Starting Again

 Yesterday I got the Megado threaded and sleyed after pressing the place mats I'd wet finished the day before.

I've been chatting with some folk about working in series, something many creative people do.  Working in a series is an opportunity to explore various aspects of a design.  In my case, I come up with a quality of cloth I like, then play with colour options within that quality of cloth.

In a seminar, Allen Fannin made the point that the amount of time we spend developing a design is a huge investment of our time.  If we came up with a brand new design/product for each and every warp, we'd never get anything much made.   Which isn't an issue if you aren't trying to earn an income from making textiles.  

But I was.  

I had already been exploring developing a design and then interpreting it in different colours and as I sat with his comments I realized how true they were.  For me.  

Others disagreed.  

It all depends.

It depends on what you are wanting to do. 

Another person asked him how he stayed motivated to get to the loom every day and his answer was the wolf at the door.  When you are relying on weaving to pay the bills, you go to the loom, even when you don't want to.  Even when you are hurting.  And if you work in series, you have a plan, a road map to follow.

This approach to weaving isn't valid for everyone.  Of course it isn't.  But for me, they were wise words.

During this time of transition from fully production oriented to 'retired', a pandemic that makes going anywhere a not good idea, I have found that working in series is comforting.  When my brain was too stressed to think very hard, I found myself reverting to the tried and true rather than the deep intellectual dive I had thought I would plunge into.

Of course I wasn't feeling well for a good chunk of time, either.  Riding a wave of 'comfort' weaving kept me going in more than one way.

My goal became to use up as much of my fibre stash as possible, rather than personal growth.  I may never get to that deep dive I had been contemplating.  And that's ok, too.

So the next warp is ready to tie on and start weaving.  That won't happen today as I have appointments and doubt I'll feel much like jumping on the loom when I get home.  But my days of needing to produce X number of items each and every day is behind me now.  I can take time 'off'.  

A number of weaving teachers have been observing that when they do a Zoom meeting the rest of the day is toast.  Personally when I do the study group Zooms from 11 am to 1 pm, the rest of the day is spent dealing with the video and nothing else happens.  Much.  I certainly don't expect that I will weave.  Sitting cramped for 2 hours, trying to stay on track and on focus and present solid information?  That takes all the brain power I might have for the day.  When I'm doing this sort of thing in person, I am on my feet, mostly, but I'm moving.  I'm engaging with the audience, watching for reactions.  The furrowed brow.  The puzzled look.  I can tell when some people tune out to dump the info into long term memory.  I have a giant white board on which I can draw diagrams.  I have a table full of samples I can pick up and talk about, then send round the room.  I can see questions and answer them immediately.  I can even go on tangents, which is part of the fun of doing in person events.

For Zoom I have to really keep my line of thought focused and concentrate on saying exactly what I mean and saying it much more clearly because I don't have that giant white board nor do I have all day.  I compromise and use a small one, but can only do small diagrams or else they can't be seen on camera.

This weekend I have Zoom meetings on both the Saturday and Sunday.  Both the same topic, which is good in one way, bad in another.  Prep time is less, but then I forget if I've said the info already and may forget something.  I do generally review the video which allows me to catch when I mis-speak or forget to add something, which I can then correct in the FB group.  But that all takes time - another two hours to watch the recording.  And more time spent cramped in front of the laptop.  

But spring is coming.  I may start going for a walk once the recording is being uploaded to You Tube.  Get out into the fresh air.  Move.  

And tomorrow I'll get started on this next warp.  There are four more bins with yarn pulled for future warps.  Stash reduction proceeds.