a room of one's own

I last read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own as an undergrad. I forget the particulars of the book, but her argument that women need a space for themselves to create has always stayed with me. She believed that a woman could have written classics, like Shakespeare did, if only she'd had her own space. (As an aside, I'm sure her argument was more complex than that, but this is what I remember 15 years later.) I'm not trying to write Shakespeare. I'm just trying to knit.

I've been working on 2 designs in the last few weeks. I've got notes spread all over my desk, pieces of knitting scattered about my room, and more thoughts in my head than I can keep track of. My desk is in the bedroom I share with my husband, and my kids have free reign of our room. That means that my notes get moved about, my pattern notes get scribbled on, my pattern notes get cut into tiny pieces with preschool scissors, my knitting gets moved down the hall and stashed under someone's bed. In my zeal to declutter one day--given that my bedroom gets covered in kids' drawings, books, toys, shoes, clothes--I tossed a pattern I had written, but not yet typed into the computer, into the recycling. I still don't have the energy to recreate that one.

I daydream about having a space that's all mine. In my head, I sometimes "convert" our shed into a little one room studio with a wood stove, some curtains, a desk and a chair.

In my head, I sometimes build us a barn with studio space above. Or build a third floor onto the top of our house with a little staircase and a door with a key that only I have.

In my head, I sometimes think about a house for sale in our old neighborhood that had a bay window in front and shade trees in the back.

In reality, my desk is a mess, I have a hard time keeping track of my needles and notes, and it takes me 5 times longer to do something than it should. Until I'm able to take over the shed out back, this is how it'll have to be.