Lessons from the Loom

There is nothing earth shattering about learning life lessons from hobbies but I have been a little surprised by some of the lessons I have learned and am still learning. while weaving. This is the first in a sporadic series of lessons learned at the loom. I wish I’d learned some of these lessons earlier in life!

Mistakes: we all make them. We all hate making them. I hate making mistakes so much that I can be paralyzed. Or, I can be so afraid something might be a mistake that I do nothing at all. I don’t want to offend, I don’t want to hurt and I don’t want to look stupid! So it can be more comfortable to deal with the disappointment of not doing something than taking the risk of making a mistake.

I’ve made mistakes in my weaving. Little mistakes that don’t really matter like colours that didn’t work, beating too hard, poor choice of fibre for personal projects. And I’ve made some bigger mistakes: wrong beat for a piece for publication, forgetting the “checkers” in a checkered scarf, tension issues. Here’s some of what I’ve learned about mistakes.

Change perspective. Sometimes a mistake isn’t really a mistake, it’s learning how not to do something. The long term consequences of these “mistakes” are actually positive so they can hardly be called mistakes. We can’t expect to be perfect when learning new things, so be nice to yourself! A simple change of perspective can have a huge impact on how you feel about yourself. The picture on the right was supposed to be a double weave log cabin. A mistake in threading turned it into houndstooth instead.

This was completely taken apart and rewoven

If you’re walking down a path that is not leading where you want to go, turn around. If you keep walking you *might* get to where you want but it would have been much easier if you had turned back at the first sign of trouble. I am amazed at how far back you can go in your weaving to fix a mistake. I have actually unwoven a completed project, tied it back to the loom and rewoven! The crazy thing is I knew from about the first 6” of weaving that I was in trouble. But I keep going hoping that the finishing would fix the issue. It didn’t (of course). Turning back doesn’t mean giving up, it means recognizing there is a problem, going back to the point it was made, fixing it at the source then moving forward in the right direction.

This might look good in a picture but the tension was a disaster…I cut my losses

Cutting your losses is not failure. Sometimes you can turn a mistake into a positive learning experience, sometimes you can turn back and fix the mistake and sometimes there is nothing to be done but cut the project off the loom. This is not a failure, this is self-care! There may be a sense of sadness over the loss of beautiful yarn, time or money but the sense of relief is greater. In life, cutting something away and tossing it out of your life might be very painful and at the same time the best thing you could ever do for yourself!

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Learning is Hard Work!

A little diversion this week. While not technically about weaving, the points at the bottom are directly transferable to learning to weave (or anything else).

My first day with my own wheel…concentrating hard!

I attended my first 2 spinning classes this past weekend. I’ve been spinning for about 2 years and, like everything else, I’m self-taught. The first class was a beginner class. I didn’t really need it, but hoped to learn some things I didn’t already know (which I did). It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a room full of people who are all learning something for the first time and it was a reminder to me.

Watching the group learn to spin I got to see a wide range of reactions to challenge. Deep looks of concentration, fumbling hands, whitening of knuckles, muttering (some positive some not so much), exclamations of delight or startled surprise.

My “art” yarn

Friday I watched other people struggle to learn, Saturday it was my turn. Spinning art yarn so it looks good is hard! My hands were clumsy, my feet forgot to treadle, or treadled too fast. I was the one talking to myself, sometimes so deep in concentration that I couldn’t hear what the instructor was saying. I spun a few mini skeins; they look surprisingly like the first few skeins I spun when I just learned to spin!

I learned a lot this weekend:

A cup of tea soothes the frazzled nerves

1. Learning means making mistakes. Except they aren’t really mistakes, it’s just learning how not to do something. Learning how not to do something is just as important as learning how to do something

2. Learning is gradual so we need to go easy on ourselves. Cheer when the fingers get it right even if the feet don’t. Cheer when the yarn is so twisted it can’t feed onto the bobbin. Over twisted yarn means you are getting twist!

3. Learning continues to happen when we take breaks. When the tension was high our instructors suggested we take a break, have a cup of tea or coffee and a treat. While we were resting our bodies, our brains were free to process what we had learned and to file some muscle memory. And it worked! Coming back to our wheels after even a brief break the anxiety in the room was lower and real yarn began to fill bobbins.

4. Learning takes a lot of energy. We can’t focus on everything all at once. It’s ok to go back to an easier step. It’s ok that we can’t listen and do at the same time or that we mess up every time we try to talk. And if you are a teacher, this is especially important to remember!

I’d love to hear about your learning experiences. What helps? How do you keep a positive outlook?

My 2nd and 3rd skeins plied and knit. Plying hides a multitude of sins!!