Charting a New Course

The photo is of the tapestry I wove as part of the level four Guild of Canadian Weavers master weaver certificate.

For many years I have used the image of a butterfly as a personal icon.  In many societies, the butterfly is used to represent change, growth, development.

The warp was linen, the background a wool/silk blend (if I remember correctly - the tapestry is put away...somewhere...) and the warp was used doubled for the background, but singly for the butterfly which was woven with silk, in order to get greater detail.  All the yarns were dyed by me.

Since I am not an artist of the drawing kind, I chose to go with a rather 'naive' style of imagery.

After last year with the book launch, conference, shutting down my business, I feel as though once again I am in the process of metamorphosis, changing from one flavour of weaver to another.

I feel as though I am still in the 'soup' stage of changing, not quite sure what I will be when it is all done, not quite sure how or where I will be in a years time.

Change can be painful, difficult, challenging.  So it has been as I try to work out what comes next.

There is an observation that doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, is a kind of delusion.  There have been times I have used that approach and pretty much proven the statement.  It was only when I stepped back and then tried something different that I was able to get a different result.

And so, when the wheels seemed to be falling off my 'wagon' again, I knew intellectually that I needed to chart a different course.  Take a different road.  Try something different.  Even though I didn't really want to.

So I struggled.  I did.  I won't pretend that the past few months have been anything but challenging and uncomfortable.

I am not 'there' yet.  But I am changing.  And I am beginning to feel more comfortable about what I chose to do, the different path I set my feet onto.  The burdens are being set down and I am moving on.

During my years as a weaver I have learned many things.  I have begun to see why weaving/textiles have been used in so many fairy tales, which are all morality tales when you look beyond the obvious.  A thread runs through them.  A thread that society of the time fully understood and could relate to.  One that remains in our DNA, I am quite sure.

It is one reason I continue to write about textiles and teach it as much as I can.  Because learning how to create cloth can be a powerful lesson for how to live life.