My Brithday Brooch

I thought I had posted my Gavin Hitchings brooch Ben got me for my birthday on this blog. I was wrong; I hadn't. We actually got this a few days before last Christmas, but it was commissioned as my 50th birthday present, so I didn't wear it until this April. Ben made me the wooden case on Boxing Day, December 26.

"It's a scarf, and a time line of your life," Gavin said when he handed it to me. Do you see the shuttle? We joked whether the shuttle appeared towards the first part of my life, or more towards the end, and Gavin said it's all what I make of it.

In light of my love/hate-with-Pekka-Kuusisto post, I thought you should see it. That this "finding my thing late in life" thing has been a mixed blessing for me, and perceptive artist like Gavin has picked it up in our conversations. Or not; he might have simply thought it's nice to have a shuttle featuring big in my life. I didn't ask.

Setts

A bunch of very accomplished weavers have told me over the years that to get a really nice drape I just have a closer sett. Is this true with wool, also? I can kind of understand that pertaining to silk or cotton, though I tend to weave loosely rather than tightly, but with wool, wouldn't I need to let it breath and expand a bit?

Suddenly I felt as if I've been missing something so blatantly obvious to everybody else. Like I've been standing rather naked in front of a bunch of nice weavers in a big guild room!!

Risky Business

I like Cally's fire; check out her comment here.

"Risk" is a term used by artists quite often, isn't it? But like "fear", the concept doesn't feature in my life often. I fear car accidents, so I don't jump in front of a speeding car, but I don't even use these words often, particularly pertaining to weaving.

Two or three years ago, I noticed I became matter of fact about my weaving. Before that I loved every single piece I wove and didn't want to part with any, ever, but now once they're washed, pressed, dried, labeled and passed quality inspection, I can't wait to see the back of them. In fact, I now have around 10 pieces from the last 14 months and I don't know what to do with them; they've been shown, they didn't sell, they're not exactly Red Gallery or Sue Bateup's Gallery material, so they sit in a neat pile on the floor of my stash room, and I walk around them felling annoyed they still live here. I've given away few to charity. They're not ugly or bad pieces; I'm just over them. I check them with objective, critical eyes, and then I'm finished with them. (It's a good thing I don't have kids or pets, wouldn't you say??)

I need to weave between three to five warps to understand the characteristic of a particular yarn before I feel I know them. So I think it's stupid of me to use an unknown yarn when I have two weeks or three days for an exhibition or commission. But I do, and that's stupidity, not risk. I also change plans at the last moment, or decide to redo something at the last minute, but these are bad planning, not risk.

What I think I'm thinking is, I don't think I'm particularly reckless, but I don't think I stick to safe things only, either. I don't understand what artists mean when they say they are taking a risk.

It's been a very strange weekend, friends. To make up for not posting earlier in the month, I started writing about quite a few things, but couldn't finish any. I have over 20 drafts now, some with just the title and some with a paragraph, others with a bullet list of ideas or few photos, but I can't concentrate on any.

I keep thinking about Pekka Kuusisto and his ability to love his art so passionately, and wonder how on earth could I feel about my work even 1/100 the way he feels about his. More urgently, I am envious of him having found his thing, or having been born into his thing, (his grandfather, father and brother were/are musicians/composers), and how lucky is he to have had his thing in his youth.

I know I would not have been a good weaver if I discovered it in my teens and 20's, because I was much too impatient and hedonistic to try anything as slow as weaving. I remember a time in my life when one afternoon was forever. But I do remember, surrounded by cousins and friends who started piano and ballet such from age three, that the sooner I found my thing, the happier I would be, and the more I could contribute to the universe. In my teenage years, there was a time I was almost angry because even He didn't call on me, (I went to a Catholic convent school). I worked hard to find my thing, I studied reasonably hard and minded my parents reasonably well, but I couldn't and I knew that in the greater scheme of things, my life was being wasted, ergo I wasn't pulling my weight.

I look at Pekka's clip and envy the energy he pours into his art, and for his knowledge that is his purpose and the reason why he's here. He probably works hard at it and is undoubtedly immensely talented. And I am not deluded enough to compare my ability to weave to his ability to make music. But I am finding aging hard. Not the emotional stuff, I prepared for it for over a year and I thought I was in a good place, but I never thought the body would go so suddenly. I'm not seriously sick or injured, but all the minor complaints I've had in the last decade or so have all come home to roost, with gusto, at once, and I realize this physical decay is a one-way street. I will never have the kind of energy Pekka displays, or indeed I once put into my sports and poetry writing and my studies. And I want it so badly now that I've found my thing and am about to embark on living my life.

It doesn't excuses my spending two days gazing at the short YouTube clip. I could have woven several small pieces instead. But I feel sad and guilty having wasted my life to now, of having been deprived of my vocation. I feel angry, and I find this anger unpleasant and unproductive, because I thought I was emotionally prepared.

I hate being 50. I need a new identity.

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH CRAFT!!

Because I go on a bit about art/craft, especially pertaining to weaving, some friends think I have no respect for either "pure craft", or weaving as a hobby and other textile indulgences. Not at all. In fact, I love the craft part of weaving as well, and I do quite a bit of joy-weaving. (I coined this phrase, y'all; it's mine, unless you did before this week. I do get a natural high from the motion of weaving, don't you?)

My mom weaves purely for enjoyment and gives away anything that comes off her loom; she throws her arms in the air if I go on too long about art/craft, and walks away and puts on another warp.

For me, who never stuck to any of the extracurricular activities long enough to be good at anything, and who's had a string of admin-type job for pay, weaving is one of the very few efforts I found interesting, challenging and worth investing my energy into. And so I want to be good at it. And so I keep thinking of how I can be good at it. (Peg, there's the aspiration/desire thing, again.)

But Nancy, hobby knitter/felter/crafter extraordinaire, you've already had two things that are very much yours, and both involve healing others. Life doesn't get any better than that, so relax, enjoy your hobbies, but let's not stop talking about the stuff we do.

You have to have hobbies, too, you know. By turning weaving into the main focus of my life, I lost a lovely hobby, and a few years ago I started baking bread; the longer and more cumbersome the process, the better. Ciabatta has been my favorite for about three years.

Art/Craft Discussion Again

Peg started (or resumed) it here, then continued here, and then, so far, ended up here. My eyes can't stand the screen just now, so I'll have to go back to read this thread (and all the related links), but a thought just popped in my head.

Instead of feeling we, as weavers, need to insist we, too, make art, we might as well enjoy the spectrum of what our craft offers. I know I do, contrary to popular belief. I mean, we should not feel apologetic about weaving our bread-and-butter line, (and I'm not saying you do), and love the joy-weave as well as the more difficult stuff. That's in stark contrast to, say, a painting with no artistic merit, whatever that means, which is just, if I may humbly and quietly say so, a piece of j u n k with not a lot of utility.

The thought came from somewhere else while reading Peg's reaction to Cally. For this Perpetual Newbie, it's in the aspiration where I can distinguish my art vs my craft. And the time I spend designing. I have to say this, (though I don't like to because the act of saying could be misconstrued as my disbelief):

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH CRAFT!!

Later.

Soliciting the Latest Goss from Penland

I hope everybody at Penland is having a wonderful time. I do hope we get reports when you get home, including what you do t his weekend!! Do send me links or pics, please.

Bad Math

You know, my labels... I order 1000 of the first, big style, because then I would never have to order another label for the rest of my life, and I still have well over 750 of them. I now have 500 in each of the two color ways of the new, tiny labels, because I had to have small ones for my cashmere scarves for the Red Gallery, and, oh, what the heck, I wanted them for other small items, too.

This morning I was "talking" to Claudia the fashion designer via email about labels. And I was dead serious when I said I had about 400 years worth of labels left, if not more, and she thought I was being silly. I explained in my serious "voice" that at best I might manage to weave around 50 items a year, if that many, so simple math, 2000 divided by 50 is 400 years. And she didn't email me back, and Ben burst out laughing.

Nice to know I don't have to keep working until I'm 450 years old; I still have to keep weaving rather consistently until I'm about 90 to use up my labels.

I think I'll start sewing them onto things I don't want to lose, too; not just stuff I made...

Meddling with Heddles...

15 mistakes in all; one counting error (I mark every 10 heddles for easy counting; the marked heddle was in the wrong place in this instance); the rest were twisted heddles or wrapped heddles, eight instances on Shaft 9, one of the hardest to see and reach.

I remember how tired I was when I put the heddles back on; next time, I'll wait a few days for this task, or, I'll never wash my heddles again. But they do look nice and clean and shiny now.

All is fixed, fingers crossed, and I can finally start warping my SSVE warp.

Forever Newbie

While combating the twisted heddles yesterday, (finished 12 shafts and found six places to correct; have the worst four shafts to go), I kept trying to remember the one instance I was attracted to warp painting. This morning, I was having a look-see in Kaz's Curious Weaver looking for that photo. There I found her (and others) musing on beginners designing projects vs using kit sets. This caught my attention because I consider myself honestly and squarely a beginner, and wondered who qualify as "beginners".

On Monday I was discussing with Rosie the Art Historian the different design approaches by weavers I know personally, and I thought I saw a pattern so I said something like "perhaps that's the difference between veterans, and beginners like me." She responded with her elegant, English dismissal, laughing, "But you've been doing this a long time." And I was seriously taken aback because I never had anyone refute my beginner status, and that unsettled me big time.

But that was Monday, and by Tuesday I was back to my happy beginner self again. It's like the universe, see.

Considering the amount of stuff you need to know in order to know everything there is to know about weaving, whether I start counting from the first day I passed my stick shuttle though the shed in my rigid heddle, August 1995, and ignore the years I didn't even touch a loom, or the day I was asked to resign from a lawyer's office because I wasn't suited to office work and decided weaving was the only thing I had left, in August 2004, the time I've spent obsessing about weaving has been but a fraction of the time I need to feel comfortable with the craft to think I know something about it. I still find great comfort in being a beginner.

I can't remember where I was going with this stuff, but I haven't even done my Morning Pages this morning, so I'm waffling. But it's been an important issue for me. And the warp paint that got me curious wasn't warp paint at all; I think the it's woven shibori. Live and learn.

* * * * *

Rosie has just been to a William Morris exhibition in Christchurch, where the entire (?) exhibition was created from the collection of one family who catalog-ordered everything to decorate their house in Adelaide, Australia! The collection now belongs to the Art Gallery of South Australia. We mused on Morris's dislike of mass-production vs his entrepreneurial ventures; Williams, McIntosh and Larsson; and Arts and Crafts/Art Nouveau/Bauhaus, among other things. I'm hoping seeing Rosie is going to be a regular thing.

Need New Ideas, Please!!

So, this is my job today. I don't know if you can tell, but back in February when I washed and put the heddles back on, I twisted some around each other in two places, and counted incorrectly in one place, so I'm recounting and straightening all the heddles. I have 1600-16 heddles, whatever that number may be. I put it off as long as I could, but you know, if I don't fix this, I can't weave in peace, and with the SSVE submissions coming in, I have my bottom on fire, so thanks!!

But can you please help me on two areas? I'll give you some details later, but here are two things I've been wondering about while I wander the streets of frosty Nelson . (Yes, it is winter now.)

1) If you've done Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, you know about the Artist's Date. Well, I'm running out of ideas, not as much because I can't think of anything to do, but because so much of what I used to do is now part of my normal week; playing with color, doing the "Finding Your Visual Language" work, taking long walks looking for visual inspirations, etc. I would like to do some things I haven't tried. Can you suggest anything? And please, nothing to do with browsing retailers - I tried the plan nursery as she suggested in "Walking in This World"; what a big, fat mistake, I was instantly in my shopping mode and came home with two bags of small plants without putting in much thought to the process!!

2) My brother and sister-in-law are in the process of building a house, and have commissioned me to do a wall hanging. They are going to create an entrance foyer so they can hang a long-ish piece. They think their house will be finished in about a year, so I have plenty of time to think and experiment and change my mind.

They know I don't do tapestry/rug style weaving, but I want the piece to be a little bit more than my regular shawl-y thing. Ideas I've had so far are to a) change the draft several times within the piece so there are several related but distinct structures which kind of make up a "picture", and b) swap/add/subtract warps so the color and possibly texture changes can occur all over in both directions. I've been looking into inlay as well as hand-manipulated techniques. What I'm not thinking of doing at this point is warp paint or Ikat; the former seems to have been done to death and it hasn't so far inspired me to want to try, and the latter, you'll have to know me personally to know that I don't think I can be bothered with the niceties of working with the technique, though I love the well-executed Indonesian stuff.

Do you have any spiffy ideas? Materials other than normal and fancy threads, twigs/wood/plant material, paper or wire I can use? Do you know of websites that have interesting pictures?

I'd like to stay true to what I do best, which I think is fabric weaving, but I'd still like to allow for some flexibility, at least at this point, so that the final piece has points of interest for at least a few years, if it's going to be hung in their foyer. And talk to me quickly, before I convince myself the project is too big for me.