It took me four years to go from winding this rainbow warp to cutting this last length of fabric off the loom. I am not the same weaver I was when I began. I am not even the same person.
Rainbow’s End is the resting point between life’s many journeys. As a weaver, my journey has been toward Saori free style weaving, a place outside the rule books, the place where instinct is all you need. As a person, it’s been a journey from a desperate need for absolutes, back toward a softer world of possibilities.
Rainbow’s End is the image of this transformation. The warp, with its regular stripes, is where I began. The weft, intuitive, yet made from mostly that same thread, is where I am today. My now empty loom is where I will begin my next journey.
It took courage to plunge my smooth weaving into a tub of hot water. I was right to trust my instincts. The wool inlays are fine. The tightly spun worsted singles, steam-finished, didn’t shrink as much as the cotton. Don’t believe everything they tell you. Sometimes you have to take a chance.
Amber cat says, “Chances. I take them.”
Last week, I had only questions. Today I have answers and they are resoundingly YES! The color gamp is history, and I suppose I did learn something from it, if only to discover that I don’t like regular stripes of huck lace. What I do like is a random melange of soft Egyptian cotton for weft (Thanks, Jojomojo, for the bag of goodies!). I like recycled sari silk. I like having a purpose for weaving but not a plan.
It feels good to have no draft in front of me.
It feels good to have each throw of the shuttle be its own moment.
I don’t have words to describe how it feels to be so present in the weaving.
I think this picture tells the whole story.
It is time that I unlearn how to weave.
It is time to let go of the notions of perfect selvedge and yards and yards of uniform fabric.
That warp that I painstakingly threaded with huck lace is a canvas upon which I can create. What happens if I pull out a few warp threads? Regroup the spacing on a few others? What, indeed?
What happens when I use a thick yarn for the warp? Recycled sari silk!!!
What happens when I soften the transitions from color to color, by creating stripes of varying widths?
What about knots! What indeed?
I haven’t felt this energized about weaving in years!
One of the worst pieces of weaving advice was given me when my floor loom was new. Let me tell you what it was and why it was such bad advice for me.
I was all excited to have a new loom, and was so eager to explore my loom. I declared that I was going to put on 10 yards of black warp in plain weave and PLAY!
My erstwhile mentor told me that was the worst thing I could do, and tried to convince me to weave a color gamp first. I simply refused to do that, she then coerced me into picking a project and doing all sorts of wretched math first. I ended up making a chenille scarf but didn’t really enjoy it. I felt like the project was done before I started and I never felt present when I sat down at the loom.
Had my mentor understood me better, she would have realized that I wanted play with yarn texture, and mix all sorts of bright colors under the unifying black warp. I didn’t want to create something precise and mechanical. She never looked at me as a person, just as a potential weaver to be molded in her style. She never realized that I usually wear a combination black and bright colors. That I’m not fashionable, but that I have a strong personal style.
Lately, I have been reading about Saori weaving. Ironically, it often begins with a long black warp in plain weave. Interesting.