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.

A surprising find

I've started weaving the second circle now. But lapsed. My motivation seems to come and go in fits and starts. I remember from previous weaving experience that sitting down to do it every day - no matter how resistant I felt - paid off dividends. My resistance weakened with each new sitting. It was the regularity and repetition that were the key factors. This year, it has been fits and starts - not the ideal. But better than nothing.

I have just done a little experiment and viewed several of my weavings under UV light. The whole point was to make patterns that glowed.

Strangely, the woven pattern that I thought would be the least effective was the most effective under UV. Fancy that! There is definitely a balance to be struck between black and white to make the design work effectively.

So that has given me fresh energy. Back to the mental drawing board - I'll mull it over while I complete circle 2.

More on the way

I've now woven the base of the next circle.

This was followed by two brief attempts to start filling it with a design. However, I wasn't feeling very inspired at the time - which showed in the weaving - it wasn't really going anywhere - so I unwove it again.

I am going to revisit my sketchbooks and image bank and consider a few bold patterns, particularly the patterning on frog skins. I can then mark out a design on the warps and weave it.

I also plan to make one of the circles consist solely of text - that intrigues me.

Now I feel engaged again..and enjoying the potential.

More soon. . .

And I did !

I somehow managed to stand on both pairs of my faithful old glasses in the last week and bend them out of shape, rendering them unwearable. Thus, before I could start weaving, I spent an hour fixing, tending and cleaning my glasses - now they have a new lease of life and work better than before. I note the metaphor of getting ready to look.

So I completed the circle finally - after an 8 month lapse.

At this rate, I will be cutting it off the loom in 2020.

It is not perfect (note to self - the world did not end), but it is done.

I was interested in trying to make the circle more like an orb, coming out of the tapestry, floating in space. So I manipulated the weft quite a lot as I was weaving. It is slightly eccentric (ie not completely at right angles to the warp). I might try to use this feature more. One thing I was keen to do when weaving was to convey the shape without giving it a solid outline.

My creativity is a playful and social thing and I very much like to include viewers.

If - dare I say 'when'? -I have an exhibition one day, I would like viewers to leave feeling that it had been an enjoyable and interesting use of their time.

Now I can move on to the next part of the weaving. How exciting - starting something new!

The plan was to make a strip of circles, with different black and white designs. The warp is circular, allowing me to pull it round the frame as I go. I enjoy the idea of free will within a contained space, which is why I am working with clearly defined circles. What goes in them, I don't know yet.

I would like to weave text soon - something brand new to me.

Thanks again for all your encouragement - it really has made a big difference x

I am going to do it - right now

I welcome:

mistakes

botch jobs

forgetting what to do

happy accidents

sublime moments

losing myself in the exquisiteness of the fibres

remembering that i can do it

unexpected bursts of creativity