Happy New Year & Welcome Back!

Welcome to 2026, and welcome back to Needle ‘n Thread after our delightful Christmas holiday!

I always imagine January starting off with a flying leap into the new year, but does it ever actually happen that way?

No. January never starts with a bang and a rush for me!

I don’t know if it’s sluggishness from Christmas cookies and cheese, if it’s the prospect of the long winter streeeetch into spring, or if it’s simply a matter of trying to untie all the knotted loose ends left over from the hectic pre-Christmas season.

Here at home, I don’t quite consider the Christmas season over yet, either. We celebrate Christmas in some form or another through January 6th, the Epiphany. Even after that, I’m never in a hurry to take down the decor. After all, it seems that Christmas lights and colorful baubles are the only things that keep January from slipping into the hazy grey doldrums brought on by interminable cloudy winter days.

This year, though, my oldest sister is visiting from New England until mid-January, so I have a perfect excuse to keep things festive until the 15th!

This coming weekend, I’m kicking off my Needlework New Year with a class! I’m excited to be teaching a Fiber Fun Day workshop in Manhattan, Kansas, with the Manhattan Area Fiber Arts Guild.

And to that end, here’s some information on some new kits for 2026.

This is the project we’ll be doing for the Fiber Fun Day this Saturday. We’ll be embroidering three felted hearts, using a variety of stitches and implementing tips on embroidering 3-D objects like these. We’ll be working with beautiful Heathway wools, which are fabulously luscious wool embroidery threads. Yum!

I wrote about these hearts last year here, if you want to read more about them.

To prepare for the class, I put together kits with pre-felted hearts, full skeins of gorgeous Heathway wool, needles, and guide tape, along with instructions for the various stitches we’ll be using.

We’ll be adding a small number of these kits to the website, too, for those who are interested in them. And we’ll also have a felted Easter egg kit, too. These are more or less “test runs” to see if people want the kits and if we can regularly stock them. We’ll see how they go!

So that’s the first new thing coming out at Needle ‘n Thread for 2026! Hurray! New kits! I’m excited!

And Tools!

But wait! There’s more!

Coming up, I have some beautiful tools to show you. They are hand-crafted, turned wood needlework tools made here in the Midwest by a woodworking artisan who uses a variety of lovely exotic woods. They’re stunning, high quality, and oh-so-useful. Gosh, there’s nothing better than a useful tool that is exceptionally beautiful! More on that very soon!

Let’s Get 2026 Rolling!

Anna and I went to Prague and to Bavaria before Christmas – a much-needed, long-awaited break for refueling our creative juices. It was a wonderful time! I haven’t been able to travel any significant distance away for the past ten years, and the break was great. It’s always good to get a wider view of Life!

But we’re excited to be back in the studio now, gearing up for 2026. We’ve got the shop up and running again, if you’ve been waiting. Thanks for your patience during our absence!

Here’s to a 2026 full of blessings big and small (even if they’re sometimes disguised as detours) and with enough humor and grace to handle whatever the year gives us!

Thanks for being part of Needle ‘n Thread. I’m so glad you’re here – I love “coming home” to you!