Can you believe another year has passed? This is my seventh year running this blog hop, and I’m super stoked with this year’s list of awesome studios to share with you!

Each year, we love to show you that we are real people too. We have messy studios, we have clean studios, we have disaster areas, and we have perfect organizers. The variety of studios and sewing spaces you get to see here is awesome. I always get a few organization tips from the hop each year.

It starts today, so let’s reveal this year’s group of Spring Cleaners!

March 29 – Raylee Bielenberg – http://sunflowerstitcheries.com
March 30 – Jen Frost – http://faithandfabricdesign.com
March 31 – Tara Gebhardt – https://quiltspluslove.com/quilt-stories
April 1 – Becca Fenstermaker – http://prettypiney.com/blog
April 2 – Leanne Parsons – http://www.devotedquilter.com
April 3 – Rebecca Lidstrom – http://Www.studiorquilts.com/blog
April 4 – Amy Bradley – http://purplepineapplestudios.com
April 5 – Sue Griffiths – https://www.duckcreekmountainquilting.com
April 6 – Kate Starcher – http://katiemaequilts.com/blog
April 7 – Tammy Silvers – https://tamarinis.typepad.com/
April 8 – Jessica Caldwell – http://Www.desertbloomquilting.com
April 9 – Monika Fritschi Henry – https://www.pennyspoolquilts.com/blogs/news
April 10 – Sara D Flynn – https://www.offbeatquilts.com/blog
April 11 – Bobbie Gentili – http://geekybobbin.com
April 12 – Cheryl Sleboda – http://blog.Muppin.com

Please visit each of the stops along the way and see some studio goodness for yourself! Enjoy!

Today is Hari Kuyo, the ceremony in Japan to honor your broken needlework tools. On February 8th, in Shinto and Buddhist temples across Japan, needles, pins, and small scissors are laid to rest in soft jelly or tofu. Kuyo is a redemptive fire ceremony for tools by artists, chefs, and others to burn their worn tools, brushes, and knives to honor them for their work in their art. Needles and pins have a different ceremony, called Hari Kuyo, meaning Needle Memorial. No fire, but a soft cake to pierce one final time.

I know we have all been seeing the Marie Kondo Tidying Up series on Netflix being discussed, and much has been said over her “thanking each item for it’s service” before it’s discarded. But I don’t know that we really think about how useful, yet disposable, items help us do the work we need to do each time we sew. I think this ceremony speaks to me in a strong way, above my love for the Japanese culture.

I will spend about 10 minutes going through all of my pins looking for the truly crooked and broken ones. It is a nice way to assess my collection of these little sewing helpers. Now my pins are refreshed and ready to help, and these broken and bent ones will be retired.

I also decided to buy some new pins today. I often tell my students that they are “worth a new piece of thread” on their needle. But have I considered that the needle itself is something I am worth? The thrifty sewist in me wants to keep every scrap and sew “down to the nub”. But I know I will be less frustrated with my work if I am using the proper tools, and good, new needles and pins help me do that.

My favorite pins are these Magic Pins that are fine and have comfort grips and are heat resistant to my iron! Of course, you know my favorite needles already… You can get them in my shop!

For those of you who are curious, after I honored my needles and pins, I removed them from my little square of tofu, and wrapped them for the recycle bin.

I got a very lovely gift of bath bombs for Christmas. They are from a small business. They are really well packaged and smell divine.

This has me thinking about a book I’m reading called “Win Her Business” in which it relates how women consumers appreciate details like this.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot in my own business too. I’ll be doing some discussions of it on my Patreon this week. Join me over there on Tuesday and Thursday’s 3pm cst. Http://Patreon.com/muppindotcom

We had the tiniest bit of snow, so someone got a white Christmas! Be sure to watch our FB live video from Thursday. Happy holidays and look for some treats from us next week!