That was 2025...

Yes, it’s another of those year in review type posts, and at some point I’ll look at my Top 10 posts for the year as I usually do, but before that I’m sharing a look back at the past year which I’m hoping should be all the easier for the new series of ‘This is’ posts I started last January. Fingers crossed anyway.

2025 was a year that we saw way too much of hospitals, and I’d appreciate it if 2026 could be much better behaved in that respect please. Both MOH and I made various visits to hospitals here in Newark and further afield in Mansfield and our parents also had ambulances and A&E visits, though thankfully that’s been left in 2025.

It was also the year that I learnt that my HRT was the ‘wrong sort’ and had been for a while, despite me asking questions, but anyway it’s sorted now and I’m grateful that it was eventually discovered and corrected.

Health and fitness was a big theme this year, and I’m sure it will continue to be too. We have our gym in the garage, which I’m a much more frequent visitor in warmer weather, and I’ve been going to regular Yoga sessions in the hall in the village next to us. In October we both started Reformer Pilates, and wow - it’s been a learning curve for us both. We’ve stuck at it though and we are both benefitting from the classes, even if we don’t manage to do everything quite how we should all of the time!

And as I look back over my monthly posts as always there’s things I remember clearly, and things that make me smile - such as remembering the pheasant in our garden in the February sun - and things that jog my memory too.

In January I was inspired by many quilts at the Newark Quilt Show, and spent a Saturday at a workshop starting my Floral Fancy panel, which I haven’t yet progressed any further - oops! I wondered ahead of the workshop if I had the skills required, and over the year I’ve realised that I do and also that the more sewing I do, the more I can do, though I think having the confidence with and in my new machine helps.

In February as well as the running pheasant the snowdrops we’d planted in the garden started to flower, there was a day trip to London where I snuck in a visit and small purchase at Liberty, and we had the most amazing meal out at Sabor, which had long been on our list to visit but we never got to while we were living in London!

Spring started to spring in March and brought with it much more traffic through our tiny village thanks to the roadworks on the nearby A46. We sorted out better wine storage, replaced a failing light on our landing and spent a small fortune on a large piece of art for the stairwell.

There were cute lambs in the village in April and many mornings we woke to their bleating, which given how cute they were never becoming annoying. We went along to the Newark Garden Show leaving with an ornament for the garden, which has stayed in the garage ever since. We needed to source another light for our landing after sending a damaged light back and being expected to wait until June for its replacement - I really don’t think so, so we didn’t.

In May I was back in London at the preview of Unearthed at the British Library, and it was a fantastic exhibition which part of it is now touring the country, or at least it was. We tied this in with a visit to Grand Designs at the Excel and was surprised to see how much reduced the show was, though that didn’t stop me buying a very large pot for the patio, oh and Palace won the FA Cup, which was totally amazing.

We spent two and a bit weeks in June travelling between Chicago, Seattle and Vancouver and this was more amazing that Palace’s FA Cup win. I’ve still not edited the photos, and I really should as I want to share its awesomeness. And as soon as we were back we were off to Gardeners’ World Live in Birmingham again.

In July we finally went shopping for the sofa we were aiming for earlier in the year - hooray! Though our garden sofa which up until now had been an indoor sofa probably wasn’t as pleased as that was to be kicked out when the new one came! We got the high level sockets moved down to a level that suited us and covered the hole temporarily with a piece of A4 paper. We are resourceful if nothing else, as proven by using a liquidiser for our Pimms.

In August I continued to be wowed by quilts, this time at my first visit to the Festival of Quilts, the new kitchen sofa arrived - and it’s only in the last week or so that I’ve cut the safety label off it (it was right at the front so it had to go), and we finally made great strides in sorting out the garage, with new racks arriving too. That’s just as well as it wouldn’t be that long before the garden furniture would be moved in there for the winter.

We had a lesson in how to weekend in September, and it was a refreshing and timely reminder, plus there was new garden furniture delivered which we’ve not been able to use yet - but it’ll be new for this summer, and it was a bargain too.

There was even more progress in the garage in October when we actually made use of the racks we’d bought, but the real highlight of the month was the foraging and preserving. We had some chestnuts and walnuts from a neighbours garden, and picked up some more walnuts from the tree around the corner, and I made some chilli jelly using many of the tiny crab apples from our garden.

November saw a day trip to Harrogate for yet another quilt show (and I’m still not bored of them yet!), and I spent a joyous morning block printing some more patterns to embroider. Plus there was the annual Christmas pudding making and boiling, which always means Christmas is on its way.

And so it was, our Christmas was kickstarted after an early December weekend in Devon where we spent most of a day wandering around the gardens at The Newt, drove through plenty of water and then collected our own Christmas wreath when we were home. I got all of the sheep in Christmas jumpers embroidered that I wanted to, and we had a great Christmas seeing all of our family. Not withstanding a few domestic hiccups with the dishwasher and the heating, it was a great end to the year.

I’m only just starting to think about what 2026 may bring and what it will bring for my blog, and it may take a while for those intentional posts to surface - I’m always amazed at the number of people that already know when January 1 rolls round. I’ll get there, and most likely in a more relaxed way, which suits me just fine.

Here’s to a really great 2026 for each and every one of us.

Textured embroidery and plastic bags by Emily Cox

By now I’m sure you’ve realised that I enjoy seeing the quilts, galleries and special exhibitions at the craft shows I go to as much as seeing what the suppliers have to tempt me with, and it was no different at the Harrogate Knit & Stitch Show in November.

One of my personal favourites of the whole show was the hall hosted by the Embroidery Guild which we almost didn’t find - it was at the far end of the hall we entered, though others were arriving through that door and were immediately immersed into it. I loved that in this part of the show there was an area to showcase recent graduates work, and in my first few posts I’m going to focus on these.

Let’s start off with a look at Emily Cox’s stand, and if you know me then you know I do like a Waitrose shop, so I was curious to see if that coat really was made from Waitrose bags - and spoiler it was, but more on that later.

EMILY COX, KNIT & STITCH SHOW HARROGATE 2025

Emily says that ‘embroidery is central to her practice’ and allows her to ‘form an intimate relationship with her work, each stitch elevating the emotional and conceptual connection behind the pieces’.

Nature is a recurring theme as Emily admits she is ‘fascinated by the patterns, colours and textures that surround us, that often go unnoticed’ - I could have spent a lot more time looking at all of these pieces in much more detail.

BREATH BETWEEN THREADS, EMILY COX, KNIT & STITCH SHOW HARROGATE 2025

If you’re wondering how the ‘Breath Between Threads’ piece is created the label beneath it reads ‘Domestic freehand machine embroidery on fabric, with cut-outs to create depth and shadow between the leaves’ - and isn’t it gorgeous?

EMILY COX, KNIT & STITCH SHOW HARROGATE 2025

I love the texture and the colour detail in all of the pieces above, though in the image above I think the one with the pink background, which reminds me of a gloriously rich coleus is my favourite.

BLOOM AGAINST WASTE - EMILY COX, KNIT & STITCH SHOW HARROGATE 2025

And then I saw the embroidery on plastic hanging on the back wall - it’s a collage of plastic bags with a freehand machine embroidered tulip stitched on which ‘merges beauty with the traces of consumption’.

And that Waitrose plastic bag coat? Here’s a closer look at it.

REGROWTH IN PLASTIC - EMILY COX, KNIT & STITCH SHOW HARROGATE 2025

It’s a fantastic way to reuse reusable plastic bags to make a statement, as well as a beautifully tailored item of clothing - yes clothing, as Emily was due to model this on the Knit & Stitch Catwalk during the show, sadly not on the day we were there.

But it’s totally a plastic mac with a difference isn’t it?

Nottinghamshire's tropical garden

Yes, you read that right. A while back I spotted Honeytrees tropical garden in a local Facebook group, and my interest was piqued. It’s close to us, a little over ten miles away and never in my wildest dreams did I imagine anything quite so lush, or tropical so close by. I also spotted that they planned to open every weekend in August as part of the National Garden Scheme. As MOH has long had a hankering for including a banana tree in the plans for our garden it made sense to go along - we managed to get there on the last day of August, and their last day of opening for the year - phew.

It was amazing. Packed full of plants, and then some more on top of that.

And on this chilly December day I thought I could do with a burst of tropical colour. What I didn’t really expect to see though was some roses, but I did.

The garden was packed full of plants and structures including a viewing platform - and while it was a relatively large plot it wasn’t overly huge. It just goes to show that you really can transform spaces with some thought, and a lot of passion.

For MOH it’s the colour of the cannas, and the scale of the banana plants that appeal to him. For me it’s the multicoloured foliage and less than usual shapes.

And as we went around the garden, each turn wowed us more. I’m not about to turn my plot into a tropical garden - I’ve seen how much work goes into this garden - but I would like to incorporate some of the plants we saw when we visited.

Maybe not a monkey tree though…

With so many tropical plants and not so tropical winters, many of the plants needed to be sheltered at this time of year. There were a lot of pots, but also a lot of plants already in hot houses, which were already pretty hot back in August.

The work I mentioned before included lots of propagation, and I mean lots!

Some of the plants were for sale, and we were sorely tempted. But in the end we left empty handed but with a bit more knowledge about caring for the plants, and knowing that we’d be back again to visit and at some point likely to be ready to make a purchase too, but not until we’ve got somewhere to overwinter it properly to give it the best chance of surviving, and that could be a little while yet - no doubt much to MOH’s frustration.