All Things End

 

warping board with warp ready to be removed

How long is a piece of string?

A warp?

One of the huge roadblocks to people enjoying weaving is the investment of time, effort and energy it takes to get the loom dressed.

Sometimes I see people musing about how to create a 'never ending' warp so they don't have to do that.  They come up with all sorts of 'solutions', most of them requiring huge amounts of yarn (a yarn package for every warp end) and floor space (to put all those yarn packages).  And so on.

Thing, is - all things end.  Every string has a beginning - and an ending.  The only thing that doesn't end (so far) is the passage of time.

So what do we want to do with our time?  That is the choice we have.

Our society is so used to instant gratification that we forget that sometimes?  Things just take time to come to fruition.  Gardeners know this and do craftspeople, because they are confronted daily with the effort it takes to create something from raw materials.  There are others - creative folk - musicians, authors, scientists...

But to anyone outside of those activities, all they see is the end result, not the blood, sweat and, yes, tears, it may have taken to bring something out of 'nothing'.

But all things end.

Rather than get upset about that, I encourage my students to embrace it.  Work to make the process more ergonomic, less 'painful', be more mindful about what is happening in the now and here, not champ at the bit wanting to instantly get to the fun part.

We can partially ease our 'separation' angst by making longer warps.  I know I do.  But that doesn't mean I don't also do shorter warps - samples, or two scarves instead of a warp for 8, for example.

Because All Things End.  At some point, sooner or later, the warp will be used up, and the loom will sit empty again.

But here's the thing.  With each new warp, I get to try something different.  It might be a different yarn, a different threading, a different yarn combination.  

Having 'perfected' my processes, I can focus on the here and now and use the actual shuttle throwing as a working meditation.  And when the end of the warp comes up and over the back beam, I get to begin again.