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From time to time someone will contact me to thank me for 'what you do for the weaving community'.

It's always a day brightener.

My life has been largely shaped by the teachers I have had.  The good ones, obviously, but also?   The bad ones.

Not every teacher is good for every student, and I had to stumble my way into the teaching world after having been tossed into the deep end.  

I confess I have not always been the 'best' teacher.  There were times when I taught while I was ill, usually from allergies.  I learned early to demand that my workshops be scent free.  And still had people arrive reeking of scents.  Thing is, certain scents/perfumes robbed me of the ability to think and speak.  It's called aphasia, and when it happens to someone who is normally proficient at both, it's at first upsetting (what is happening to me?) and then anxiety inducing as my mental rolodex whirled round and round, so fast I couldn't find the words I needed to communicate.  

So, no, I wasn't the best teacher on those occasions.

Other times it was food allergies.

No matter how many times I would tell people 'plain food' and give them an actual list of allowed foods, someone would want to make something 'special'.  And then be offended when I politely said 'no thank you' and declined to eat their 'treat'.

Because if I ate that special treat, I'd wind up sick.  And I'd *be* sick for at least 3 days, which usually meant flying home while sick.  (My own personal hell, not a communicable disease.)

Other times, I just could not seem to find a way to express the information in a way that made sense to a listener.  I would try different approaches.  I would demonstrate, explaining what I was doing, breaking down the steps, trying to not forget something.  We all have basic assumptions, but when talking to a new weaver, they don't have the experience or background knowledge to understand a new technique, especially if I don't include every step along the way.

It was in the early days of the internet that I really began to try to find different ways to write about weaving, finding metaphors, different perspectives, allowing for as many of the 'it depends' considerations as I could think of, in the moment.

And I started developing my 'Laura-isms' as some of my students tagged them.  Short sentences that captured the essence of a principle - never use a knot where a bow will do - for example.

Change one thing and everything can change, is a more recent one.

I love reading, and I happen to enjoy writing.  I've used writing as a communication tool for a long time, including this blog since 2008.  Interest in the blog has waxed and waned, and recently seems to be growing in numbers of readers.

Thing is, I can't tell if it is just bots scraping content for 'AI' or if there are real humans reading (and hopefully benefitting) from my posts.

Comments are how I tell that actual people are reading it, be they on here, or shares on FB or elsewhere.

As I wind down my business (and my life) I find I still want to help people.  The books I published over the past year seem to have satiated my desire for writing books, but every morning I find myself at the desk top feeling the urge to write.  Something.  So, here I am, once again.

Which is all to say - apparently I'm not quite done writing.

Even though I may say the same thing, over and over again, it seems not every person will grasp what I'm trying to communicate the first (or even the 10th time).  So, yesterday I agreed to write some articles for a site.  A few weeks ago I told a friend that I didn't want to write for publication anymore because I didn't want to write to someone else's style sheet or format, or to tight deadlines.  But I was asked to write about things that I want to write about, so how could I say no?  And when someone says they value your knowledge and your talent at writing...it seemed churlish not to agree.  

Not sure when I will get the topics they asked for written, or when they will appear.  But rest assured, I will likely continue to take my second cup of coffee here, at the desktop, and muse 'out loud'.  About weaving.  And about my life.

Because I get just enough feedback to let me know some of you are reading.  And some days that's all it takes.

As always books are available here and also here (along with tea towels...)