February | 2026 | Margaret Quilts

I am having a hard time keeping up here – real life is getting in the way, as it should, I suppose, but I want to keep my record. Future me wants to read about what happened. So this post is my summary of 2025, written in February 2026, to the best of my current memory.

Last year I still managed to knit and read a fair amount, but our hiking and travel were somewhat curtailed by health issues, and I did very little sewing and quilting.

Knitting

I finished 17 projects in 2025, including nine donation items, mostly hats.

One goal for 2026 is to finish the Zephyr sweater I have been working on for two years.

Reading

I always set my goal to my age, but lately have zoomed past it. This year I read just over 100 books.

Quilting, Sewing and other projects…

Stitching was mostly helping my daughter work through her mending pile whenever she visited. I also briefly worked on these quilt blocks. Next year I hope to quilt four languishing quilt tops, and I have several planned tops in my minds eye…

Hands All Around Blocks, Modern Quilt Studio

We also made progress on home maintenance and repair: interior wall repair; new dining room blinds, new hallway carpet; new kitchen faucet; window repair; storm window cleaning and repair; exterior paint; and exterior brick tuck pointing. This 1932 house will always need something!

Hiking

I have had the goal of at least a hike a week in recent years. I only made it to 49 in 2025, mainly due to health setbacks. Hip bursitis, and a complete cardiac work up for me, and neck surgery for my husband, kept us on shorter and easier walks for a while. I have noticed that I have much less stamina on hotter days, and we seem to have many more hotter days now.

Highlights:

March – Grass Widows at Rowena Crest, OR

April – Green meadows with Death Camas, Shooting Stars and many other wildflowers at Catherine Creek, WA…these meadows would burn in July….

April – First walk through the new hiker/biker tunnels at Mitchell Point, OR

May – Return to that one trail between Multnomah and Wahkeena Creeks, OR

June – Avalanche lilies on the Ant Hill Trail, Mt Hood, OR

July – Bear Grass near Picnic Rock, Mt Hood, OR

July – Elliot Moraine and Timberline Trail High Point, Mt Hood, OR

December – First return after the fires to Catherine Creek, WA

Travel

Travel was mostly local this year. We had to cancel plans for Paris, Switzerland, and Mt Rainier due to the previously mentioned health issues. We spent two lovely weeks in January and August at Bandon, on the southern Oregon Coast.

We visited family in Connecticut and Philadelphia in the fall.

And I spent two weeks in southern Utah in June, but that was mostly within health care settings, and too hot to go outside.

RIP

I will miss these family members who left too soon.

Etc…

2025 was worse than expected, with the government now being run by corrupt criminals who have a stranglehold on the checks and balances built into our government. Someday, someone will figure out why Congress and the Supreme Court won’t do their jobs (Epstein files?). In the meantime, people are protesting in the streets, and every avenue of progress has been set back; basic rights are denied to many people. I thought this was behind us! I wish I was living in that other reality, with a woman president, all people feeling respected as humans, climate change initiatives proceeding, and everyone learning to accept diversity as a natural part of the human species. In the meantime time I will do my bit to communicate, vote, knit, read, and share in resisting tyranny. In spite of everything, I have to hold an optimistic spark in my soul, for hope that we end 2026 on a brighter note!