Workshop Notes - 1/10/24

I am at 15 and a quarter inches on this weaving and only have like 6 arms length of my handspun yarn left. I got 3/4 an inch left, and I’m just keeping the fingers crossed that I make it. Yes, the age-old saga of yarn chicken has commenced. I want to believe that the exact amount of yarn, roughly 189 yards, that I spun will be perfect for this weaving. However, I have relented in starting to spin more just in case. This is just a hedge against the future if the yarn runs out, but I really wanted to just hit the lotto of spinning the exact right amount of yarn for this weaving. It would be like when you were a kid and you wanted so badly to guess the exact number of marbles in gigantic jar at some shop. I wouldn’t get some goofy prize, but I would get the satisfaction of feeling this magical thread extending from my spinning into my weaving. That satisfaction, or rather confirmation, that my work is full of magic is what all adults need repeatedly in our late-stage capitalist society.

Even though this is all just a simple empirical fact of determining, through the power of mathz, the exact right amount of yarn I need to spin, I just want to have confirmation that I can FEEL my way through it. I want to give over power to my instincts and hunches that I have spun enough. I want to trust that my body, my fingers, and my gut know how much yarn is enough. I don’t want to quantify this weaving into being. No, I want it to be snatched from the great web of cloth that all sacred weavings come from. Does this make sense? I want the weaving to become a reality because of some embodied sense of proportion, density, and craft that only a human hand, guided by a romantic soul, can lend it.

The great irony of this painstaking approach is that I am using it for the simplest of weavings. Today, weavings like this would be machine made. If you are hand making something, you are supposed to embellish your weavings. How else would someone determine that it was made by a human and not a machine? How is someone supposed to express their emotions or spirit in the weaving? I am no stranger to this sort of embellished weaving. I enjoy it, but I still hold out a big place in my practice to do this simple work that I was supposed to leave behind when I began tapestry weaving. I would prolly fit in better in thirteenth century castles, replete with chamber music, than in our post-industrial knowledge economy. This is why my work may best be described as castlecore.

I imagine myself aside the stables on a cold autumnal morning. The mist of the breathe of a nearby mare hanging in the cold air. I can hear the nearby clang of the smithy and look over my sheep while they lazily graze on hay in primitive stable. The oaks are ablaze and I ply my simple craft just off the main thoroughfare. A simple song emanates from inside the castle walls. It’s “Quant Voi La Flor Novele” of course. The loveliest of chamber music to weave to. Yes, indeed, I do feel as enchanted as one does when they see a new flower when I feel my capability to make my sacred rugs. This is a simple, honest life for a fiber mage. May my path stay prosperous and true.

Ok, I am done. hehehe thanks for indulging me. I hope you enjoyed and do come back now, ya hear? I would love to have to along for the ride of these weekly workshop notes, so sign up for a free or paid subscription below. All my best until Sunday, dear reader.

James