Uncategorized

Chaos Central version 2.0

As we start our second year in residence at Chaos Central, it is only fitting that we roll out version 2.0.  For most of the past year, we have run our respective businesses out of a three-generation household, sharing the house with our son and his family after our daughter-in-law, a local government professional, took a new job 20 miles away–and 80 miles from their former home.  Our son, a civil engineer who telecommutes part of the time to his job midway between the old and new locations, took over the main office; our two grandsons, ages 7 and 2, took over most of the living room and a substantial chunk of the longarm quilting studio, which became a Lego design studio.  Of course, the extra family filled two of the remaining bedrooms (leaving a guest room for the other grandparents); the kitchen ran in a three-section duty roster cycle, with separate meals prepared for children (unseasoned past and meat), parents (high-protein macrobiotics and spicy meals), and grandparents (vegetarian); and, the butler’s pantry/laundry/espresso bar ran pretty much continuously.

We arrived back from a business trip  to Montana at the end of October to an almost-empty house, our first night back home coinciding with the children’s first night in their new home, after a long search and even longer building cycle.  We celebrated by helping the grandsons assemble their beds and shuffle furniture the next morning while their parents retrieved more belongings from storage, then returned to Chaos Central to transform it into the fiber arts and software studio we had imagined.

First, without tubs of toys, the front room transformed into a welcoming reception area, which still needs a few lamps and occasional tables to round out the space.  The dining room got more spacious with the removal of two leaves from the table.

The reception area, with "adult" furniture, sans toy boxes and TV

We had started reclaiming the office earlier, anticipating the imminent move with the installation of our new XenServer. Since our return, the Unix Curmudgeon’s trusty Ubuntu Linux laptop has been set up on the conference table, with dual monitors. The XenServer console, a Windows XP machine (our one and only concession to the Redmond Menace), is essentially reduced to a VNC terminal for the many Linux/BSD images residing on the virtualization host.

The office reverts to a software development center
Getting ready access to the bookshelves and laser printers is great.

Of course, the real transformation is in the Nice Person’s fiber and fabric arts studio, now that she is rid of the Unix Curmudgeon’s temporary office mess in the midst of her looms. In fact, the fiber business has expanded to four rooms: the longarm quilting studio, the weaving/sewing room and office/library, a spinning and weaving room, and beading and weaving space in one of the guest rooms.

The quilting studio, now with cutting/ironing station replacing the grandchildren's Lego studio.
The weaving/sewing studio, with fabric stash and Oregon floor loom
The office/library area, with yarn stash and 8-harness table loom replacing the Unix Curmudgeon's former temporary office; the fabric arts office area is to the right.
The spinning/weaving studio, with Gilmore floor loom. This is also the "Music Room" and overflow guest space with inflatable mattress.
The 4-harness table loom in the "Bicycle Room" guest bedroom
A view of the "Bicycle Room" guest quarters. The quilt is a blooming 9-patch in Kaffe Fassett fabrics.
The original guest room, on the first floor, with a Thimbleberries sampler and the "cat quilt."
Of course, the downstairs guest room is known as the "Sewing Room," for the 1888 Domestic treadle machine.

So it goes. We’ve recovered our house and are transforming our workspaces for productivity. The lesson is this: family life and business don’t always mix well. Working from home when home consists of an active family life with small children is, by necessity, a stop-gap measure that involves some sacrifices. Prior to last year, we had been empty-nesters for over 15 years, and sharing space with college students is a lot different than sharing space with toddlers and grade-schoolers.

But, at the same time as we are setting up dedicated studio space, we are finding ourselves more mobile: the laptop computer is still the key to the software and systems consulting business; and the portable table-top looms, compact spinning wheel, sewing machine carry cases, and project portfolio boxes are essential to the fiber and fabric business.  Even without full-time multi-generational occupation, Chaos Central, true to its name, remains a flurry of seemingly disjointed, divergent activities on many fronts.