Rebooting in the New Year

 After a gap, a rather large gap as it happens, I'm going to attempt to blog again. Interspersed amongst current projects will be posts devoted to the quilty events of the past 7.5 years. While I wasn't blogging, I was creating.

I'm writing from my "home office" space which is carved out of a corner of my new and improved Mom Cave. Thanks to COVID-19 I was moved to a work-at-home position on March 19, 2020. It is hard to believe it has been nearly a year at home - and I finally have a stable set-up rather than a cobbled together corner.

A few years ago, while Mike was away at a conference, I once again flipped rooms in the house - and moved Mike and I to the front bedroom, thus freeing up the master bedroom for crafting space. The downside is we don't have a bathroom attached to our bedroom anymore - but that is actually kind of an upside too.  Overall this is a better use of space for us in a small house.  In July 2019 we discovered damage to the floors under both bathrooms and our bedroom - thus we embarked on a major home renovation which spanned over a year. And like many things in our lives, once we got started - it ballooned. Rather than just repair/replace the flooring that was damaged, we chose to rip the carpet out of the entire house and gut both bathrooms to the studs. Something we should have done over a decade ago.

My IKEA shelves are mostly quilt fabric now, with a shelf of scrapbook supplies at the base. Initially, I had hoped the tops would be barren, but they do make a great place to store batting and WIPS. I hope this year to reduce my stash through actually using it.

 The hutch is one I stained and finished back in 1995. It was used for dishes until 2013 and then repurposed for fabric and books and notions. It is still suffering a bit from the renovation move and reorganization. And on top, a perfect place to stash puzzles (board games live in the coat closet and pushed the puzzles out a few years back). To the right is my yarn corner... which in spite of good intentions of only buy for a project you are about to start has expanded quite a bit.

My poor, neglected Sweet 16, Molly, still needs to be dug out from under the pile of stuff that is sitting over it. In 2019, my goal was to use it for ~15 minutes per day to get over my fear of free-motion quilting. That went great for the first part of the year, and then the floors happened, and I ended up setting up an air mattress where the cutting table now sits - thus blocking my access to Molly for many months and leaving her table a bit of a dumping ground. I have managed to move the plants off. Next up the supplies.  The cutting table top shifts, so I can move the top back towards Bernadette (Bernina 830 Record) when I quilt on Molly and vice versa.  The next thing I need to tackle is better lighting. I do have a wide variety of lamps spread around the room.

My overarching goal for this coming year is to create! Quilting, knitting, cross-stitching, and perhaps even scrapbooking. I do have a bit of crafters ADHD - and with world travel at a standstill, I anticipate spending many more months at home in 2021.