Recalculating

Last table runner warp - colours are actually darker than shown

Life is full of unexpected things cropping up.  I've had a bunch of them the past month, but all have been dealt with and hopefully things will now proceed in a much smoother fashion.

My astrological sign is Cancer.  Cancer is a water sign.  And in one way I do conform to that fluidity.  When confronted with obstacles to a goal, I tend to go under, around - or at times - over, in order to make it to my goal. 

Sometimes that still doesn't work and I have to choose another path, another course entirely.  A detour, if you will.  Sometimes I realize that the original goal wasn't the best thing to be aiming for and I need a new goal.  A new destination.

The next four or so months are fraught with deadlines.  One of those is the photography for The Book.  I am just waiting to hear when my editor can arrive.  In the meantime I am steaming ahead with getting these table runner warps woven.  But since it appears that she may arrive very soon, once this warp is done I will have to switch from weaving the book projects and jump into studio clean up and prep work for the photos that need to be taken.

Everything still needs to be done - I just need to change things around in order to get there.

I came to weaving with this attitude already.  It has been no great hardship when I run into problems in weaving to recalculate.  Sometimes my goal was found to be lacking and I had to toss out that idea and change things in order to make a textile that I was going to be happy with making, but also putting my name on it for sale.

That is what weaving samples is all about, really.  Will this particular combination of factors result in the quality of cloth I desire?  If not, why not?

All my life I have been driven by two questions.  Why?  And Why Not?  I must have driven my mother mad given the number of times she answered those questions with "Because I said so!"

But that was never enough for me.  I wanted to know why something was necessary.  And I wanted to know why I couldn't do something differently. 

My career of creating textiles for sale has been informed by those questions and the answers to them.  Likewise my teaching is guided by them - telling students my experiences of what happens when, and exploring alternatives to accepted wisdom.

Like a Life GPS - sometimes the route needs to be recalculated.