The Right Question

 

When it comes to life, sometimes we need to ask the 'right' question in order to get a 'good' answer.

So it has been for me, these past few years.  Not that I have ever stopped asking questions, of course not.  But there come to be times in life which, upon reflection, can be identified as watershed moments.

After floundering around for a while, suddenly you ask yourself the question, in a different way, in a different context and voila, an answer comes.  

Sometimes the answer comes from inside of you.  Sometimes it comes from outside of you.  An interested person will contact you.  Or someone will ask *you* a question that seems to bring things into focus.  Like a door opening, your thoughts become flooded with light and things seem...sensible.  Achievable.  Appropriate.  Exciting, even.

About this time last year I started putting the Sunday Seminars together, based on my knowledge of the weaving (and fibre generally) community.  As I worked at getting a good cross section of people signed on to the idea, I was also working with some of my students, trying to keep them on track and focused on the learning, not just the achieving.  That a delay in acquiring the next level was sad, but should not mean the end.

Since then I worked on developing my skills in terms of doing Power Point presentations, learning how to Zoom, working on what I know so that I could convey it better.

In the end I'm happy with what I have come up with and - about halfway through my content - I'm confident that I'm passing on good knowledge that *some* weavers do want to know.

But the pandemic is winding down (at least here in Canada) and people are anxious to get back to in person classes.  

For me?  With my compromised immune system?  I'm not so anxious.

I would still like to teach but what I'm not at all interested in doing is producing video content.  I'm too old and this dog has had enough new tricks to learn.  

I've been thrashing around trying to work out how I can continue, maybe even reach a wider audience.

Each time I thought of something I could do, it was, um, nope.  Not that.  And I would think of why not that, what I didn't want to have to deal with all by myself (pretty much).  I do have people who have supported me, helped me, given me tutorials on how to make Zoom work, but as for going the route of others who jumped into the on-line teaching?  Nope.  Not me.  

I guess I finally asked myself enough of the not quite right questions that someone popped up this week and this morning we had a meeting about if and how we can work together.

They were bringing exactly the kind of skills and technology to the equation that I did not want to deal with.  More importantly?  They want the kind of information I want to share.

So, not going to say more than this, at this point in time.  It may all fall through the cracks because there is a tonne of stuff that needs to be considered.   The logistics of working together, 500 miles distant for one thing.  But at least it is only 500 miles.  And we are in the same time zone!  No dark o'clock mornings.

Just as I am beginning to feel a bit better, comes a new opportunity.  Funny how that works, sometimes.

Other people producing video/on line content, doing it much better than I could ever hope to do:

Tien Chiu, Janet Dawson, Jane Stafford, Daryl Lancaster, Abby Franquemont.  Each has their specialty and others are also providing content on line for other parts of the weaving community.  Knitters have a large number of people also producing on line content.  For people like self-employed textile folk?  Very few have allowed grass to grow under their feet.  They have continued to scramble in order to put food on the table during the pandemic.  It should not take very much effort to do a quick search and find someone who might be teaching what you want to learn.  Also, textile events are going to continue to be on line for at least the rest of this summer and into the fall.  A great opportunity to learn from someone from far away.  (Including the rest of the Sunday Seminars - next one in July is with Janet Dawson talking about her textile adventures in Turkey.)