Weaving

This little leather pouch…

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Using leftover pieces of leather from the wall hanging I created for a school auction, I fashioned a small pouch to carry the essentials like an ID and credit card. The body of the pouch is one long piece folded onto itself and handstitched with artificial sinew. The tri-color macrame that adorns and lengthens the front flap uses two colors of natural alpaca wool yarn and a dark brown cotton embroidery floss.

But that is not how I first envisioned this project, of course. This is another blog post about working with frustration, changing or releasing expectations, and, in the end, not giving up. Because creativity is finding the work around when you think you have failed.

The macrame was an idea that came to me in a moment one day after seeing some modern macrame images online. I’ve done a little bit of macrame before, but never anything like a friendship bracelet – which is what this most resembles. Eight year olds make friendship bracelets all the time. I actually thought it would be easy. 

I found a pattern I liked, but decided to double it to 36 strings to fit the width of my pouch. My first mistake. Not drawing the wider pattern on paper – second mistake. I tied all the strings onto the short leather flap and just charged ahead, thinking I’d be able to figure it out as I went along.

I spent as much time undoing knots as I did tying them. I almost gave up on the project. I definitely put it aside for many days. Then yesterday, I decided to undo everything. I considered maybe starting over using different strings since the natural alpaca yarn was irregular in thickness and would sometimes unravel or fray in the process of tying knots. But in the process of undoing, I slowly worked back to a row of dark brown and stopped. The simple chevron seemed just right, imperfections and all. I trimmed the strings as tassels to match the length of the pouch. The thin leather strap was attached by threading the ends through two small slits cut in the crease of the leather flap and simply gluing the ends to the inside of the pouch. 

I am pleased, relieved actually, to have completed this project rather than tossed it aside. Giving up or quitting lingers on as regret. Creativity is the bridge between the vision and the actual execution; between giving up and trying again – and finishing.

Catching inspiration…

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The frequency and intensity of inspiration may vary from day to day, but I rarely am empty of ideas. And I am grateful for this flow. The challenge for me is to find time to attend to all of the ideas – which is, of course, impossible. If I am not already working on a project, a new idea becomes my next focus. Otherwise, I write them down as they come; recorded for some future date when I need inspiration.

About a month ago, I was hiking around Dillon Falls with my daughters and picked a single willow branch from the river’s edge. I’ve never worked with willow, but as I played with bending a twisting the branch, I was inspired to make a dream catcher. When we got home, I used hemp cord to wrap the branch into a circle-ish shape. And then life got in the way. A couple weeks later, I started weaving the dream catcher, adding wooden and hand felted beads at random intervals in the process. The weaving took several days; much longer than I anticipated. Life again required me to put the project aside.

I lost the flow. I’d stare at the dream catcher day after day and wonder how I would ever finish it. I had vague ideas, but nothing connected. Another week passed. Then, right before I had to leave for a day long gathering, inspiration struck. Worried that I would again lose the flow, I gathered all the materials together and photographed them in a pile. I needed to record my inspiration.

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And then again, life got in the way. Or maybe I just again lost the flow. It took several more days before I literally forced myself to act. Just one act on the dream weaver that would hopefully push me forward. I took the old sheets, ripped them into strips, and tied them onto the woven branch. Then I cut and tied lengths of  t-shirt yarn and wool yarn. The flow returned as I braided yarn. I decided to keep the colors of the dream catcher tail monochromatic. And when it was finished, I decided it was my “inspiration catcher;” for those ideas that I am not ready to use, but also not ready to release.

Allow the unexpected…

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You may have noticed that I am a big proponent of the unexpected; like the centaur who shoots an arrow afar just to follow it into the unknown. It is not that I lack vision when beginning a project. I always have a clear target. I just often miss the mark and have to shift my vision to accept the unexpected.

During my week in the woods of the Sierra Mountains, I found a beautiful, dark sienna rock with a small dimple near one end. It seemed the perfect size and weight for an experiment with weaving. Using hemp twine, I tied larks head knots around the girth of the rock, then knotted several rows of square knots. Never having done this before, I quickly realized that I had used too many larks head knots. So, what was meant to be a snug, knotted wrap for the rock, expanded with each row of square knots to become a pouch to carry the rock; an unexpected, yet satisfying outcome.

Take a simple craft outside and scale it GIANT…

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A beautiful setting for crafting in nature; a grove of Ponderosas next to the rambling Tumalo creek. Students from kindergarten through 5th grade each wove part of a giant god’s eye on 8’ lodgepoles. This change in scale was an idea that came to me while I was researching ideas for a collaborative, kid-friendly project. Most children (and adults) have made a small god’s eye at some point. In native cultures, a god’s eye is used as a connection to the spirit world through the very center of the weaving. Outdoor school provides an opportunity for the kid’s to connect to the spirit of nature. Changing the scale of the god’s eye to GIANT made it a collaborative project rather than an individual craft. And the large scale emphasized its presence in nature – an amplification of the spirit of the earth. While weaving, children were also looking through the god’s eye to the creek and cliffs in the background. It was a magical experience.

The children chose their weaving yarn from a large collection of thrift yarns as well as several colorful t-shirt yarns I hand cut from thrift T-shirts. Denim “yarn” that I made from thrift jeans separates sections of the kid’s weaving and helps tie together the otherwise diverse collection of yarns. At the end of the day, the god’s eye was only have full. Given the scale of the weaving (and the small population of the school) I’ve invited faculty and staff to add to the god’s eye after the summer break.