I’m super excited to have learned a new skill. One of my new year’s resolutions was to try something new creatively every month. My husband suggested learning to crochet hats. Well, I enjoy knitting a lot more than crochet so I decided to learn how to knit in the round.
As with most things, creating something new comes with lots of… I’ll call them learning opportunities. The hat I’m wearing is the successful end result of four scrapped projects. I chose to unravel them to keep the yarn since the things themselves were not save-worthy.
- I got the hang of knitting a tube on circular needles. A small lumpy tube, lol!
- Then I began what I thought was a hat pattern in the library book I’m learning from. Flip the page and it’s actually a bag. I have no need for a knitted bag.
- Next I learned the importance of making sure the cast-on yarn isn’t twisted before joining it into a circle. Got a good 20 rows in before I realized the hat was going to flip around itself.
- The hat’s diameter in this picture was too big. I got quite a ways in before realizing the size was off. So I figured I’d learn how to close up the top before unraveling this iteration.
#5: Ta-da! It’s a cute and functional simple hat. I can learn more complex patterns as I go along. This one’s for me. Hubby’s requested a green one so I’ll take him yarn shopping soon for the exact green that makes him happy. Me, I’m happy to have learned so much and not given up!
Here’s my desk workspace. I have the computer, sewing machine, and projects I’m currently working on here. I also have a wooden desk and long folding table to use now. The table was in the garage while we were cutting wood but we’ve finally finished installing all of the wood flooring. It’s so exciting to have room to spread out! I’ll be basting a quilt in a few days and it’ll be super handy to do that on the table rather than on the floor.
Ooooh look at that fabric storage! I fold each large piece around a board, pin it closed, remove the board and stack ’em in the shelves. It looks like a mini quilt shop and stays organized even if a cat comes in and dumps a shelf’s worth on the floor. They stay pinned in this shape and I can put them right back up. Don’t worry, I wash everything after it’s made and put it in a no-cats zone. 
My fabric’s organized by type and color. This is a new system for me and I’m loving it so far. The fullest shelves have tone-on-tones, batiks, hand-dyes, and solids in rainbow order. There’s also holiday fabrics, florals and novelty fabrics including foods and animals. Scraps are sorted in a similar way into bins. Each color gets its own except for black, grey, and white which share one. There’s also a bin for novelty fabrics and a large container for all of the solid scraps.
There’s a library next to my desk. It holds some of my favorite books including Sam Hunter’s 
The library also holds some fun things from friends like the bomb pillow from Trish and chicken pincushion from Eddie.
More bins are stored on top of the shelves. I keep things I don’t get into as often up there to avoid being chopped by the ceiling fan every time I access them. I can’t seem to remember to turn it off before I’m on the step-stool! Anyway, there are keeper quilts, non-cotton fabrics and more up there. The batting was up there too but will probably be moved to a lower shelf because I keep hopping up to get it. 
Aunt Laurie advised me to bring only the things into my new studio that are good quality, beautiful and useful. So I purged a lot of supplies, including most of my thread and much of the fabric. Why hold on to three shelves worth of florals I don’t like when they could bless someone else? Now I can pick out any piece of fabric knowing it’s something I love. And the thread? Ooooh it’s all so nice.
I’m moving 
Getting organized can be so messy! I’m looking forward to getting into my 
Of course, I need to take sewing breaks. So I made this month’s 
We discovered that he’s much better with the caulking gun than I am. So my job was to squish the silicone into the holes and smooth it out.
QUILTArtbymegan 
