What's Up?

Well, I've managed not to be a wet duck.

I felt a bit wary after this, because I was so disappointed. And that got me musing about the kind of cloth I want to weave, the kind of work I want to put into the October exhibition, and whether I was feeling pressured by the group to work more conceptually for the exhibition. This all showed the signs of sucking the energy out of me, so I made the choice to press on, moving my hands. (The answers to above for this week: donno, not sure, and probably but probably self-inflicted.)

Looking back, too much thinking can be like an addiction, whereas moving my hands and working gives me more practical ideas for future projects. I should finish the fourth, and for now the last, cotton merchandise piece today; in all, I will have woven two in the wood grain draft, (purple&green, and pink&orange,) one in big bubbles draft, (dark&light purples,) and little bubbles, (hot pink&pale purple-pink). I'll post pics later in the week.

I noticed yesterday afternoon I was weaving in a most peculiar way. My right hand does what you might expect a weaver's right hand to do, catch-throw in one continuous motion. With the left hand, though, I am tentative in catching, so I grab the shuttle unnecessarily firmly, and I take it with my right hand and return it to the left so that I can throw it back with the left. So two picks of weaving takes five steps; R-throw, L-catch, R-hold, L-throw, R-catch. But not always.

I've never been confident with my left hand catching or throwing accurately, but I didn't realize I'd been accommodating. I don't know if it's something I developed in the last year to protect the left bung arm, or if it's because I used the smaller, lighter Swedish boat shuttle instead of the default Schacht end-feed this side of the Prayers piece, mid-Feb. I always imagine I don't sit in the middle of the cloth, either, and that's what disrupts the rhythm, so I am constantly sliding on the bench trying to position my un-small in the right place, but, well, whaddyaknow!

So after I noticed my peculiarity, I tried to correct it, while weaving a merchandise piece, which slowed me down a bit, which wasn't a problem, but this morning my left thumb and shoulder feel a tiny bit tense as expected.

This is Prof Mitsui's design textbook, which I had for... six months, a year? I remember objecting "pink and orange are so wrong," and shoving it in the bookshelf. (I didn't realize it wasn't only pink and orange until just now.) I haven't even checked the illustrations/pics or the TOC because I didn't like the color combo, but this kind of thing stays with me. I couldn't remember where I saw it but I knew I saw it and tried to push away the mental picture. And it pops up on my loom! Pink and orange.

I'm back on track with the "pillars" project, too, now. I had a hard time thinking of drafts on the software; doodling didn't work, so I cut up color papers and stuck them on other color papers. I don't have a solution yet, but I now have a direction. Phew. And I don't have another pre-made short cotton warps I can use as an excuse to procrastinate any more.

Things are starting to look a little serious inside my head. About time, too.