I am still easing into the new year over here. Our holiday decorations are still up — I had planned to take them down last weekend, but didn’t get to it, so up they stay. Hopefully we’ll get them taken down and put away tomorrow. (It’s so fun to put them up! Then just feels like a hassle to take them down.)
As usual, there are a few habits I’m trying to bring into my 2023 routine. “Move my body” is one of them. Not exercise, not weight loss — I just really want to move more, whether it’s yoga or a bike ride or taking a walk. I feel like I’m more sedentary than ever, which is bad for both my physical health and my general mental health and happiness levels.
Two weeks in, and “move my body” is going pretty well! I’ve gone on several walks and bike rides. Charlotte learned to ride without training wheels over the break, and has requested to go on a bike ride nearly every day for the last two weeks — something that I am generally happy to oblige since it gets me outside and moving as well.
I suspected that it might take Charlotte a while to get the hang of the bike, but I underestimated her ability — she caught on and was successfully riding within 30 minutes!! She started on a tiny bike that worked well because it was easy to push with her legs, but earlier this week I got her onto the blue bike you see below, which is a more appropriate size for her. The tennis courts were a great place to learn (large area, smooth surface) but we’ve since moved on to riding around the neighborhood and over to the elementary school. I’m super proud of her, but the best part has been seeing how proud she is of herself!
I’ve also been trying to dedicate more time to reading, which for me is 100% a feast-or-famine type of habit. Upon finishing one book, I need to immediately start another one — I’ve realized over the years that this is essential to keeping me in a reading groove. So when I finished a Mhairi McFarlane novel just after the new year, I immediately rolled into “Alone on the Wall” by Alex Honnold and David Roberts, which Jose gave me for Christmas. (I forgot how much I enjoy outdoor/adventure books! Though my conclusion halfway through the book is that free solo climbers are legit a bit crazy. Whew.)
(Related: Jose and I were doing Charlotte’s Web as a read-aloud with the girls and finished it a few days ago. I’m not sure I had ever actually read the book myself — I had it read to me as a child, and watched the animated movie as a kid as well. It was such a lovely book to read as an adult! Something about the writing style was so calm and warm.)
In other news, I’ve been doing some cleanup/reorganization in my sewing room as well — though at the moment it’s very much in the “it looks worse before it looks better” stage. From the photo above, it should be clear enough that there hasn’t been much (any) sewing happening recently, but I’m happy to report that I’ve cleared off enough of my sewing machine and cutting mat to get started on a baby version of my Ribbons quilt. I’m teaching a workshop on this pattern next week, and realized that I don’t have a sample to take with me. (I gave the original quilt to my mother-in-law.)
Pulling fabric from my stash for this baby quilt was surprisingly difficult because my stash is ~90% fat quarters, and this quilt requires yardage. This was a minor epiphany — I should have realized long before now that my stash is predominantly FQs, but I guess I hadn’t really thought about it! More than half of my patterns call for yardage, and it was sort of funny and confusing to realize that I could barely scrounge up enough yardage to make my own pattern from my own stash! And yet I have enough FQs to make several dozen quilts.
This has made me think about how I buy fabric and whether I should make any changes. In the last couple years, my purchases have been either 1) yardage for a specific quilt I’ve designed, 2) Color Collective, or 3) a new fabric line that I really, really love. Both #2 and #3 end up being more fat quarters — and even #1 often ends up with leftover FQ-ish pieces once I’m done. Perhaps it’s time to buy a few favorite prints and solids in 1-yard cuts? But also, my fabric stash is definitely smaller than the average, and I like it that way. Maybe it’s better to just continuing buying yardage if/when I need it? TBD!
I’ve been talking about writing a couple new patterns that are precut-friendly, and this “epiphany” is certainly aligned with that goal! So I’m looking forward to seeing what I can come up with this year.
