What is a mistake but an unintended discovery.
I have heard that for every intended purpose there is a unintended consequence. If you have anything to do with computers or software generally, I’m thinking of MS Sharepoint here, you’ll know that every apparently good and noble change to configuration equals  a flurry of complaints about another unintended and usually undesirable consequence.

Luckily weaving, in its more personal and exhilarating hands-on form, presents ‘mistakes’ of possible great beauty or function, always worth pursuring to see where you can go with it.  And only yourself to complain to if it goes pear shaped.  I’ve  read about scientific ‘mistakes’ like the ones Madame Curie and Einstein made. These errors were seen as stepping stones to discovery, but I can plainly see that it’s also based on the will of the person to really see it though to the end.  What if this, what if that. It doesn’t make sense but lets just see…

I tend to be on the conservative side of weaving. Terrified that some morsel of my time will be wasted in ending up who knows where.  As if my time doesn’t get ‘wasted’ on much less important things like watching TV or reading articles in trashy magazines that I immediately regret.  My Saori weave scarf, pictured here, that I wove in Japan helped me to cope with this somewhat by producing a darstardly feature on washing. At the end of the scarf I used a lovely fine silvery, ribbony yarn in a clasped weft with a purple woollen one. The black warp was cotton and after washing it parted and compacted at the linked position of the wefts to reveal the ribbon yarn. The woollen weft held steadfast to the warp and behaved in a ‘normal’ way. Now I have a silvery yarn godet at the edge of the scarf.

I was a bit taken aback when I first saw my discovery, viewing it more as spoiling the cloth. Kenzo Jo from Saori just shrugged and said, “No Mistakes only new design”.  I wonder if this cheeky approach could also work with my Sharepoint complainants.