Feeling the Love

 

Yesterday I finished the peacock blue weft and started weaving with the natural white.  

This is intended to be the 'back' side of the cloth, but weaving it 'upside down' means I lift just 6 shafts, not 10, so that's what I do.  (Some people call it 'lazy', I call it 'efficient'.)  

Yesterday I also launched A Thread Runs Through It.  Some people have already purchased, for which I want to say a heart felt thank you.  This book is probably the most 'personal' I have written, hence the tag 'memoir'.

One of the things I didn't really touch on in this book is the fact that I made the decision to become a weaver as my father was dying from multiple myeloma.  He was diagnosed in 1969 while I was in Sweden, and for the next 6 years lived through some pretty brutal health issues.

My father was a hard worker, took his duties as husband and father seriously, and was a man of few words.  But his words, while short, were to the point, and I'm quite sure my sudden pivot to taking up weaving was confusing to him.  All his life he had worked to provide for his family, provide them with as much security as he could manage and, while he never said anything, I could sense his doubt at my decision to make weaving my career.  Especially in the 1970s when women didn't actually have careers, unless they fell into extraordinary circumstances.  Getting married and then pregnant was usually seen as the top priority and so women were not given opportunities to advance in most professions since everyone knew they would soon stop working to become care givers for their children.

Then the fact that I was leaving a rather well paying job with a steady paycheque for something as insecure as being a self-employed weaver?  I'm sure he had many many doubts.

As it happened, the night he died I was teaching my first ever fibre class.  There was a group of people who wanted a spinning workshop and the instructor at the college was asked to teach it.  She refused, saying that she was teaching full time, she wasn't interested in doing even more 'work' outside of her already full schedule.  The person approaching her then asked how they could learn if she wouldn't teach?  My instructor's eye fell on me, sitting quietly in the corner and, bless her heart, she pointed at me and declared "Laura will teach you!"

I, who had taken weeks to finally figure out how to get fibre twisted into yarn?  That Laura?  

It was easier for me to say I would teach the class (along with another of the weaving students) than it was to say 'no' to my teacher.

And so, that Wednesday evening, in the unfinished basement of our new home, a group of students and my co-teacher gathered to begin to figure out how to turn fibre into yarn.  

Halfway through the lesson, the doorbell rang and my 'best' friend arrived to tell me she had just come from the hospital where she and my mother and my mother's friend, plus the minister, had been present to send Dad on to...whatever comes next.

My co-teacher offered to tell the students to leave, but I said no.  My father would not have wanted that to happen.  He had always instilled in me (and my brother) that you did what you said you would do.  That you would finish your obligation.  That your highest priority was for the living.

It was no surprise that dad was dying; we'd known that for years.  I just found it interesting that he would leave the one night that I could not be present with him as he passed.  

The days and weeks afterwards, I spent at the weaving studio because I had decided that weaving was going to be my job.  And I needed to learn as much as I could to become the best weaver that I could.  So I treated that year at the college as though it was my job.  And it was during those quiet days in the studio when no one else was there that I felt the constant, steady presence of my father's spirit.  He now understood.  And while he may have still had doubts, he respected my choice.

Or so I like to believe.

I hope that whatever is left of 'him' has watched me live my life.  I hope that my brother is also watching.  I hope that they have not been disappointed in me.  In how I have tried to learn, but also to teach.  I know that I have grown in ways I had no way anticipated.  I hope I have become a better person, not just a better weaver.

When my brother died in 2008, I had to deal with survivor guilt.  In the end, I realized that Don had left me with a level of security I had no right to expect, and certainly never anticipated.  Don lived his life to the fullest, but now he was gone, and I wasn't, it was up to me to grab whatever life was going to give me, live the best life I could manage.  And so I decided to talk about that aspect of my life that I rarely discussed - being in the business of taking thread and turning it into cloth.

It has not been an easy life.  Far from it.  But I have no regrets that I made that decision.

Wayne Dyer talked about the different phases of life.  I do believe that I am fully into 'mentor' now.  If anyone can take any lessons from my life, then I must share what I have learned.  All of it, not just the 'good' stuff.  Because we learn the most effective lessons from the mistakes that we make and how we correct them.

And yes, I've made mistakes that I regret.  But I also learned.  And that is what I will focus on now, inner critic be damned.  

I saw a meme yesterday to the effect that an artist needs to make their art.  Others will 'judge' if that art is good or bad.  The artist must continue to make their art.

The above warp is quite likely the last in this series.  I feel I have explored the technique as much as I want to - for now.

It is time to move on.  I will likely go back to something 'easy' for a while and continue to work on stash reduction.  

Today the sun is shining.  I will soon go to the loom and weave some more.  Will there be another book?  I honestly don't know.  If I write one, will anyone want to read it?  Maybe.  But even if there isn't one more book, my childhood aspiration to become a writer came true.  Four books, now.  My inner child is kind of gobsmacked I actually did it.

To all who have purchased any of my books, or my textiles.  Thank you.  From the bottom of my heart.

For my Ko-fi shop - two signed copies of Stories from the Matrix, A Thread Runs Through It, and lots and lots of tea towels

For my first three books, both pdf and print versions.

Classes at School of Sweet Georgia

Workshops at Handwoven