Plodding

 

Recently I was asked to talk about my journey as a weaver.  Thinking back over the past 40+ years brought back many memories.  Too many to include in what was meant to be a short 'article'.  I've written - something - and now need to choose photos to go with it.  I can choose three, although they may not use all of them.

And, true to form, I went over the word count they wanted.  Not by a lot, but still...

Discovering weaving was a huge turning point for me.  At the age of 24/5 I was looking for work that was a lot more satisfying than what I had been doing since graduating high school.  I wanted something with an element of creativity.  Something where I could make my own goals and priorities.  Something other than office work, which felt like it was sucking the life right out of me.

Add to that the fact that my father was in the late stages of terminal illness and I was made all too aware that life is short, sharp and not to be squandered if that could be avoided.  So yes, there was a part of me that wanted to make some sort of positive contribution, some how, some way.

To say that the universe worked really hard to get me in front of a loom would be an understatement.  When I look back it all seems so clear that events kept pushing me in that direction.  Kept bringing me opportunities to learn more about it.  

One of the things I recognized right from the beginning was that to earn an income* by weaving I would have to work hard.  Really hard.  I would have to get right out of my comfort zone as an introvert, because I would have to market myself and my textiles.  This was probably the most challenging aspect of being a weaver in the 20th and 21st centuries.  I've gotten pretty good at it but it's still not really very comfortable.

But the actual weaving part?  That, too, is hard labour.  Really hard.  In my prime I was throwing the shuttle approximately 10,000 times a day, some days more than that, if I were under the pressure of a critical deadline.

I wove my own designs, of course.  But I also wove for other weavers, and for 9 years I wove for a fashion designer.  That was probably the most challenging part because there was no (or very little) creativity as I wove to her specifications and I wove under extremely tight deadlines.  She would fax me instructions and expect me to get the fabric onto the bus that day or the next.  And sometimes she would change her mind part way through the day and change her instructions - after I'd filled pirns enough to weave the original faxed instructions.  And I'd have to stop, fill pirns with different yarn, then weave like the wind to get the fabric woven.  

But!  She paid me well and for those 9 years I had a steady income* which allowed me to do other things, like work on the GCW test program, do my own work (in between her warps), travel to teach, write articles.  It was no different from working as a temp office worker and I was actually still weaving and getting paid for it.

There is no perfect 'job' anywhere.  Every job has aspects about it that require one to just get on with it.  Things that I would rather not do, but need doing.  Plod.

And no matter what I wove, I paid attention.  My 'plodding' became a working meditation, where I was watching what was happening in the loom, and - for my own work - what happened in the wet finishing.  (I didn't do the wet finishing for the fashion designer, she had someone else to take care of that.)

As I slowly shrink my efforts, I think - a lot - about my journey.  I think about how many days I went to the loom in pain.  I knew that if I could get weaving the physical activity would generate endorphins and the pain would be less.  That is still true today.  

I came to weaving with injuries and consider it a 'win' that I was able to weave thousands of yards of cloth in spite of those injuries.  I learned how to minimize further damage.  How to work ergonomically and efficiently.  And much of that was because I was willing to plod.  Willing to work hard.  Willing to learn.

So as I pack up for Olds, I think about these things.  And I aspire to pass on some of what I've learned.  Because in reality we all learn in our own time, the lessons we need to learn.  My journey will be different from every other weaver who comes to me to learn.  But I also know at least 3 other weavers who have had similar paths to what I have taken.  And every one of them agrees:  weaving is hard work if you are doing it to make an income.*

*note that I say 'income' not a 'living'...