Deep Breath. This is a big one.

I'm going to start with immense gratitude to everyone in our community. We've done so many great things together this past year! We moved twice and set up two very special locations - in Parkdale and Sprucedale. Since we moved into our cute Parkdale Studio on Cowan last September, we have hosted over two hundred and twenty workshops, including Ron Collins guest teaching in the Fall and the Spring, our annual Heart Crafted Maker's Market, a community fabric swap, twenty long arm appointments, four Sewing Dates, eleven Member Stitch Nights, and a very special baby shower. My heart is full and proud looking back on that list knowing all the wonderful things and connections that were made in less than a year.

The difficult thing is that even with everything we have accomplished, class registrations have been down significantly for a while now. No matter what we do, class cancellations have gone way up. Unfortunately, the numbers don't add up to keep a physical space in Toronto anymore, even with all the changes we made in hopes to find a solution for this. I'm so heartbroken to say we will have to close our Parkdale location later this Fall.

Please know that closing this chapter of the workroom, makes space for us to recover and move forward into the future. We have many more things to do together. We are creative problem solvers and have always done our best to embrace change. We are full of ideas and will be shifting our energy to all the potential here in Sprucedale and in our existing online community, theworkroomstudio.ca - where we will start to offer virtual workshops and more events for our larger community. We will continue to work with and support our instructors, Johanna, Carolanne and Leo in new ways with your help.

Our plan is to book workshops and events until the end of October before we pack up and close the studio. We hope you will join us! If there's a workshop you'd like to sign up for, feel free to reply to this note to let me know. I will do my best to add it to the Fall calendar, which we will be working on and posting soon. Take a look at our current calendar and join our amazing instructors for an upcoming class you've been pondering. Now is the time! We would love to fill our final workshops in the Cowan Avenue studio with your support.

We have just posted our September Handmade Getaway in Sprucedale. It is already half full and we take that as a sign to expand on our retreat offerings to welcome more of you to the Almaguin Highlands. We are also planning a Fall Maker's Market event to celebrate our seventeen year anniversary that should line up with the changing of the leaves up North.

I can't possibly say all the things that need to be said today. I also know that the workroom is built on an open dialog with our community and I encourage you to reach out if you're inspired to. I'll be back next week to answer your questions and talk more about our ever changing way forward.

So grateful for all of you,
Karyn