Kintsugi

 

There is a philosophy of embracing imperfections/flaws in Japan called Kintsugi.  Broken pottery is mended with gold as the mortar.  It is a reminder of the fragility of both life and 'things' and that just because something broke doesn't mean it can't be mended and made whole again.  Perhaps even beautiful.

Leonard Cohen voiced that in the song that goes 'forget your perfect offerings, there is a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in'.

As I get older I become less concerned about being 'perfect' and the little 'flaws' that used to bother me become less of an issue.

Am I perfect?  Of course not.  So why would I pretend that I am?  That doesn't mean that I am happy when I make a mistake, but now I ask myself if that mistake reduces the 'value' of the textile I am making.  Will it interfere with the cloth doing the job it is supposed to do?  How much of an effort will it be to fix the problem?  If it's a small threading or sleying error, I'll generally take the time to fix it.  But I also work with fairly fine yarn and sometimes a minor threading error doesn't make itself known until after I've cut the web from the loom and wet finished it.  

In that case I will sometimes offer the item(s) at a discount, rating them a 'second', not 'first' quality.

On the other hand, the idea of kintsugi and the visual of the gold mortar offered some inspiration to me and I used a gold mercerized weft yarn on a 2/16 cotton warp and produced these:

The colours aren't 'true' - they are in fact more intense than the photo shows, but they come close.  They will be listed in my ko-fi shop today.