Since we’ve moved here last Feb I haven’t had any kind of office-ish space. I’ve taken over a corner of the living room where I work, and the front porch where I stash most of my yarn and finished projects, but I don’t have a PLACE for me to work.
I’m thinking that might be behind much of my inability to focus on one project at a time – well, that and other stuff… But it’s hard to feel that I need to put away all my ‘toys’ in order to keep the living room livable (I’m a Virgo, it’s what I do.)
More than once I’ve found this need to put a project away in mid-inspiration* and take it out again later standing the way of getting REAL work done. *Or midspiration, there – I’ve made up a word!
The answer? A space of my own where I can just LEAVE my work in its’ half finished state, and return to it later.
Ironically, the reason we chose this house above others was that although the bedrooms were small, there were four of them – leaving one as an office for me.
But life took over and Gerry and the kids adopted the extra room as their own, which I was happy to sanction (Gerry had such a hard time getting up and down stairs at that time, and the small bedrooms meant the kids HAD to have some place to stretch out and relax)
But this left me knitting in the living room and grabbing my yarn from the front porch. Not the best setup if you’re trying to be professional about the whole yarn biz thing.
Well, that’s all about to change!
The basement was a sad place. It was clean and dry, but unfinished. We’d just been shoving stuff down there. During the bathroom creation on the ground floor last Summer more stuff got shoved there, and it was getting insane.
Time for things to change.
We had to move one of the walls because it was sitting on a drain that had to be relocated (by order of the St. Paul plumbing inspector because now we have THREE toilets, woo hoo!) So while the wall moving was goingn onwe used this opportunity to insulate and drywall one corner of the basement which will be [drumroll] MY OFFICE!!
I’ve been painting the floor over the past week – a section here, a section there – waiting 24 hours for the paint to dry before I can move all of the shelves and basement stuff over to the new, dry section and paint the next section. As I move it, I’ve been dusting it (it’s filthy) and the kids have been helping. Just like when they used to work in the mines. Happy days….
And now the floor is done! It’s been an excellent opportunity to reorganize how we have the stuff downstairs, and I think we’ll be able to fit so much more stuff in a more easily accessible way. This week, while the kids are home on Spring Break, we’ll be doing a lot of moving things BACK onto shelves and helping Mommy create her own space. Evidently Mommy thinks she’s Virginia Woolf.
Gerry will have an area where he store tools and hardware things, and I’ll have an area where I can store my yarn and books, get away to do quiet work when the kids have friends over, and just HIDE sometimes. I’m not even going to set it up like an office, but more like a little sitting room with comfy chairs and bookshelves. Yay, my own space!
SLOW WIRE
I’ve also been working on the knitted wire screens for our cabinets, but have been seeing little progress. I have so many other projects to work on right now – which is good – that I’m not giving the wire top priority. And it’s not exactly the best thing to take through airport security when I fly, so I only work on it at home.
It’s an adventure though – when I have a half decent screen to show, I’ll post photos. In the mean time here is my work on the wire!
OH, Wool!
One of those aforementioned projects is my O-Wool Cardigan that I’ve been working on. It’s so much fun to knit- I’m really enjoying it – and now I’m just about ready to join the sleeves to the body and continue working the whole thing as a yoke with raglan shaping.
Does anyone else get this damned excited over joining a front and back and two sleeves? I always cry at weddings…
PEAR OF BEAUTIES
Shopping yesterday at Rainbow I saw these pears – so beautiful – I bought two. A nice lookin’ pair.
And I have just the goat cheese and sausage to go with them in a nice salad!