Letting Go

 

Yesterday I finally got to the loom and started weaving the heart motif I spent a very long time generating.

It wasn't looking good.  In fact, there were 'errors' in the tie up that created a very long 'skip' in a particular pick.  At first I thought it might be a mechanical problem with the loom, but when I looked more carefully, it was designer error.  I tried to fix it and just wound up with something even less attractive than ever.  I kept trying to fix it but it kept getting 'worse' instead of better.

It was time to 'fold 'em' and give up.

I knew going in that there was a distinct possibility that this would happen, so I had a backup plan, a Plan B, if you will.  It was simple and I wasn't sure how it would look, but about 5 minutes at the keyboard in Fiberworks and it was...okay.

Nothing dazzling.  Nothing technically difficult.  But 'good enough' for tea towels.

I could have spent more time trying to figure out something else, but frankly it's been a long time of too many other things happening and I just didn't have the spoons to expend more of my time and energy on this warp.  It's taken me all week just to get TO the loom; I didn't want to spend even more time on a mistake just because I'd already spent a lot of time getting to the realization that it WAS a mistake.

You know what they say - don't stick with a mistake just because you've spent a lot of time making it.

And it wasn't a 'failure' because I learned a lot about this weave structure and how the half-tones were going to look in something other than a 'line' design.  Valuable information.  Now I know that isn't a road I care to follow.  Instead I will go back to my 'etch-a-sketch' approach and play with twill lines. 

I'm actually quite pleased with the next two weaving drafts which go back to that approach to designing so I'm now eager to get this warp woven off so I can go on to the next.  And I will think some more about where I can take my line 'drawings' within the woven structure.

It's a good lesson to learn, I think.  Explore, but be willing to go back if the trail peters out or you wind up in a bog.  Sometimes the fastest way forward is to go around an obstacle, not stubbornly carry on, just because you decided to go that way.  Take the lessons, add them to the mix, and try something else.

In life as well as weaving.  That's a pretty good lesson to learn.