If you think about it, we have honeymoon phases with lots of different things, not just the people in our lives. For instance, when starting a new job, everything is magical and wonderful for a few weeks...then the routine and requirements set in and while we still may like our jobs, we aren't quite as enthusiastic as we once were.
I fell in love with weaving. I don't know how else to describe what happened to me in October 2007 when I took my first weaving class. In fact, if you're curious, you can read about my experiences in that three day class here. I described my feelings to David when I got home as having "fallen in love" with weaving. I couldn't sleep. Food didn't interest me, it only gave me the energy I needed to sustain weaving. I devoured books and magazines, played with yarn, thought of nothing but the weaving projects I was going to do. The thought of all the money I was going to spend setting up a studio wasn't daunting...I just HAD to get it done AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.
My first 3-day date with weaving was amazing. Not once did we fight, or argue, or even think about anything but each other. In fact, it was like we were meant for each other. I didn't struggle to understand the mechanics of the loom, the process of dressing the loom, and throwing the shuttle for the first time felt like something I'd done all my life. I was made to weave. I don't know how else to think about it. Even to this day I can look at a pattern or fabric and just know how it was constructed (and know whether I'd have the time or interest in doing that myself).
It was truly magic, but then I had to go home...and I missed weaving like you wouldn't believe. I ordered my loom within days of getting home and then had to wait while the folks in New Hampshire put together all the little bits and pieces of my new loom.
And I waited...
And waited...
For what felt like forever but was really only 2 months. I e-mailed my weaving instructor each day for fear that when my loom got home I wouldn't know what to do with it. Would it remember me? Would I be able to warp it the first time? I read several books, over and over, to keep myself "up" on what weaving was and how one goes about doing it. I dreamed of weaving, I played with my yarn, I planned out many many projects.
And still the loom wasn't here.
Sandra suggested I get a peg loom--well I already had one, so I pulled it out and started making scraps and bits of things, but it wasn't the same. I was limited by the size of the loom, the size of the pegs and the yarn that I had didn't get along well with the loom...
So I waited some more. Finally the loom arrived in what was probably the most anxiety-filled day of my life--major delays with the delivery truck, so that it didn't get to my house until sometime after 10pm.
David and I spent two days lovingly putting together my first loom. I was so happy to bring it home and spend the rest of my life with it, that I haven't looked back.
Lately things have been difficult between me and my loom. We haven't fallen out of love, but we have taken a little bit of a break from each other. The past year has been very difficult for me emotionally. I was struggling with work, my grandmother passed away, I wrote my dissertation, my dad's cancer came back, AND I had emergency surgery. All of this ended up in a 2011 with very little weaving. The loom and I have some work to do to get reacquainted to the level we once were, and we have new definitions of my availability...but we're working it out.
I very much enjoyed reading this entry in your blog. "Absence (from weaving) makes the heart grow fonder," they say. (Auntie J.
ReplyDeleteThanks Janice. I'm at the point now, where I'm resenting work and anything that takes me away from my loom...it's a good thing, though, and I'll figure out a rhythm that will work.
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