Working Meditation

 

Yesterday I threaded the next all white warp of cotton for tea towels.  Now to tie on, wind bobbins, get started.

I'm back to my 'default' length of 60 turns on the beam (about 25 yards or so) and should get 21 towels out of the warp.  The next design is a bit longer than some other designs so I'm not exactly sure how many there will be.  

But!  This warp should go a long way towards using up more of the dyed 2/16 cotton.  Except for the turquoise green.  I still have  a LOT of that left - about 3.5 kilos if I remember correctly.  That will produce a LOT of turquoise green towels, so expect my timeline to be a bit 'boring' if you tire of the same colour all the time.

And that is something I hear frequently - that someone will find out I put on long warps and weave multiple items all the same.  "Don't you get bored" they ask.

No.  No, I do not. I may tire of something, in which case I will go work on something else.  But bored?  No, not really.

I have been reading a series by author Tamora Pierce.  Her books are geared to the teen market, which is not a deal breaker for me if the stories are well written.  And I find her The Circle Opens series engaging for a number of reasons.  A large part of the story is young mages growing into their powers and learning how to control their power - and their emotions.  Pierce shows human beings, being human.  Making mistakes.  Learning.  Growing.  

I have enjoyed the series well enough that when I discovered that the local library did not have two of the books in the series I bought them from a second hand book site, where I found both titles for under $6 each (as opposed to $50-75 on Amazon).  Doug is waiting for them to arrive and in the meantime reading another favourite author, C. J. Cherryh.

Cherryh's Foreigner series also has children, although the story is not centered on them.  But again, young people making mistakes, learning, growing.  Both authors show the good and bad sides of human nature, but both are firmly on the side of human beings learning to be more compassionate, more inclusive, more kind.  That is the kind of quality I like to see in my fiction as I also aspire to grow in that direction.

Pierce includes a significant amount of craft work in her series - textiles, metalwork, gardening, cooking.  As part of the book I just finished - Cold Fire - one of the teenaged mages discovers two younger people who have the capability to work magic and she must get them training in their particular skill.  She winds up being responsible for their meditation.  One of the youngsters finds sitting quietly and calming herself works well.  The other?  Does not.  So that one needs to come to her inner peace, inner calm through movement.

And that's the thing about humans, isn't it?  We are all different and what works for one may not work for another.

I have always considered weaving to be - for me - a working meditation.  I've tried 'traditional' meditation and could not do it.  Like the youngster in the story, I could not find my centre, my calm, by sitting quietly.  But I find it very easily sitting at the loom, shuttle in hand.

So, no, I don't get bored weaving the same thing over and over.  It is my happy place.  My space to just be.  I need to shut out the cares of the world so that I can feel the rhythm of the process.  Listen to the loom.  The yarn.  Just...be.

As Wayne Dyer (and others) have said, we are human beings, not humans doing.  But some of us get to the being more quickly through the process of doing.