As we turn toward 2026, I thought I would take a moment to look back at the year. I have so much to be grateful for! First of all, I want to say thank you! I am truly grateful to all of you for being part of Purple Lamb. I’m grateful for your friendship, for your interest, and for your support of my small business.

I’m also grateful for some of our adult children who have been taking part in Purple Lamb this year. Our daughter Elizabeth has been working as my social media manager since last year. She’s the one who writes most of the posts for Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Recently she and her husband have also started making stitch markers for Purple Lamb.

Also, my son John Paul has been making most of the art batts this year. He is also amazing at fixing whatever is broken–whether it’s on the computer or in the studio, and he’s the one I go to when I have some crazy idea for how to improve the website. He can always figure out how to make it happen! Now he’s also working on an idea that will make warping rigid heddle looms easier. More about that when it’s further along.

My son Joseph doesn’t have a lot of free time these days, but as you know he has come up with some fabulous colorways over the years like Sapphire Dreams and Northern Lights, and I can always count on him to help when I need a second opinion about a colorway idea.

Our youngest two boys often help too with things like making the sample skeins I send along with your orders and winding balls of yarn for me.

I’m grateful to my husband who has been such a huge support to me in making Purple Lamb possible. He’s always available to help me work through a problem or idea, to do the heavy lifting (literally) when it comes to shows and festivals, and he makes dinner every night and does so many things so together we can juggle this crazy busy life together.

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All the New Colorways of 2025

This has also been a great year for coming up with new colorways. I was actually really surprised to see how many new colorways I have made this year. Not counting the club colorways from each month, I have created 25 new colorways this year!

We started the year with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons last January.

Next I made Cherry Blossom in anticipation of spring in February:

After that I created Beautiful Galaxy, the second colorway in my “beautiful” space series:

The next new creation was Tulips in April. Here that is:

The next colorway was Day at the Beach. My second youngest came up with the idea for this one:

After that came Cloud Gazing in June, inspired by the lazy days of summer and gazing up to find shapes in the clouds. It’s an assigned pooling colorway. Here is Cloud Gazing:

I also updated Carnevale and turned it into an assigned pooling colorway in June:

Carnevale was inspired by the elegant and amazing costumes and the whole experience in Venice the day before Lent begins. It’s Mardi Gras Italian style.

The next new colorway was Texas Bluebonnet, made to help the flood victims in central Texas last summer:

FYI, I’m going to be making the final donation of the year from the sale of this colorway to the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country on the 31st.

After that I made Pistachio to go with it:

The next new creation was Coral:

After that came Caribbean Blue in early September:

I made it especially to go with Black Butterfly, which I had just brought back after a long hiatus.

As my thoughts turned to autumn, I made Japanese Maples:

Next I made Fuchsia Flower:

I created the next new colorway in early October. It’s called Beyond the Grey Havens:

It was inspired by the very end of The Lord of the Rings.

Also in October I got to add Masaccio’s Tribute Money as a regular colorway:

This was a club colorway in February. Once in a blue moon I add a club colorway to the shop after many months have passed.

Next came Beautiful Nebula in in early November:

Also in November I made Oak Creek Canyon, inspired by the beautiful canyon in northern Arizona:

The next colorway I made was Sea Glass, which came about when a customer was looking for something similar to Galadriel’s Gift but a little more muted:

Next up came Fawn, which I had originally made for this year’s Advent calendars and decided to add to the shop:

After that I created one more colorway for the “Beautiful” space series called Beautiful Black Hole:

This one is really hard to photograph, but I dyed all the colors in the other beautiful space colorways over black, so in dim light it just looks black and in bright light you see all the other colors too.

Next I decided to take the beautiful purple-blue of Texas Bluebonnet and make a semi-solid with it. Here is Bluebonnet Blue:

The very last one is a new assigned pooling colorway from earlier this week, and it still needs a name. Here is the colorway:

Let me know if you have any name ideas! Once I have a name I’ll add it to the shop.

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January Club Colorway

For January I chose this ingenious painting by Vermeer:

It’s called The Art of Painting, and he painted it around 1667. Art historians believe the painter in the painting is Vermeer himself, and the model he is painting was his daughter. You can sign up for the club or change your subscription anytime until the end of the month right here.

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On a Personal Note

We have been having a lovely Christmas with lots of family. We have four generations at our home right now! Isn’t that wonderful? As soon as I’m done here I’ll go hang out with everyone. There’s a board game going on, and I think I smell bacon and eggs.

I hope you and yours have a fabulous New Year!