Of Comfort Zones

shawl warp #4 on the loom

#4 off the loom

I'm down to the last 3 shawl warps done with the silk gimp hand dyed yarns.  All three of the last warps are the same sort of blue/green as this one.  The problem, if problem it be, is that I'm all out of 'safe' colour choices for the weft and am having to go beyond my comfort zone in choosing weft colours to go with the warps.

For shawl #4 I chose a pink varigated that changes value, not hue, and think it turned out okay.  I suspect that once wet finished there will actually be some irridescence happening.  You can just almost sort of see it in the off the loom photo.  The colours aren't quite true in either photo - the actual shade of pink is somewhere between the two.

As I struggled a bit choosing the weft colour for this warp I started thinking about comfort zones in general and wondering how someone like myself who craves security as much as I do wound up in a profession with as little of it as a craftsperson has.  I mean really, how insecure can you be - relying on your own creative abilities to craft something, offering it for sale, hoping that even one other person will like what you've dreamt up and created enough to plunk down their money in order to purchase it?

Even the teaching and writing I've done is a bit of a crapshoot - just because I think something is worthwhile writing down or offering in a workshop doesn't mean anybody else will value it. 

So how did I wind up here, anyway? 

As I look back on my life it all seems terribly irrevocable.  When I look at the choices I've made in my lifetime, I wonder how I could have made any other choices - and remained sane.  Oh sure I could have opted for the security of a 9 to 5 job in an office somewhere - and died a slow smothering spiritual death.  I was, after all, headed that direction when I suddenly veered off the beaten track and chose weaving as a career!

My life has not been a string of successes, either.  I've had my failures.  The challenge, in the end, is to not get defeated by the things that don't turn out the way you hope.  To pick yourself up again, try something else, keep going.

Again I come back to Winston Churchill's advice - when you're going through hell, keep going!  For one thing I've learned is that nothing, and I do mean nothing, lasts forever.  Not the good - and not the bad, either.  Comfort zones are just that - a zone.  They too will end.  But so, too, will the discomfort zones.....