It Isn't Finished Until...

 

..it's wet finished.

Or in reality, for someone who wants to sell their work, until it's sold.

One of the things that I've been doing for the past few months is remembering.

Remembering how Magic came to be - and how many years it took.  Remembering all the different shows I (we) did.  How many places I travelled to teach.

And reflecting on how the event horizons of my life have shrunk.  

In order to keep weaving (because that's what I love to do, above all else, despite the 'failures') I have chosen to stop doing a whole lot of things.

Each activity I chopped away from my calendar of events took time to grieve.  Well, I didn't 'take' it so much as it was part of the process of letting go, of accepting that it was what I needed to do in order to keep weaving.  Marie Kondo had it right - if it doesn't bring you joy, get rid of it.  When the aggravation and aftermath become too great, it had to go.  As a result, I am doing everything in my power to keep weaving.

For me weaving isn't just what I do, it's what I am, at a very core level.  

It means I look at things analytically, especially textiles, and I think about how the designer brought the various elements together to create the textile.  It's a puzzle, and one I find endlessly fascinating.

I anticipate problems by thinking through the processes and applying what I know about a situation and try to extrapolate what I know to a new problem to see if I can head off any issues before they happen.

And I carry this approach out of the studio into my life.

I'm a thinker and a planner, but I was that before I learned how to weave - it just seemed as though my attitude towards life integrated with weaving at a very deep level.  I just do it more consciously, now.

For the past few years I have been weaving tea towels.  I've sold some on my ko-fi shop, but one of the memories that got brought to the surface over the past few days was the fact that markets can become saturated.  

Have I saturated my tea towel market on ko-fi?  If so, then how do I sell them?

With Stories from the Matrix just launched, now comes the wait to see if I can sell 'enough' copies to pay for the costs of producing it.  I chose to self-publish via an online print-on-demand website.  The choice was made because I am well aware that my stories, my writings, are aimed at a tiny niche of an already niche market.  Stories may find interest beyond weavers, although that wasn't my primary focus when I wrote it.  But there is no guarantee it will be well received beyond my 'fan base'.

With all that in mind, did I stop everything else and pour all my attention into marketing Stories?  

Um, no, I did not.  While I'm not ignoring the marketing, there isn't much I can do until the reviews start appearing (I'm hoping for reviews in a couple of publications which received review copies.)

With all the memories stirred up, I've just spent the past few weeks - you guessed it - writing another, well, not sure if I can call it a 'book', yet.  Perhaps a 'pamphlet' or a 'zine'.

It's 'resting' right now.  I need time to let the files sit and, um, mature, kind of like cheese.  I need 'distance' from what I've just written, which was in some cases deeply personal and quite possibly Too Much Information.  Do I want to share those stories?  

So the files are with two alpha readers.  

And now, finally, I turn my attention to the long neglected things I've been meaning to do.  Yesterday I prepared the cloth for the aprons for the guild looms.  Today I hope to start serging the edges, a daunting task and one I may not be able to do all in one go, like I could have done even three years ago.  After standing too long at a too low table yesterday, I had too much pain.  :(   So I have to once again reduce my event horizon, learn to pace myself.

It's not the 'old', it's the decrepit...

In the meantime, if you are finding Stories (or The Intentional Weaver, because I still sell a few copies a month of that one, or for that matter Magic) and you are willing to share your comments about one or the other on my blog, contact me 

laura at laurafry dot com