A room full of departures

An original descriptive passage set in an invented hat workshop.

The hats stood on pale wooden heads with no faces. Some leaned over imaginary eyes. Others rose in folded peaks or spread into brims so wide that they seemed to require a room of their own. The workshop was narrow, but every shelf suggested someone about to leave for somewhere larger.

Near the window, a hat of stiff yellow straw cast a striped shadow across a bill. Beside it, a dark felt cap held the white dust of the workbench along its edge. Neither looked finished. A pin remained in the yellow ribbon; a piece of chalk had marked a small cross on the felt. I had imagined a workshop as a place where things became more definite. Here, objects seemed to be waiting for permission to change again.

The maker lifted a broad black hat and turned it between her hands. Away from its wooden head, it lost the assurance it had possessed on the shelf. The brim trembled. She rested it on her own head for a moment, and the shape became a gesture: not quite a bow, not quite a refusal to look up. Then it was in her hands again, an object with a rough seam inside.

At the back of the room, feathers lay in shallow drawers. Their colours were startling against the practical brown paper beneath them. A green feather caught the light and seemed blue; when the drawer moved, it became green again. The maker shut it gently, taking the sudden brightness away.

Outside, people passed wearing ordinary hoods against the drizzle. Inside, the hats continued their silent preparations. I could not imagine who would choose the tallest one, or how it would travel through a low doorway. That uncertainty was part of its presence. It occupied more than its measured space, carrying the possibility of a person who had not yet arrived.

How does the writer make the hats seem to have possibilities beyond their appearance as workshop objects? Support your answer with references to the passage.