Review of 2025

Well, in total astonishment I have just noticed it is nearly the end of January and I haven't done my review of 2025 yet. I have been really busy since Christmas and time has flown by. Traditionally, from mid-December when the peak rush dies down, I revamp my Etsy, tidy the craft room after several weeks of mayhem and plan the following year. Having a big tidy-up is really healthy for any crafter, as you find things you had forgotten you had brought, new ideas form as you sort and it is great to be organised. I had already made plans for this year, with my hand being forced by changing times, changes in Etsy and the fact I have worked flat out for eight years, where my shop has only been closed for one week when I was poorly in 2020. 2026 was to be the year where I downscale to just the popular lines, organise pagan craft fairs at the village hall and spend the year primarily in the garden, drawing, photography studies and general pottering.

2025 was a great year, along with brilliant sunshine from February to the end of July. I made pom poms for a lady whose favourite expensive, vintage shoes had old poms that were the worse for wear, having seen better days many moons ago. We worked together, as the greatest challenge was to understand the mechanism by which the poms were attached to the shoes. In the end, the lady sent me her sick poms and I got to town fathoming how they could be replaced. It was an extremely successful project and the lady was so pleased. It gave us both a sense of accomplishment. I know it's not like we solved world peace or cured world hunger, but this was a big deal, with the lady being delighted with her revitalised shoes.

https://www.catspunkystuff.com/post/sophia-webster-jada-pom-pom-repair

Another memorable event was when I was contacted and asked if I could create a raven yule card. This lady was in America and we had previously worked together on the summer solstice sunflower card. This raven card was a huge challenge for me, as it meant drawing something lifelike and not one of my usual whimsical flora and fauna doodles. I can draw still life and life drawing (nudes), but actually combining imagination with reality is sometimes a tough draw.

I studied ravens for days, trialled lots of composition arrangements and finally drew a design that was to become something much bigger than I had imagined. The American lady worked with me, choosing whether the berries should be white, red or purple. I didn't want the raven card to be too gothic-y, as most raven cards are, so I focused on the surrounding foliage in keeping with the tradition of Yule. White berries would have been drawn as mistletoe, purple berries as old rosehips and red berries as yew. The card virtually drew itself once the

seed of an idea was sown. The resulting card is very different from my others, but it is incredibly bold, full of meaning and oozes pagan magic.

I make pom poms for a large costume production and 2025 was even busier than usual. They were opening a new event and I was to make all their poms for the costumes. One order alone had 21 balls of wool, taking seven days to make! By August I was so tired of pom-poms; I had blister calluses on my fingers and an aggravated shoulder injury, but as with all bad comes good and I had a fabulous chest. Pom pom making on an industrial scale is like doing 12 hours a day of arm exercises. Do you remember the Carry On

film where Barbara Windsor's top pings off whilst doing exercise on a camping trip? My arms did that movement for seven days and by the end of it I nearly had a chest like Barbara's!

As I have mentioned, Etsy has changed so much and not always for the worse, though my plans for 2026 came about when I calculated the extortionate amount of fees I was paying. Whilst I know exactly how much Etsy takes with each order, it isn't until massive orders take massive amounts in fees that you realise just how much it's costing. From this, not only did I realise there were several technical faults with my Etsy, like showing my shop quality as 4.9 out of 5 when it should be 5 out of 5, little things like that, I understood I needed to trim the fat and

take an analytical look at my shop. When you start on Etsy the goal is to get as many listings as possible, but once you have substantial sales and raving (raven, hehe) reviews, it is sensible to focus on what works and alter or ditch what doesn't. Since Christmas, this is what I have been doing. I have cut my listings from 140 to 80, dropping to 60 when it warms up in Spring and I take off some of my draft excluders. I have repurposed underperforming cards, deactivated cards that have had no interest and remade examples of all my shaded pom poms for new listing photographs. I have been meaning to remake these poms as the ones on Etsy were 3 years old and my poms are much better now.

One of the great things on Etsy is they now allow 20 photos rather than the previous 13 per listing. I saw this as an opportunity to show off my different wares on irrelevant listings, but by skewering the text to suit the listing, surprisingly, the irrelevant became relevant. I used the extra photograph slots to create little adverts to show gift wrapping, the custom order process and warnings that pets love poms, by adding bits of text to photo montages. The new pom listings look absolutely monumental,

with great results felt almost immediately. Just yesterday, I was contacted by a lady who wanted two poms in a fern green with a bit of orange to match her sky jacket and new pom-less woollen hat. She supplied excellent photos of both garments and we discussed the many options for her poms. One was fern green with orange polka dots and the other was just orange but made from 3 different orange shades. I think she will be very pleased with them, as they came out identical to her colour palette.

As I mentioned before, the raven drawing has had a much bigger impact than could possibly have been imagined. Firstly, a juvenile crow (initially incorrectly identified as a raven) started to wait by the kitchen window, hoping for mealworms, grated cheese, bacon bits or peanut butter. He stayed in the garden for a month and was so used to us we nearly tripped up over him. He started to make a 'cak' sound, so we knew where he was and we think 'cak' also means 'thanks', as Mr Zailes, the crow, seemed to thank us when we refreshed his frozen drinking bowl or topped up the mealworms. Mr Zailes and all the local crows have disappeared, as they do, so we hope he comes back once he's got a partner. Mr Zailes even turned up at my friend's house, five doors down, just as we were planning the Pagan Beltane Fayre. I had the idea that my friend and I needed an identity, linking all of our fairs under one name. We decided to call ourselves the Pagan Raven Crafters, inspired by Mr Zailes, with our logo featuring my raven drawing. It all fit together so well and it is bizarre that it all happened in just a few weeks.

While 2026 looks like it is promising much of the same – incompetent politicians' rambling word salads and a country that has completely had enough – I plan to simplify my living even more so than it already is and take time for myself in the garden, reading all the books I have bought and not yet read and focusing on lots of drawing. Whilst with Etsy the world is at your feet, this year I am going to work at putting on local Pagan craft fairs, which means poster designs, local social media promotion and distributing advertising posters, along with making things that are different from my Etsy. I plan to have my husbunny make very chunky wooden frames for prints of my card designs, un-postable because of the weight and high risk of damage because of the glass. I also have lots of poms that I will make into tall stems and bouquets by attaching them to tall, dried poppy heads and raspberry canes, again un-postable due to their size and fragility. The local craft fairs will allow me to be really creative, working on one-off pieces in exciting new formats.

I made our bunny rescue donation on the 29th of December. I had planned to do a blog about the rescue and the bunnies, but as I said at the start, time has got away from me. We visited the rescue and were shown the only two bunnies they have right now. They had a whole wooden Wendy house to themselves so lots of binkie space, with all-day access to the outdoors for diggings and grass nibblings. As it was so cold, they had a heat mat with snuggly bedding on top. I know this rescue personally, as we got Tsuki and Sun

Tzu from them, so I was happy to hand them a gift card to the pet store of their choice. They use our donation throughout the year as and when they have bunnies brought to them. Whilst our donation is just a few hundred pounds, it makes a huge difference to this rescue. Although they are quiet at the moment, when we collected our two, they'd just had a group of six bunnies come in from one place, so it can become hectic very quickly.

Time to go; it's been good to have a catch-up, but I'm off to paint four-inch wooden tiles. I am designing my bathroom floor this month, along with making the traditional 100 little wool robins I always make in January. The floor comprises 500 small tiles we have cut from pallets, which I am going to paint, using up all the colour match pots I have as part of my decluttering project. The diamond-laid tiles will be held in place by a wide plank around the outside edge, inlaid with a band of mosaic tiles. It's going to look spectacular; I'll get you a picture.

So, that's a review of 2025. As we look forward to the year ahead I plan to bring back my 'Gardeners Crafting Diaries of Wonderings', see you soon, be safe.

Blessings and Light x