Pacing

 

These are a series of scarves made from painted warps.  I worked with several indy dyers over the years and would send them photos or word descriptions of the kinds of colours  I wanted in the warps and then let them have free rein over how they dyed the warps, which I wound and sent to them.

It made more sense for me to wind my own warps so that they would conform to how I do the job of dressing the loom.  And since I'm not too bothered about 'messy' warps, this worked well for me for a number of years.

In order to make this approach work for me, I had to be aware of what the dyer needed to do and some sense of their pacing/timing in getting the job done, allow time for the warps to be shipped to them and back to me, for me to actually weave them, then fringe twist and wet finish them.

The work for each year's craft fairs began in the spring when I would crunch the numbers, take inventory, yes, including colours I was low on, order the yarn, wind the warps, get them to the dyer, then wait for them to come back, all pretty with their colours.

And then it was weave, weave, weave.  For a time I paid other people to do the fringe twisting, which worked, sort of.  But in the end it was just better if I bit the bullet and did the fringe twisting myself.

But that's the thing about producing in quantities large enough to fill a craft fair booth.

I had to know how long it would take me to receive the yarn order, when I could begin warp winding, allow time to get the wound warps to the dyer, and then back to me.  Then I had to gear up and begin weaving.  As the pile of unfinished scarves grew (about 4 every other day, including dressing the loom, on average) the fringe twisting had to be done.  Since it takes almost the same amount of time to fringe twist one scarf as it took to weave it...well, you get the picture.

Now, in my 'retirement' I no longer need to produce in quantities that will fill a craft fair booth.  People are sometimes rather astonished at the quantity of cloth I have produced over my 40+ year span of doing this as a profession.  But I could not have done it at all without learning how to be really efficient at getting it done.

Allen Fannin once told me (when I was going through a period of extreme chronic pain) that he was in pain every day and you just have to ignore that and get on with the job.

In some ways he was right.  When you live with chronic pain you just factor that into your life and either give up or keep going.  I always kept going.

Until it wasn't necessary that I wove to pay the bills.

Now I am learning how to pace myself in a different way.  Now, I weave for my mental health as much as anything else.  Weaving has always been a working meditation for me as much as an aerobic activity.  In my 70s it is now less physical, because I just can't do it that way anymore, but about the fact that I do still enjoy the whole process.  So I'm learning how to pace myself with the new reality of my current physical age, not my mental image of a 30 something person.

I'm just finished reading a memoir by Michael Caine and he talks a lot about finding balance in his life, how he looks at mistakes or failures as lessons to be learned.  And in many ways, this is how I've tried to live my life as well.  I never met a mistake or failure that I couldn't learn from!  

This week I should finish the ghost weaving I'm doing, and then?  Back to the Big Project to wrap up the rest of my contribution to the post production.  There are other things I have to do as well - the Sunday Seminar this Sunday, the Ontario Handweavers Conference the following weekend.  The local craft fair, for which I need to get the recent production tagged/priced.  Then the guild room sale for the five weeks following.

There are also personal maintenance appointments in there, but mostly I am holding off accepting more obligations beyond the two that are pending, one of which happens next year.

My well of adrenaline appears to be close to empty.  I will learn a slower pace.  But I will keep going.  Got way too much yarn to stop weaving now!