Reflections

 

This is an aerial photo of my town.  That line of white in the far distant background is the Rocky Mountains, normally not visible from the town in it's valley, but there, just over the horizon.

I spend a lot of time thinking.  I think about yarn.  Cloth.  What's it all about, Alfie.  (You have to be over a certain age to get that reference.)

I spend a lot of time considering possibilities.  Examining situations from various points of view.

It's been almost exactly 47 years since I made the decision to become a weaver.  Not just to learn how to weave, but to BE a weaver.  To do it as my profession.  To dive as deeply as I possibly could into as many different aspects of the craft as I could manage.

Forty-seven years of a deep connection with yarn, with the equipment required, with the processes.  Forty-seven years of fine tuning my approach.  My skills.  My knowledge.  

When I look back I see the steady thread (pun intended) of progress.  The many mistakes made along the way.  The lessons learned from making, then fixing those mistakes.

But even so, there are times when I got 'stuck' in my thinking.  I rode burn out all the way down into the ground - because I got stuck in doing what I had always been doing.  It took a long time to climb out of that hole again.

And yes, I've had successes.  I've won awards.  I've gained a certain level of recognition in the weaving community.  I feel as though it IS a community for me.  One that has supported me and cheered me on, while also keeping me humble and reminding me that no, I don't know everything.

One of the first workshops I took (maybe the 3rd?) was with Peter Collingwood.  He talked about how he had grown tired of traveling to teach so he decided to write a book, put everything he knew into that book and then people could just read the book and he could stay home.

So he spent an enormous amount of time creating his book on rug weaving, got it published.  And then got even more requests to go teach than previously.

I had a similar experience when I published Magic in the Water.  It came out in 2002, just in time for Convergence in Vancouver.  I call 2004 my year of coast to coast to coast travel, where I was away from home more than I was *at* home.  My year started in February on Salt Spring Island, in March I was on the Gulf of Mexico (Louisiana) and May in Nova Scotia and PEI.  And many many places in between.  

I have been places, met people I had no expectation of ever going when I chose this life.  And I've seen way too many airports at dark o'clock.  Driven hundreds of miles all over western Canada, from the deep south east and south west of BC, up to Fort St. John and through those Rocky Mountains multiple times they feel like old friends.

When I began, I thought I would weave for 25 years, then teach for 25 years.  Instead I did both at once.  And it was hard work.  I won't lie, it was very hard work.  The internet made some aspects of it easier but also, in the end made more work for me.  Instead of getting a travel agent to book my trips, I begin to have to do all of that myself.  And sometimes it would take several hours.  Hours when I could have been weaving, or writing.

But as I look back, I'm grateful to have had the life I have had.  I am grateful that I can still weave.  I am grateful that I can still teach, share what I know, encourage others to keep going.  Even when things go 'wrong'.

A few years ago the local cable tv station did a wee profile of me.  If you are interested, it's here