Frost

We have been having a cold 'snap'.  Usually when the temps go low, we are blessed with clear skies and brilliant sunshine.  Not so much today.  

But the fact is, the sun IS still shining.  That is not something I believe, or have faith in - it is a fact.  It is also a fact that there is enough overcast that the sunlight is weak, and the day is dreary.

I am currently writing an article about weaving ergonomically.  Again.  You'd think by now everyone would be aware of how a body works, which movements are not efficient, which ones are actually harmful.  The body works best in certain ways and if you try to make them work in ways that are not good for it, injury *can* result.

Sometimes people are lucky and they push their bodies to the limit again and again and have no consequence, so they keep doing what they have always done.  And they are fine.  

They are the lucky ones.

Others?  Not so much.

The weaver who refused to wear anything but socks on her feet, and only on cold days, weaving too many hours without breaks to meet a deadline, winding up with inflammation in her feet so that she could barely walk.

The weaver who had been weaving for decades, suddenly having a 'frozen' shoulder, then going back to the same way of doing what she had been doing and having further injury.

The weaver who refused to get a 'proper' bench but wove sitting 'too low' on an ordinary chair now with low back pain.  Or neck pain.  Or shoulder pain.

The list goes on.  I hear from a lot of them.  

The biggest reason I hear from people who aren't interested in working more efficiently?  They don't want to hurry.  They want to take their time, enjoy the process.  As if I don't?  What I especially enjoy is getting a warp into the loom as efficiently as possible, to reduce the amount of time I am sitting in a cramped position to thread, and getting to the 'fun' part - the actual weaving.

Working ergonomically isn't hurrying.  Working ergonomically is working with the least amount of strain on the body, with the fewest extraneous movements.   

Hurrying is most definitely NOT working efficiently.

It is not up to me to tell someone they *must* do something in a particular way.  What I am *trying* to do is give people the information they need to work more comfortably for more years.  That by reducing the repetitive stress to a body, the body doesn't rebel and break down, preventing not just weaving, but other aspects of living, too.  

It's a message I've been delivering for quite literally decades, but there are always new weavers entering the craft, and so I keep on.  And I will keep on for as long as I can.

For more on this, use the 'ergonomics' tag to the right - check out my You Tube videos, take my online classes, buy my book.  Then decide what is 'right' for you.