Recently a bright event happened. Someone came along and brightened my sky. Just like the Aurora Australis happening in our skies at the moment.
I find that really good things in my life have just happened. No planning or devising or goal setting needed…she just turned up. She is a wonderful weaver who I admire greatly and she asked me to show up at my loom. By conversation and checking in on each other. I accepted. We’re now happily corresponding about life, weaving, culture, writing, art. This has all come along at a good time for me with trying to find a new direction but taking the older direction along with me.
Some of our links are about age and time. We’re wondering more about these aspects within our work. But it is also about friendship and connection through the making of woven cloth.
I’m aware that this type of long format ‘collaboration’ isn’t as common as it once was with handwritten letters and the old style blogging.
My first experiences on the web were of blogs. We linked to each other with a button which took you to another blogger with the same interests. Blogging taught me html, javascript and latter css. All things you don’t know about under the ‘bonnet’ for most now.
Blogging is a form of memory recording like a diary or log. I’ve had several blogs over more than 20 years and even though I’ve printed off the earlier entries I still enjoy looking at them. It also makes me seem more productive than I feel I am. Not that productivity is the most important aspect of weaving but it can be one.
Over the past 10 years I’ve also recorded all my weaving, knitting, sewing projects in ‘fat’ books as seen above. They are messy and don’t close as they should which is why I treasure them. They are dated, chronological and tactile. They have samples, drafts, patterns, problems, settings, yarn samples and advice for future replications of any project in them. They also record greater events we are living through like Covid and my daughters birthdays if I do a record that day. It certainly helps with my memory at any rate.
I mention my fat memory books because they are helping me sort out where I am at with my bright sky weaving friend. Lucky moments can come when you least expect it.