Today I’ll take you on a tour of my writing space. I blogged about this last year for RMFW, but now that we’ve bought and moved into our first home, my little writing corner has expanded into an entire writing room!
The basic setup hasn’t changed much. Same $20 thrift store desk, which I repainted with the help of my wonderfully crafty mother. Same “wall of encouragement” above it (with more publications now!). Same slightly crooked lamp and comfy chair. Same handmade tuffet for Winnie (though she prefers the chair).
But this time…the owls have taken over.
I like to think the owls adopted me, rather than the other way around. I certainly didn’t go out looking for an entire parliament of them (yes, that’s the technical term). The first owl fluttered into my life three years ago, when I was visiting my parents for Christmas and my mom and I wanted to do a sewing project together. We found a pattern for this adorable owl pincushion.
A few months later, I noticed this little guy looking lonely at an estate sale and couldn’t say no.
Then on a walk, Winnie and I rescued this appropriately frightened-looking owl from a dumpster.
At this point, I started to wonder if the owl thing was getting out of hand. I can be a bit of a packrat, and it’s easy for me to “collect” things until I run out of shelf space for them. So, for a while, I actually considered getting rid of my owls (gasp!).
Then I went to a book launch at one of my favorite local bookshops, the Tattered Cover, with one of my favorite children’s authors, Melanie Crowder. And guess what?
The cover of her latest book, Three Pennies, was a big owl. She had a cake with an owl printed in icing on the top. She had lovingly handcrafted these owl masks for all the guests to wear.
At first, I was so excited to meet one of my writing idols that I didn’t even make the owl connection. But when I got home and noticed all the other owls looking at me from various nooks and crannies of my writing studio, I took it as a sign from the writing gods.
Since then, I’ve accumulated several more owls. And I keep that owl mask on my bulletin board, to remind myself that someday, I’ll be doing my own book launch.
