeast edge of the San Francisco Bay. We managed to get there in between rainstorms, so that was very good.

We (DH and I) took an almost four mile hike with DS (seen above with Bella, DD's dog), DD, her boyfriend. Bella has her Christmas sweatshirt on.We had just started walking when DS, said "wow, what, oh no!" turned out he almost had stepped on this wriggler. A park worker happened to drive up in his electric work truck and he ID'd it for us as a Tiger Centipede. 

Also saw a big flock of wild turkeys. They look a little different from the ones we have in our neighborhood.

Up the hill we went. The Bay was such a different color than last time when it was so bright we could barely look at it from the sun glare.

The water was filled with floating American Coots.

A large white bird way up on the hill really was eye catching, either a heron or a crane.

It got tough going up Red Hill as it's pretty steep (500' elevation gain), but we were happy at the top.

A nice log under the trees to sit on with a heck of a view.

We could see back towards home that it was likely raining there.

The red rocks of Red Hill with the Bay in the background.

We were so happy to make it outside together, and to miss getting rained on.

Purple Geese

 

At this past weekend's Sew Day, I got to finally break out the purple and start making the Flying Geese units for the second clue of the Lupine mystery quilt. I was able to try out my new Steady Betty pressing mat too. It worked out great, smelled just a little bit, but overall just great. And I remembered to press towards the neutrals.

I came home from Sew Day with the right-hand sky sewn onto about half of the neutral Geese, so first of all those got the left-hand sky pieces sewn on.

Then I cut the rest of the purple sky triangles for the remainder, got those sewn on and pressed.

There they all are.

Still not trimmed, but that's for another day. 

B.O.M.-Friendship Stars

 Last Saturday's BAMQG Sew Day was lovely. A great time to catch up on the holidays everyone had and get some sewing done. I dove into making my BAMQ BOM blocks for the month: Friendship Star.

They went together pretty quickly, and I was really happy with the fabric choices I made.

I got so excited about it, I made two more for a total of four.

Here's how they look together with the other BOM blocks I've made so far.

And I got to see a great rainbow or two on the way.

Summed-Up 2025

 The year 2025 is completed and "in the books", and before I shelve mine completely away on the very long bookshelf that is this blog, it's time for another yearly summing up. Fair Warning: this is quite a long post.

The 1SE video for 2025, all six minutes or so of it, shows a lot about how I spent my time all year. One second per day. Looking back on last year, it's pretty representative, showing the daily studio work, all the family/pets, gardening, and so very very much traveling. Not that I'm complaining about getting to travel of course! It's just been a year of being out and about and away from my workroom, more than is usual.

I published 17 Wandering Wednesday posts about all these travels. Non-local travel locations included  Tahoe, Chemainus Canada, San Juan Bautista, San Francisco 2x, Spokane 5x,Copenhagen, London England, Ashland, Portland.

I'm going to use the same format as I did last year to look at what all got accomplished in my studio.

Finishes

Sky Structure for the Sister Artists exhibit.

Our Mistake for the Stretching Art & Tradition 25 exhibit.

Spring Speaking to Summer for the BAMQG exhibit at the SMCF.

Slopes

Metro Twist

Running Out of Raincloud

Trinket

Another year of participating in Index Card A Day

Made napkins out of toweling fabric.

Big Steps Completed

Pieced the blocks and assembled the top of the Old Town Mystery Quilt

City Sampler Backing and binding done and the quilt is at the long-armer being quilted.

Almost to the center of my Kawandii

Finally found the right background so I can start my Circle Sampler

Made the Bohemian Wife Backing and binding.

Pieced many more blocks for the Y.E.S. coat.

Made 11 more Stamp Quilt blocks and cut out 11 more.

Made several parts of the paper-pieced Candy quilt.

Made blocks for the new BAMQG BOM 

Actually started working on the Oxbow Tote!

Pieced the blocks and sashing for Patchwork Palooza

Pieced the first clue for the new mystery quilt Lupine & Laughter.

Community Giving

7 Blocks

Made and added the binding.

Made and added the binding.

Made the Postage Stamp and HST blocks from the pre-packs and sewed into a top.

Sew Day group project blocks

Seven Postage Stamp blocks

Oh my goodness, that's quite a lot really! I was feeling a little poky and a bit down about my production for the year given all that went on in my non-creative life this year. As per usual my productivity continues to come on in fits and starts throughout the whole twelve months. Not a surprise as a lot of this is still very dependent on how I'm physically doing which changes a lot from month to month (and day to day!). And with all of that traveling, and helping my mom through her move it feels like it's been a decade in a year. Thus, this has been a very good exercise for me to go through every year here on ye olde blougue as I also discovered over the last two years. I think I'll continue this going forward.