Weaving: planning, process and product… creating something beyond myself

I knew exactly what I wanted to say in this blog but have struggled for about five minutes to frame it with a sensible title.  I still don’t think I’ve got it right, but it will do unless I think of something snappy and amazing before I get to the end of this piece.

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So, what do I want to say?  Let’s set the scene.  It’s another hot summers day – too hot for me to sit comfortably in the studio even with the fan on.  There is a patch of shade in the garden and a nice breeze.  I hunt out the folding table which we keep in the campervan and set it up in the shade.  I bring out my loom, my box of chosen yarn and my beater.  I warped the loom yesterday evening in the garden and then tried to hunt out a selection of colours that I thought would work.  I had only sketched out the idea that morning, so the whole concept was very rough and ready.  I warped the loom with the yarn that happened to be on the table (and which to be fair is my favourite weight) and chose colours quickly and almost at random because it was too hot to hang around inside.

Planning

Some projects I get totally sucked into and end up searching and researching and planning and refining and re-

planning and sampling and basically going round in circles (hello Lancashire project).  Other projects are think-sketch-do with no planning involved.  Both types of project bring me pleasure and frustration.  I feel that there is a danger, for me, in over-thinking, over-planning and over-preparing.  In those cases, I find myself wondering what holds me back – is it that the whole project means too much?  That I’m ‘scared’ of it not being what I want?  That it won’t live up to the images and ideas in my head?  But the get-stuck-in- projects have their own pitfalls; having to pull back and redo because I didn’t have a plan to follow and the idea in my head was too nebulous.  Sometimes it turns out that I’m just not skilled enough or experienced enough to translate my dreams into woven reality.  There is probably a middle way between over- and under- preparing; an approach that will be my sweet spot (and its different for everyone). But I’m still searching for that.

Process

I have a very curious relationship with not weaving.  If I don’t have anything on the loom, then I can’t really imagine why I would want to bother.  The effort of planning (or not planning) a design/size/material and even more, the process of warping and preparing the loom completely obscure what comes next.  It becomes hard to imagine enjoying the weaving when getting to that point feels like such a chore.  And yet.  The minute I start the process my brain ticks into another way of seeing things.  Yes, preparation can be tedious, but its also rhythmic, mindful and satisfying.  Even before I pick up my first bundle of weft, I can feel the piece taking shape.  The neat line of warps, corralled into formation with twining and half hitches is pleasing in its own right.  But when I touch it, I can feel it thrumming with what I can only call expectation.  Not my expectation, or at least not mine alone.  It’s the expectation of the yarn.  It waits, half sentient, for whatever it will become.  Once I start to layer up the weft, the pattern taking shape under a slow tabby weave, I can feel the expectation growing.  Something transmits from my fingers to the weave and back.  It is exciting but it’s also a bit odd. 

When I write I am aware that I lose control of my words – even in my personal pencil-written diary, the words take on a life of their own.  When I read them back, they offer me perspectives, ideas and emotions that I didn’t have when I wrote them.  With words designed for publication this evolution becomes public.  Someone might cite my work in a paper they write – and I won’t recognise my words and my theories or evidence.  But it does make sense and I don’t have a problem with it – novels, poems, letters, text messages all have a life of their own (as Winnie-the-Pooh noted “…when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”)

I suppose the same type of process happens with weaving – something that takes time and thought gradually grows away from me and becomes itself.  That sounds a bit witchy but, as with writing, I can feel it happening.  During the process the piece begins to pull away from me, almost as a teenager pulls away from its parent.

Product

When I am weaving, I focus on process.  This is partly because otherwise the slowness of production would drive me mad.  The product is one thing, but it is totally separate from the process which, in the moment, is the only thing that matters.  Once the piece is finished, off the loom and blocked it feels totally out of my hands.  I still see it with a critical eye (I could have done this differently…better…) but I also see it as something that exists in its own right.  The further I get in time and space from the piece, the more it feels independent.  I can pull it back a little by naming it, but even that is an imperfect science.  In the end the ‘product’ is something other than me.