Case Study: The Old Knitting Factory

Coliving for single parents (and kids) in rural Ireland

Editor’s note: this is a guest post from Betsy Cornwell, a bestselling author most recently of Ring of Salt, her memoir of building a community home on the west coast of Ireland. When Betsy reached out to us, I ordered her book and read it in a single weekend - I couldn’t put it down. If you enjoyed Tara Westover’s Educated or Cheryl Strayed’s Wild you should probably order Betsy’s book now :)

In the piece below she offers a perspective on what it’s like to live with others as a single parent. Most of our writing has been on adults living together and some families with kids, so we’re grateful she’s bringing up how the needs of single parents vary - and what is universal.

The glen behind the knitting factory, full of crocosmia

Date founded: 2020

Location: Connemara, Ireland

Rented or owned: initially rent-to-own, purchase finalized 2022

Amount of space: two in-house units, each designed for a single parent family: one long term residence and one short term

Governance: sole decision maker owner

When I became a single parent on my baby’s first birthday, I was isolated and essentially homeless. I went from a domestic violence center to a hotel to a friend’s guest room before I finally found a rental I could barely afford for myself and my baby. One of the first ways I figured out how to survive was through coliving: I offered to host a student and give them writing mentorship in exchange for some help with childcare and writing-related administrative tasks. The student who came to stay with us became a dear friend who my kid still calls Tía Natalia.

As I figured out how to scrape together a living as a single parent, I started fantasizing intensely about homeownership, scrolling through real-estate listings I couldn’t afford when my baby woke me at night to nurse. My dream of a home always came with a bigger dream to offer other single parents what I wished for myself: rest and support, specifically with childcare.

I eventually found a place that let me combine those dreams in 2020, a historic knitting factory on the west coast of Ireland. I started sharing online about my dream of turning it into a family home and a childcare-inclusive residency space for other single parents. I crowdfunded the purchase of The Old Knitting Factory over the course of a year and a half and welcomed my first funded single-mom resident in 2022. Since then, I’ve had both paying and funded guests living with my son and me at the knitting factory, as well as friends and acquaintances who have co-lived with us in the spirit of mutual aid, for just a week sometimes and for months at others.

Reclaiming some of the overgrown garden shortly after moving in, July 2020

Finally, five years after we moved into the knitting factory, I am having major renovations done here thanks to yet more community support. Everyone in the house has shared one ancient, decrepit bathroom this whole time, and I cannot tell you how excited I am about the prospect of having a second bathroom. Peace and love and fellowship get a bit old when there are multiple potty-training kids in a one-toilet house, or god forbid when a stomach flu runs through it.

It’s changed my life and my child’s -- saved our lives, really -- sharing our home with other people. My kid gets something like the extended family we don’t otherwise have: there are several people who’ve stayed with us that he now calls Auntie, in addition to Tía Natalia. I’ve gotten help with childcare, shared meals, a laugh at the end of a hard and lonely day.

But I’m also still both a working single mom and an introvert, and I need my alone time; all the gifts of coliving, that I wouldn’t change for the world, can’t change that. Plenty of the overworked, touched-out single parents who come here for solace – many of them also survivors of domestic abuse or other trauma – need it too. So I’m making sure that as I renovate the knitting factory, I’m considering the ways we can live together but still offer each other space for solitude.

Space Considerations

1. Private, comfortable, accessible bathrooms

When you have young children, a bathroom can be shared space a little too often, so in my renovations I’m making extra-sure that each bathroom is a comfortable, private place. The bathroom for the residency space is being fully renovated into a spacious, wheelchair-accessible wet room. The new bathroom in my and my kid’s unit is getting the extra-long bathtub of my dreams – at long last it’s going to be a bathroom just for us, and the design, down to dark moody decor that I love but wouldn’t force on a stranger, reflects that. I want both bathrooms to be comfortable for adults to hang out and supervise kids without having to worry about another family waiting impatiently for their turn.

I’m also working toward making knitting factory residencies accessible to wheelchair users, and the design of the residency bathroom reflects that: a wet room with a stool in the shower, grab bars, and space to maneuver a wheelchair. I will need to do more fundraising (or sell a lot more books!) to get the outdoor space fully accessible – in this rocky part of Ireland it will involve intensive landscaping! – but in the meantime, I’m making renovation decisions with that goal in mind. The bathroom is where it starts.

2. Separate kitchens, with optional communal eating spaces

There are great reasons not to have multiple similar kitchens in your coliving unit, as this do’s & don’ts list argues – but I’ve found that for single parents, individual private kitchens really make life easier for everyone. We have to feed our kids at roughly the same times every day, and plenty of those kids have mutually incompatible allergies or food aversions or sensory sensitivities. Getting meals on the table is hard enough for a working single parent without having to worry about who gets which time slot to use the oven and whether you’ve definitely removed all traces of peanuts, all while both sets of kids are getting hangry!

That said, private cooking spaces and private eating spaces are two very separate concepts, and I’m making sure to have picnic tables in the garden that accommodate kids and families eating together – and coloring and playing and talking together, too.

The view from the communal garden, out across Lough an Mhuillin

3. Separate and communal recreational spaces

The name “knitting factory” is historically accurate – it’s what this building was built for in 1906 – but it suggests a larger space than the average-size house The Old Knitting Factory really is. I love the “caves and commons” philosophy in this pyramid of coliving needs, and the knitting factory’s layout reflects that: a cozy upstairs loft room in the residency unit, and a combined living room/kitchen for my kid and me. With those “caves” established, the outdoor space becomes our commons: a lakeside garden with areas for both private and shared use. The big windows that I’ve just installed will also allow parents to keep an eye on kids playing together while we do our own thing inside – something else I’ve dreamed of for a long, long time.

My toddler picking wild blackberries outside the knitting factory

All of these renovation decisions get at something crucial about The Old Knitting Factory: it’s a coliving space designed very specifically for single parents. A space for single adults, like the youth hostel where I did work exchange when I first came to Ireland, absolutely benefits from different features, like one communal kitchen and living room.

But while I look forward to having other Tía Natalias, and individuals and families with all kinds of structures, come to stay with us, centering the needs of single parents, and especially other working single mother artists like me (here’s a note on why I focus on single moms in my language sometimes, even though single parents of all genders are welcome here), really gets to the heart of what The Old Knitting Factory is all about.

Single parents so rarely get our needs put first, by ourselves or by anyone else. This space is about us, and the kinds of support we really need to be comfortable: both fellowship and longed-for solitude included.

Author’s Note: I am planning to re-open the knitting factory for both paid and funded residencies in spring of 2026, after renovations are complete. In the meantime, if you’d like to support our work, please consider joining us on Patreon to help make space for single moms to make art.

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