Nudges

Hello again.

Thanks to everyone who has left comments on the last posting. Every so often over the past few months, a new comment from you, waiting for me in my inbox, has reminded me about my creative life and nudged me in the right direction - just what was required!

What can I say about my absence? It's that old work-life balance chestnut again. My natural rhythm seems to be to work creatively in fits and starts. I'm relaxing into that notion

My desire to create also seems to be influenced by the physical space around me. I am a great spreader of things around the room while I am working, and I've felt a bit cooped up. This observation has influenced the decision to repaint my living room (aka my work space) pure white. A new sandy-coloured carpet is about to be laid tonight to complete the transformation. The idea is to create surroundings more conducive to getting 'in the zone'. More on this later.

I have returned my attention to another love - making translucent paper constructions. I am fascinated by the idea of strength, fragility and contained space. It also enables me to work out ideas for 3-D weavings. I'll say more soon, and add photos.

Discipline

Once again, I remember that discipline is the only thing that will allow me to produce weaving. When I was unemployed a couple of years ago, I sat down every morning to weave -my mental resistance to doing so soon surrendered - and as a result I got things done. The weaving started evolving. It takes time to weave - it is not a quick process. So to see results, as Tammye said in an earlier comment, you have to put time into the warps.

I regularly feel there is just no time to weave, but I realise again as I sit here typing that this is just a feeling - not the reality. I can create an hour every day to weave. I can prioritise it. So I'm going to do it - starting right now.

More later.

Tipping the balance

Repetition is paying off.

I sat down spontaneously last night and wove for half an hour. It didn't take any planning or coercing myself into doing it. I just felt like it. The mental resistance to weaving is fading once again. Ego (my fear of failure) is giving way to curiosity in seeing the weaving evolve. The balance is tipping in the opposite direction.

This design is quite textural. I've been wrapping up the warps. It looks a bit like brickwork gone wrong which I like. I took a look at the weaving sideways and I am going use this quality later.

Weaving a design sideways: When weaving vertical lines up a tapestry, the vertical warps dictate that you can only create very straight lines. However, if you turn your design sideways before you mark it onto the warps, you are able to horizontally weave across the warps what will later become vertical lines - ie once you cut the tapestry off the loom and turn it the right way up. This gives you as the weaver much greater scope to play with vertical lines and make them less severe.