When I weave...

When I weave, I am focused and everything is clear.

When I weave I feel calm. I know who I am and I know what the world is about. The evils of the world fall away. The politics of friendships, of states, of red and blue, are gone.

It's just me and the threads. 342 navy blue warp threads. Some are a little weak. Some are strong. I shore up the weak ones with a few extra packing sticks on the warp beam. Some are still a little weak, so for a while I will fuss with them and see if I can get them to behave.

When I weave I can feel the rhythm: step, throw, beat, step, throw, beat, step throw beat.

But then I run out of weft. I use a piano bench as my chair because it is the perfect height and I get up and walk over to my little rolling kitchen cart which has the bobbin winder attached to it. It's a great tool, that cart. So is the bobbin winder.

When I weave, my mind empties and I begin to daydream about other projects. I think about projects I want to do and take a mental inventory of my stash - do I have the right yarn? do I have colors that I want to use?  Do I need  to spin hundreds of yards of fiber? Do I need to - gasp - order more yarn??? A friend thinks about what she has and then thinks what she can make with it. Why can't I think like that?

When I weave, I relax, and time disappears. I almost don't need that massage gift certificate given to me by my manager.

When I weave, I don't worry about my day job. There are no statistics or reports or off-shore blame games.

When I weave, I know who I am. I'm me and I make. I weave, I knit, I spin, I flute, I photograph, and (sometimes) I blog. Mostly, lately, I weave and I love it.

When I help someone else weave, I feel joyful. That's better than anything else.

And when it is the holiday season I get a little misty and mushy.

Happy Holidays and Weave On!

Erin