Doing the Same Thing

 

A couple of the tea towels designed after the great ah-ha moment

Now that the book is officially launched, it is time to turn back to more...mundane...matters.

I stripped all of the tea towels I had listed in my ko-fi shop with the intention of starting to list the towels I wove building on the technique I discuss in Stories from the Matrix.  (Still no idea what to call it - shifted twill blocks?  overlapping twill blocks?)

However, life has been complicated - as it so often is - and so far I haven't sorted the towels out in order to get 'pretty' pictures of them, count, measure and post.  That is one of my goals for this week.  I'm still dealing with mailing out the books and doing my marketing push.  Plus, oh yeah, weave?

I've sent copies out to people I hope will give a favourable review, so, fingers crossed.

And yes, I'm working on another...book?  pamphlet?  To be determined.

I used to give classes on how to run a weaving business (or any craft business).  Usually people wanting to start or who were trying and floundering to be a professional craftsperson didn't know the first thing about running a business.

Not that they weren't talented or intelligent, just...they didn't know about things like collecting and remitting appropriate taxes.  Didn't know they were supposed to do it, didn't know where to find the information.  Didn't know what a wholesale vs a retail price was and why it mattered.  Didn't know who held legal title to the product until the customer purchased it (i.e. consignment vs wholesale).  And they didn't know who their customer was.

All things I had to learn for myself.  I had a bit of a leg up given my rather eclectic background which stood me in good stead.  Like the year spent at the credit bureau learning about how credit works and why a good credit score was important and how to maintain one.  The year I spent working for the claims adjuster at an insurance company.  And so on.

The Office Practices and Law 11 courses I took in Grade 12 helped, too.  I knew what made a legally binding contract, what a promissory note was, how liability worked and so on.

What I seldom talked about during this class were the more personal lessons I learned as I continued re-inventing myself as markets changed and I had to find new markets, and new designs.  

While society has changed over the past 50 years, I thought it might be helpful if I documented some of what I did, especially when things changed.  

Someone commented after a presentation on being a professional weaver, that while they had re-invented themselves by completely changing careers, I had re-invented myself but always stayed a weaver.

I thought about that for a moment and said that weaving was not only what I did, a weaver is what I am.

Last night I sent one of the essays(?)  chapters(?) to my editor for her evaluation.  Is this information something that others need to hear?  Is what I have written 'worthy' of seeing the light of day?

The stories I tell about this stage of my life are deeply personal and may contain Too Much Information.  On the other hand, the vast majority of people have no clue what people like me, trying to make an income using their creativity and skills go through in a society that by and large doesn't value things that are made by hand.  Or teachers, either.

We have been conditioned to want the instant.  The disposable.  Dare I say it, the plastic?

As we dig ourselves deeper into the mire of instant gratification, eventually the wheels are going to fall off.  There may come a time when we can't get things like cloth (or food, for that matter) unless we make it ourselves.

At that point raising sheep or fibre crops, spinning and weaving (and other textile crafts) will once again become a survival skill.

Perhaps none of my lived experience will be relevant.  But while I was learning how to run a business I was also growing as a person.  And perhaps those stories will be the valuable lessons?

Dunno.  

Still writing, working out what to tell, how much to tell, how personal I should be.  Right now?  It's pretty personal.  Perhaps, Too Personal.

Again.  Dunno.

As usual, I'm writing my way to a conclusion while I try to figure things out for my own self.

All I really know is that if we keep doing what we've always been doing, we will keep getting what we've always been getting.  And when society changes direction, if we don't, we'll have to deal with the consequences.