One of my gifts is the ability to generate a number of ideas. In fact, I can gauge how much sleep I'm getting and how little stress there is by how quickly or easily they come. If I lose myself in the fountain, there's something regenerating in it for me. Now, they aren't all practical ideas and for those who are very practical my idea spouting is rather irritating. But within it, there's always something worth looking into. Sometimes I'll find someone has already tried it. that's okay - there's another idea behind that one. I sadly realized sometime around 30 that there are more decent ideas that come than there is life left in me. Now I'm in a phase of filtering. I may even be so kind as to filter before I present them to the practical people! So the question becomes - what do I really want to do?Case in point - I have fallen in love with weaving. I only have a limited amount of time to dedicate to it since I do still have a full time job and do play the harp. The ideas that spurt around weaving are wonderful, and complicated, and engrossing, and require large blocks of time to get started. My looms sit lonely while I try to figure it all out.
Last Friday, on the way home from work, a concept that hit me during the wedge weave class came back. What if each alternating wedge were from one picture and the others were from a different one? For example, all the odd passes were strips from one picture and all the even were from another. All sorts of geometric patterns flew through my head. "What if?" is one of my favorite questions. Still all of this was too complicated to not get some paper out and carve out time to plan. A second concept came back from class. What about something simple where a beautiful variegated yarn does all the work and I just weave? (Let's forget I don't own said yarn and would have to drive up to Asheville to get it...) Hey, I now have multiple looms and one can be just for simply weaving. I need the practice and it would be great to have something I can work on in large blocks of time or just for 15 minutes after work.
I pulled out my colored pencils and started sketching on grid paper. Be proud - I chose the simplest sketch and picked out colors based on yarn I actually own! And you know I don't feel I compromised - amazing! Basically, the design still takes into account every other wedge is from the same picture. The "pictures" are sine waves and the background is blocks of color. This weekend I was able to complete 3 inches of an 8" wide weaving. This week I've been able to start on the 4th inch. I'm enjoying it and it's keeping my hands in the wool!
