Workshop Notes - 1/31/24

It’s sorta just been a getting the work done week. Once I started this piece on Sunday, it has been sorta just a slow and steady advance toward finishing it. I was challenged on Monday night by the 12 color changes I set up for myself to accomplish this hedge design. It wasn’t that big of a deal once I got everything set up. The only trouble I ran into was keeping those initial starts in the previous shed. With only four warp threads holding onto the tail of the new yarn starts, it’s always precarious to make the first overlaps. You have to be very gentle. I think I only pulled two of twelve of the yarn starts out in the process of making that first overlap of each piece of weft yarn. That’s a WIN in my book. 

I feel the magic of this border start to build as I am weaving it up. It’s always so interesting how a design element is just a figment of your imagination and the math you are using to bring it to life until you weave it up. You truly don’t know how it’s going to look or even feel to you. Yes, I said feel. A lot of my own assessment of how I feel about a weaving has to do with that gut level feeling of satisfaction that comes out of witnessing that design reveal itself little by little. Once it starts to build up row by row, that gut feeling of the power of the border starts to build. That’s usually when I know that it’s time to put some little spells into the border itself to direct that power with a little intention. 

I think the most interest revelation of this is how my magic is rooted in a bodily feeling. As someone who climbed the mountain of academia to get a Ph.D. and co-author a peer-reviewed article, I have always said that bodily awareness of my own power and the power of what I make is secondary to my powers of deduction and logic.  After weaving for almost a decade, I think that is changing. A lot of times, there isn’t the straining to create the magic that there used to be when I was taking those first step to create fiber spells. I shouldn’t throw shade at myself, because that straining and trying is just part of learning one’s own magic. Yet, I sure am glad to be on the other side of it. Now, I can let my own body just flow through these beginning stages.

Weaving friend Jennifer Mao prompted a lot of this reflection on the flows that cascade out of just starting. In her reflection on her weekly weaving, Mao, quoting Rebecca Solnit, noted, “A lot of change is rather undramatic growth, …or rather it’s timescale might not be perceptible to the impatient.” Sometimes, as Mao’s weaving reminds us, if we want “to begin, begin” already and be patient for the process to do its work. This is the sort of accumulative framework that fiber artists know well. We work in glacial time compared to most of the society around us. We know our development as artists is measured in decades of work toward totally unattainable summits of skill. Yet, we began this process years ago and continue you it today, patiently logging the hours in the quiet weaving textile after textile.

You know at some basic level this hits to the very heart of my whole project still after all these years. I am still that person interested in working on a lifetime timescale where I see how close I can get to weaving in a cyclical way where I am involved with as many sorts of the weaving, spinning, and dyeing process that I can be involved in. I still am devoted to my quiet practice as a way to feel into my own bodily experience and the cycles of the seasons around me while building my capacity to be a craftsperson who can work magic with their hands. 

Album of the Week — Robes of Snow’s “Winter’s Promise”

Ok, Glenn wanted a dungeon synth mix. That is hard, because a lot of the records I listen to are on bandcamp. I cannot make a mix outta those tracks in the typically way that I do. However, you know what album is perfect for this season? Robes of Snow’s dark folk classic “Winter’s Promise” from how The Wooden Wheel folk series. I listened to it twice yesterday and was just blown away at how perfect it is for the winter. It has a palpable feeling to it as well. It’s like reading a book by the fire with a slight draft nipping at the top of your ear. Please go listen to it repeatedly on Bandcamp meow. Robes of Snow and Fiadh Productions are two of the best people ever.

Anyways, dear reader, I am so thankful you are here witnessing this work. I hope you and yours are well. Until saturday,

James