Fragile

As I was twisting the fringe on a shawl this morning I started thinking about how fragile the web is when it is cut from the loom.

The threads are no longer under tension.  The threads can easily be pulled out of alignment.  Slippery yarns like this rayon can slither and slip.  The weft yarns don't want to stay where they have been placed but start to fall out of the web entirely.

Fragile.

Once the fringe (or raw edge) has been secured in some way, things are better but the cloth still won't - can't - perform its function properly.  The threads, warp and weft, are still individual.  They have no cohesiveness.  No strength.  They are interlaced but that web has no structural integrity.  It is fragile.

Weavers have to wet finish their results just like potters have to fire their bisque, glass workers have to anneal their glass, etc., etc., etc.

Almost every craft I can think of has to 'finish' their product in some way before it is finally done, done.

Textiles have been used for centuries as metaphor for life.  In some versions Hansel and Gretel use a ball of yarn to mark their path through the forest.  Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger on a spindle.  Rumplestiltskin spins flax into gold.  The Swan Princes have to have their curse broken by their sister making a dozen shirts of nettle   And so on.

I look at the web of my life and stand here, near the end of my warp (so to speak) and pick out this thread and that, threads that I had no idea would be incorporated into my life when I set out on this journey.

I have met wonderful people, made dear friends.  Been to lovely places.  Enjoyed conversations that ranged from quantum physics to the history of language.  I have been welcomed and treated royally.  People seem to enjoy my writing - something I dreamed of as a child but never imagined would become any sort of reality for me - blue collar poor, living in a geographically remote location.  And yet.

I traveled to Sweden (by freighter, across the Atlantic in May, which was...interesting), took a bus tour of Europe, toured England, visited Sweden several more times, have been to Greece and Istanbul (only 24 hours in Istanbul, but still).  I have been to nearly every province in this country (still a few more to get to) and many of the US states.

This blog is coming up to 1.5M  (Million!!!) page views.  I've published books, created educational weaving 'kits', done not one but two DVDs.

I've attended - and organized - conferences, sold my weaving wholesale, worked for a fashion designer, done 'ghost' weaving for others.

I've had the privilege of transcribing interviews (WeaveCast, Tien Chiu and others) and been interviewed for podcasts.

As a child I grew up thinking I was fragile.  That I'd never really amount to much.  But through the challenge of creating textiles, I seem to have 'finished' myself.  Into something "not fragile".

Currently reading The Prisoner in the Castle by Susan Elia McNeal