Did I Live My Life the Right Way?

It's really summer here now; it's sunny and hot and some weeds are in flower and this year we seem to have thrice the garden bugs, (the icky kind,) than usual. Still, we are alive, not amidst a war, not amidst a natural disaster, living a nice, First World life, in Ben's last week of work before a three-week break. I can't complain.

A while ago, after a minor life disaster was overcome, I became angry I wasn't weaving, that my life became beholden to a random garden schedule and other life administrivia, as Laura Fry calls them. So I "took a day off" and started a new piece on the Sunflower warp.

I was pleasantly surprised I got right back on the saddle, just lifting, weaving, beating, until my attention started to wane after, oh, 7cm? Salvedges were good, and the usually weird tension wasn't weird. Until Day 2. 

 

You know, I got greedy about colors, overthought the lifting, and started thinking all sorts of potentials while weaving; my lifting got erratic and I had to unweave quite often. Then I remembered one of the things I used to do was to line up wefts, sometimes just the tie-down, sometimes just the pattern, sometimes both, so I could concentrate on the lifting and only when to change colors. 

These are the tie-down 60/2s for the next wee while. Gradation is pretty, and lovely for harmony, but also sometimes too sedate, so I'm happy to go with these, but may inject a surprise color here and there. For now I'm picking up pattern colors from the ice cream tub more or less in gradation but not strictly, as you can see in the top pic. And some weirdness in the tension started to appear about 1/5 of the way in on the left, but it's not serious. I might fiddle with it the next time I weave, or ignore and go on.

And suddenly, (or not, I have to think about this one,) I wondered if I wanted to investigate the state of galleries in town, to see if I wanted to sell again. I'm not going to hurry the weaving, particularly these ones which are crazy labour-intensive, but in the most general sense, did I want to get back on to that saddle for one last hurrah for as long as I can manage, my body can manage, and I can feel excited about the things I make. We shall see.

I was going to write a completely different post today, (ergo the cryptic title,) but here we are, a quiet, satisfied, weave-y post to start the week.

More to come soon, good people.