
Hello, friends! Thanks so much for your comments on my last post! For those of you who saw that post pop up on your blog feed and noted how glad you were I was back to blogging, I wanted to fill you in on what happened. Last December I migrated my blog from Blogspot over to my own domain. If you go to the old blog address you will automatically be redirected to the new location. So, I’ve been blogging at my new location throughout 2015 but unfortunately it didn’t occur to me that my feed over at Bloglovin’ or similar blog readers never got updated to the new address. So, if you were looking for updates via a blog reader, rather than heading to the blog directly, it appeared that I haven’t updated my blog in a year! The feed should be fixed now, so you will get regular updates as I post. So…please take a look back at my older posts if you’d like and see what I’ve been up to. Also, you can subscribe to my blog by hovering over the Contact tab at the top and clicking on Subscribe to our mailing list, which will send you new posts by email.
So, since it’s January and since you may have missed several of my posts from 2015, I thought I’d do a little recap of what I’ve been up to.

The biggest thing I did last year in the Cozyegg universe was to start a video podcast! So far I’ve recorded ten episodes and I am absolutely loving this new venture. You can tune in via YouTube or right here on the blog. I am working on getting my feed over to iTunes as well. If you’re not familiar with podcasts (they are more prevalent in the knitting community than in the stitching or quilting community, I think), it’s basically a video blog post where I talk about what I’ve finished, what I’m working on, what I’m reading, any new stash enhancements, etc. I talk about stitching, quilting, and knitting. You can watch the first episode here.
In stitching, I finished several things. Early in the year, I stitched two of these little Faith ornaments that I turned into book weights. One was for me, and one for a friend. I made some color changes and used threads that I had on hand.

Eric and I celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary in April, which is the willow anniversary. I wanted to stitch something for him and decided to stitch a block from Village of Hawk Run Hollow that had willow trees in it. I personalized it with our wedding date. Unfortunately, I haven’t taken proper photos of this one yet, so you get a screen capture from Episode 4. I love how it turned out.

The biggest finish, though, was five years in the making. I can still hardly believe it’s done. This piece will definitely be getting its own blog post, but here’s a sneak peek… And They Sinned. So, more to come on this one for sure, with details of the changes I made and the personalizations I did.

And then towards the end of the year I stitched a couple of gifts (photos to come in a later post) and some exchange ornaments for both guild holiday parties (you can see my ornaments here and here).
On the quilting front, my big finish was way back at the beginning of the year. I decided to get moving on finishing off some of these old quilt WIPs that had been lingering around forever. So, I started with the oldest one – my very first quilt from 2002.

If you’d like to see more of the quilt or read more about it, you can find that blog post here. It was hugely satisfying to finally have this one quilted and bound.
I made several bags in 2015 too, starting off with a tote for a gift that featured the Hazel the Hedgehog pattern on both sides.

And it was so stinking cute I decided I needed a hedgehog too. So, I made a mini quilt to keep. Of course I mixed it up a little bit by giving my hedgehog a little bit of a punk look. (Neither of these photos is really great, unfortunately but you can get a better look in Episode 2.)

I attended a few “in town retreats” over the year that were very helpful in getting a good bit of sewing done. I started and finished this Tula Pink quilt top that I’d been drooling over since seeing a model made up at the Dallas quilt show a couple of years ago. Please pardon those two black spots in the middle of it. Seriously, you lay a quilt top down in my house and this is what happens. I’m going to send this one out for custom quilting.

Next up, I finished another old quilt top that is made entirely of novelty cat fabric. I know, it’s so bad it’s good. It felt good to check another one off my list. I want to back this with some Lizzy House Catnap fabric

or perhaps some Sarah Watts Cat Lady fabric,

just to attempt to make it a little more awesome and a little less awesomely horrible. Photos to come on this one (maybe).

In November, I attended Glamp Stitchalot hosted by Pink Castle Fabrics and got to learn techniques from Katy Jones, Tula Pink, Violet Craft, Jeni Baker, Alison Glass, and Sarah Fielke. I talked about my experience in Episode 10, but will also be doing a blog post soon.

And finally, I finished yet another quilt top over Thanksgiving. This was a BOM from like 2004ish called Pansy Park by Thimbleberries. I worked on this over two weekends at the in town sewing retreat and when I took the photo below in November, all it was lacking was one side of the burgundy inner border and then the big leaf print borders on all four sides. And then voila, it was done! And it is huge, so I’ll have to find somewhere to take a photo of this beast so I can share.

And finally, I took up knitting last year. I went to DFW Fiber Fest in the spring and I had set myself a goal of relearning to knit before I went, which I accomplished. I posted about my knitting journey here. And after knitting a few dishcloths and a garter stitch scarf, I jumped into the deep end of the pool and decided to knit my first shawl, the Weigh It Shawl #1 by Susan B. Anderson. I will most definitely be doing a whole post on this project, but I couldn’t resist sharing it here. It’s knit with Miss Babs Yowza in the Zombie Prom colorway and I love it. I was determined to get it done in 2015 and I finished it on December 31st – whew!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little recap of my 2015 creating and explained what craziness happened with my blog feed so that you can get all caught up on those posts you may have missed. I will be posting on a more regular basis in 2016 and will definitely be continuing the podcast too. I hope that 2016 is treating you right so far and that you are enjoying your projects. I’ll be back soon to share my plans for the new year and what I’m working on. Have a great week!
I am grateful for my first shawl!
My gosh, girlfriend – you were extraordinarily productive in 2015! You are an inspiration for me. Cheers! Karen
My gosh, girlfriend – you were extraordinarily productive in 2015! You are an inspiration for me. Cheers! Karen