WeaveCast and Re-Thinking My Weaving Goals a Little

I have been making my way (slowly) through the past episodes of WeaveCast, a wonderful, free PodCast all about weaving by Syne Mitchell. (Go download a couple of episodes! It's great listening!)

Anyway, I recently listened to Episode 12, Weaving Resolutions, in which Syne interviewed a fabulous weaver named Anita Luvera Mayer. Ms. Mayer creates astonishingly beautiful Art-to-Wear clothing:

WOW! Go here to see more about this piece.

Anyway, listening to her speak with Syne really got me thinking about what I'm doing with my weaving... I've had an Etsy shop for about a year now, and participated in the Weavers' Guild of Boston sale for the first time this past November. And it's been amazing - people are actually buying just about everything that I can weave! Very neat.

But.

I can feel myself getting caught up in the race, in a way. Wanting to weave-weave-weave so that I can keep my shop stocked, to sell more... I think, as Syne and Anita mentioned, that in some ways contemporary American society only really rewards artistic endeavor when it has a price tag attached. (Amazing how my extended family reacted, for example, when I was able to say that I made about $X in sales this past year from my weaving - and with a newborn, at that. Hey, instant validation!)

I definitely think there is some merit in that, and that weaving for the marketplace can serve a function (keeping an obscure art alive, e.g.). But I also think that I need to step back a little bit and weave a little more just for myself, or for exploration's sake. Like Anita, I'm in the fortunate position that I don't *need* to sell my weaving to support myself. It's really nice when I do, and certainly makes me feel a lot less guilty about buying so much yarn and equipment, but it's not like we won't be able to pay the mortgage if I don't sell four scarves this month.

So, with Conall getting a little older (one year old!!!), and my search for outside studio space underway, I think I am finally going to try to do some of the more experimental/artistic weaving projects that I have had floating around in my head for quite a while.

I'm not sure where my reluctance to do so until now has come from. Not fear of failure - I'm really very ruthless about cutting bad projects off the loom. (I have a very finite amount of time to create, I'm not going to waste it by dinking around with a failed project.) Maybe fear of taking up a loom with a time-consuming project that may turn out terribly has been at the bottom of it. I really don't have much time, after all - this post has taken me almost 24 hours to write! :) Being a Mom is hugely time-consuming, obviously, but things keep getting easier...

At any rate. That's just what I've been thinking about lately. Hope I didn't bore you to tears.

WeaveCast and an Unhappy Project...

So, I've been working on a really pretty 8-shaft shadow weave scarf on my big loom. It's made of 18/2 Jaggerspun wool, in teal and silvery grey - quite a nice combination, it has turned out, for a men's scarf. BUT. Sigh. Partway through, I snapped a warp thread. Phooey. Repairable, but I don't like to sell anything with an error like that in it. So, I thought, ok, I'll give it to Carlos for Christmas, he'll like it, he's already looked at it and said he likes it. And then, partway through, my pattern starts getting all out of whack. What on earth?? My treadling hasn't changed, I haven't got the shuttle order backwards (you use two shuttles and to weave shadow weave). Weirdness.

Turns out on of the cords that tie-up my one of my treadles (the 8th one, actually) had come undone, so whenever I opened the shed with that 8th treadle, the first shaft wasn't rising. Hmph. My big loom lives in the basement (poor thing) and the lighting isn't spectacular (poor me, lol), or I might have spotted it earlier, there's a definite weft float in the pattern for about half of the scarf. Argh!

So much for my powers of observation.

I'm going to blame it on Syne Mitchell.

Syne has a wonderful (free) podcast all about weaving - WeaveCast. It's great! Go check it out now!

At any rate, I've been listening to it while weaving this scarf (weaving with 18/2 wool is a slooooow process) and was having such fun listening - and laughing - that I wasn't paying enough attention to my project.

Does this mean I'll leave the iPod behind while weaving this evening?

Nope. :) I'm only through episode 2 of 18!