Practicing in the Gap: Day One

 Otis and I are planning a new tapestry, wedge weave of course!

We needed to pull some yarns first and choose a loom.

Tidewater Yarns

Coastal Plain Yarns

Piedmont Yarns

Mountain Yarns

Warped and Ready to Weave!

Who helps you plan your tapestries ?

Staying Connected

I am laying on my couch procrastinating, you know the feeling.  There is a long list of to do items and my inner pajama clad toddler wants nothing to do with any of that grownup stuff.  I want to stay comfy on the couch looking at pretty tapestry stuff on my tablet.  A waste of time you say... I think not.

In my direct field of vision is this tapestry hanging on the wall.  Holding Space.  I thoroughly enjoyed planning this,  dyeing the yarn and weaving it.  The fingers are itching to weave again.  My quilting is a lovely way of working feelings out in a textile and tangible way but lacks the gravitas of tapestry weaving for me.

Holding Space

I specify for me as for others who painstakingly quilt thousands of tiny pieces by hand with much precision I am sure there is gravitas.  Crap!  I am not using that word correctly. Webster defines gravitas as dignity, seriousness, or solemnity of manner.   What I mean is that for me tapestry is Slow and Hard! 

 The tapestry muse left several months ago, the desire to weave evaporated.  What remained however was a lovely bunch of connections to the tapestry world.  Friends on Facebook and Instagram, lovely new books on tapestry by Tommye and Rebecca and new work by my friends at Tapestry Weavers South.  These connections kept me pulled into my love of tapestry without weaving.  Not ideal but I will take it.

Quilting provided a different way to look at color, value and proportion and confirmed some things I know about myself.  I will continue to quilt and explore improvisational quilting and let it inform my weaving. 

Love is Not A Victory March

For now, baby steps back into my tapestry.

My Selfie; Disgruntled State Employee 

I will be practicing in the gap with my tapestry.  What gap you say... Well the gap between my taste in tapestry and my ability to weave it.  Ira Glass describes it this way

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this.

We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."

Okay, tapestry is hard and slow and I have to be willing to suck  fail!  Got it!