I’ve been making a new planner for next year, trying to encourage myself to be more organised. Last year’s planner got more use than I expected, so I’ll keep it up through 2026.
I use a cardboard template to draw each week-to-view page, and I stuck a bit of old ribbon to the spine to act as a bookmark.
I cheated with the cover and just changed the 5 to a 6
No need to reinvent the wheel or create extra work for myself.
It was a good opportunity to review this year’s goals, the ones I made in January:
Well, let’s see how I did.
Don’t work at weekends: Fail. Pretty epic fail, in fact.
Don’t work past 7pm: ditto
Take 4 weeks holiday: Actually I almost made this one. Including the 10 days holiday I WILL take later this month, that will amount to about three and a half weeks for the year. Nearly.
Wednesday afternoons are for CPD (that’s a throwback from my corporate days, Continuing Professional Development) which essentially means throwing some paint/ink/thread around in order to learn something new: Managed that maybe a dozen times over the year at the most. Nowhere near enough.
End of year report: Must try harder!
On the plus side, I’m fairly sure I might win the annual Employee of the Year award. Only because my boss (that’s me) only has one of us to choose from (also me).
Next year I intend to make more use of my neglected YouTube channel, and I may well do more of what I’ve done today – daily stitching in real time, with running commentary.
You can see the making of this one here.
I have a few other goals in mind (as well as repeating those above that I didn’t quite get the hang of) which I’ll share in due course.
For now, I’m starting to wind down and will be officially on holiday from 17th December until about 29th-ish. I’ll be back next week with my last post before the festivities, and in the meantime I hope all your preparations for Christmas and beyond are going well.
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You have inspired me to block of time every week for “Mandatory Studio Time!”
Ha! Good luck, I hope you do better than I did 😆 I’ll manage it next year by hook or by crook 🙂
Beyond helpful! I couched a few inches yesterday with the yarn you used to tie the parcel of threads I ordered. I wanted to at least have January 1 couched and to try the Spoonflower fabric. And I wondered how to start/end the couching. One of my goals obviously is to do as much daily stitching as I can. Merry Christmas and be kind to yourself.
Thanks so much, that sounds excellent! Merry Christmas to you too, and yes, I will try to be a better boss next year 🙂
Lovely inspiration! I have begun an “idea board” of things I want to include in 2026… including a new thing or two! I think your bouclé threads are so lovely (and a good reminder to pick up my 2026 stitching and get more couching done!) Happy Holidays to you!
And happy holidays to you too, Kat 🙂 An ideas board is a great thing – happy discovering!
Thank for all your inspiration!
Linda
thanks so much Linda
That’s such a cool thing to do Karen. I have loads of unused notebooks just waiting to be completed. And a lovely stitchery cover. Take more time for yourself, you’ve earned it.
Thanks so much Karan, I will try 🙂
Hi Karen and Merry Christmas ~ Lovely newsletter and I do love your youtube channel.
a warm hug Louise
Thank you Louise and a merry Christmas to you too
As always, thank you for your inspiration to “do” less and create more! I appreciate you for encouraging exploration and letting go of cultural norms for perfection. Merry Merry Holidays to you!
Thank you Rebecca and the same to you. Perfection is vastly over-rated 🙂
Thank you for these lovely emails. I’ve been following your work here and on YouTube channel and felt so inspired! I have little patcwork projects and doing some stitches every day and I feel more stable in my mental health especially with the long nights now…Merry Christmas to you and lots of blessings! Martina
Thanks so much Martina, I’m so glad a little gentle stitching is bringing some peace. Merry Christmas to you too 🙂
“the naive optimism of January.”
Every year! And I’m prepping to do it again this week! There’s something very charming about naive optimism, isn’t there? I think I need a bit more structure around it.
You’ve added something to my list: make a monthly calendar. I’m using a huge, thick page-a-day calendar and now I don’t know what I want. I like yours with your cute little boxes. I may do both. (I am losing track of appointments and what I need to do so I absolutely have to keep some sort of daytimer. And I am losing the battle with minimalism in this area at the moment.)
Obviously I have a lot of work to do figuring all this out in the next not quite 3 weeks.
AND I want to make a planner cover!
This last year I have some utter fails and some not bads as well. So you are definitely not alone.
I have a CPD list as well I have to do better this year. That’s one of my main goals.
Good luck to us both!
Ha, every year. But optimism is a good thing overall, probably… The planner/diary has been really useful this year, especially for planning workloads, so I’ll keep that up. And totally, good luck to us both! I aim to do much better in the self-care stakes next year, for sure.
Even a partial success on those goals is worth having, something you can build on…
Yea, very true. Determined to do better next year though 🙂