Got home last night, thoroughly exhausted, and fell into bed for ten hours. Still feeling woozy this morning, though – I absolutely loathe airplane travel – so didn’t attempt anything difficult.
Instead I spent a little while doodling with Fiberworks PCW. Network drafting and a little cut, paste, and reverse sequence produced this draft:
I’m not sure it deserves to be categorized as network drafted since there’s a reversal in the treadling and the threading is a point threading, but whatever you call it, it’s pretty. I think I will use it to weave off the next eight yards of the Infinite Warp, which will be a gift to a seamstress I know. After considerable debate I think I’m going to weave it up in black and white – mostly because I have 400 grams of similar-weight black cashmere in my stash, and dyeing fine cashmere is a royal pain. If I decide the contrast is too strong, I may overdye it later, probably a pale beige or pale gray, to make the contrast a little less striking.
Meanwhile, I wrote another 2,500 words during my trip, so the book is making real progress. I’ve decided to expand the topic from learning a single craft quickly to learning to problem-solve craftwork generally, and work across multiple disciplines at once. This seems more interesting and complex to me than just talking about a single craft – especially since I’ve realized that I rarely pick up a new craft in a vacuum, and that problem-solving skills are one of the most useful things a crafter can have in his/her arsenal. This will let people build on existing skills as well as pick up a new one.
So this is an exciting development, book-wise. I’m planning to continue working on it as I have time between house, getting in shape, weaving, and othersuch. Still hoping to average 500 words/day for the next month or so. That would get me to 15,000 + 7,500 already written = 22,500, which is probably about 1/3 to 1/2 the finished length. I don’t anticipate this being a big book, unless I come up with more material than I expect I will!
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ILOVE this draft. VERY pretty. I look forward to seeing the cloth.
I like your comment about “not picking up a new craft in a vacuum.” So many things come together when one works on any creative project. When I was studying dance, I came into my class with a rather legendary teacher/pioneer of “expression corporelle” (I hesitate to say “mime” since the art has gotten such a bad rap in recent years…this guy was DEEP and a veteran of the French theatre going ‘way back), anyway, I had had a catastrophic head-butt with my family and was so upset I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t think of anything to do except go to class. Instead of asking me what was wrong and making soothing noises, he focussed on my and made me work really, really hard…it was as if I was the only person in the class, and he gave me a really hard time. The point of that story is that what he was teaching me was how to turn your pain into creative energy, and he was perceptive enough to know that it was the perfect time to do that. That has come into every creative effort in my life ever since. (BTW, I doubt you’ve heard of “Etienne Decroux,” since his work was not necessarily public, but look him up…fascinating life. The first time I ever went to him , I was ‘way early and he made me go into his library with a collection of Victor Hugo’s drawings and poetry and wouldn’t let me out for about 2 hours, and I had to “report on” what I thought of it all.)