Skip to main content

End of year wrap up - 2025

Happy 2026!


In 2025 I joined a reading challenge for the first time. Partway through the year I wandered off from it. I didn't enjoy structuring my reading that way. I went back to my usual method - read all the NetGalley review books, and then grab something that somehow found it's way onto my Kobo. According to my (not entirely reliable) records I reviewed 84 books for NetGalley this year, of a total of 121 books. That seems high, but I did listen and well as eye read on NetGalley. I discovered some new to me authors, including Lily King and Taylor Gray, and read lots of delicious fantasy, sci-fi, romance and plain ordinary fiction.

We had some fun holidays, including Sri Lanka, Queensland, hiking twice once by the mountains and once by the sea, Bendigo twice (once for knitting and once for beer) two running weekends (Marysville and Warburton)  Sydney and Adelaide in one trip,  

I knit 19,490 meters of yarn over 40 projects. Only 9 were for charity, which is significantly less than last year. I finally met my goal of knitting less socks, with only 6 pairs this year. I knit three projects out of handspun, including one where I dyed the fibre myself. That was the only project I made out of my own hand dyed yarn. 

I have 17,592 meters of yarn, over 33 stash entries. this is holding reasonably steady - I do keep spinning which has added some to the stash. 

What's coming in 2026? I brought my loom home with the idea of making handspun cushion covers, but warping scares me so I haven't actually started that. I've already dyed the yarn for two jumpers, so I'll be knitting with more of my hand-dyed yarn. I've got a couple of long runs planned, including my first ultramarathon. I'm loving Pole dancing more than ever. We're getting a new couch delivered next week, and I plan to spend lots of time relaxing on it with Leon and Willow. Obviously I'm going to keep knitting and reading and talking and dreaming about knitting and reading.

Previous years here: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019201820172016

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Unravelled wednesday and WAYRN - the one where I prepare

We are heading off for some camping and hiking and general R&R on Friday, so I'm currently in planning and preparing mode. Of course that mainly means deciding what to knit - I'm going to make the Old Romance cardigan by Joji Locatelli. The yarn is wound and I'm ready to go. I completed Leon's Winter Set (2023) just in time, and it's currently blocking. I'm reading Georgette Hayer's Fredrica , which I am enjoying very much. Regency romance is so sweet and, unlike current romance offerings, I know it won't suddenly tumble into gynaecological territory!  For unexplained reasons, NetGalley is offering some Georgette Heyer books at the moment - (maybe it's re-release?) and I'm taking this opportunity to read a few more of them And that's my week in knitting and reading.  To read my all my book reviews, and to see everything I knit, you can find me on Ravelry as  Sharondoublekni t and on GoodReads as  Sharondblk .  I'm joining in with Kat ...

Yarnalong - the one with the final bit of transport

Remember how I took every form of transport known to man a fortnight ago? Well, I was missing just one thing, suburban trains. But today I got to remedy that, knitting my way to Dandenong for work. Yay? My Char jumper has been knitting up ridiculously fast. It's easy, pleasant and a well written pattern. I'm reading Rachael Herron's latest book The Ones Who Matter Most . It's a good read so far, family centered fiction, easy to read but still emotionally challenging. I'm listening to Evelyn Waugh's Men At Arms . I'm enjoying it, I didn't really know what to expect, but some of it reminds me of Catch 22, in that it catalogues the absurdities of war and bureaucracy. The narrator has the perfect upper crust English accent and I'm very pleased it's the first of a trilogy.   And that's another week of reading, knitting and catching trains everywhere for me. Do pop along to Ginny's blog to see what she and the rest of the yarnalong ...

Why Andrea Mowry, why? (A rant and a rather nice finished object)

As mentioned, prior to our hiking trip I suddenly, and rather randomly, decided to knit  Andrea Morwy's Traveler Shell . It's basically an open fronted rectangle in a knit purl pattern. The pattern is FOURTEEN pages long. Why is the pattern 14 pages long? Because, instead of explaining the ten row repeat and then putting the shaping on top of that (e.g. decrease while continuing to knit in pattern), she writes out the entire ten row knit purl sequence every time something changes. Additionally, most of the time she starts with even number being the right side and wrong numbers being the right side,which is just plain odd. It's confusing and it's like she wants to keep you looking at the pattern for every row, rathe than following the very intuitive stitch pattern, which I had memorised after one repeat.  The instructions for the band just say 'pick up x number of stitches'. No ratios, no acjnowledgement that different bits of the band have different ratios. Afte...