Ideas

 

Tranquility

Where do ideas come from, anyway?

Dunno.  

All I know is that I have an almost unending parade of new things I want to try, new designs I'd like to weave, new colour combinations that I'd like to see interact in warp/weft.  

What I don't expect - or even *try* for - is 'perfection'.  Because I know how rarely 'perfect' turns up - at least in my studio.  But I also know that I can make 'good'.  And most days, that's 'good enough'.

Some people assume that I have little talent if all I do is 'settle' for good instead of giving it my all trying to achieve 'perfection'.

I can probably safely say that I have forgotten more ideas than I've woven.  But that's the thing about weaving - it is labour intensive and it takes *time*.  While weaving one warp off, I may think about 3 more and reject 2 of them - or maybe even all of them - because something else triggers my curiosity and I'm off again, following another trail of crumbs.

Now that I'm in my 'golden' years (ha), things take even longer, for a number of reasons.  But running out?  Not likely.  Because as I learn more, experience more, see more interesting work by others in the pages of magazines and books, the more inspired I am.

I confess that I'm purposefully limiting what I am doing right now, mostly an in effort to weave down my stash.  I was doing quite well at that until I started writing for WEFT and then ran out of some 'standard' yarns.  Because it is hard to guide people along the rocky path of learning if you don't provide a good road map and select yarns that are 'commonly' available for them to try it for themselves.  OTOH, they give me pretty free rein about which yarns to choose, so I know I will use the yarns up eventually.  And every article I write for WEFT leaves me with 'extra' yarn to add to my stash.  So - win-win?

My latest is needing to buy more yarn to weave additional samples for an article.  The deadline is getting crunchy but I should be able to finish the current warp early next week.  Then I'll set up the loom to replicate what I did - and then continue the experiment in order to provide a better overview of what I did and what resulted.  And the rest will go into the stash and used at some point.

I'm up 'early' this morning but I've already set up for the HGA Textiles and Tea interview.  So I won't be weaving before the zoom.  I'm hoping I can do one session after.  Because I'm getting anxious to get this warp off the loom so I can deal with the additional samples.  But I also need to re-read what I wrote and make sure I'm doing what needs to be done, given what I already sent to them.  Or I could sit and veg with the jigsaw puzzle - or the library book I'm reading.

I find it interesting that of the several books I've read this spring/summer, 3 of them are 'memoirs', all of them musicians, two of them politicians.  I've got the book written by Mark Carney on hold, but I'm still down on the list.  I just wish that things right now were less 'interesting' so I could pay more attention to creative things, instead of current events.  

Ah well.  Onwards.