The One Notebook Principle

From October 29, 2024:

Let me explain a little bit of context here.  When I was young, probably around 13 or 14 years old, I was fascinated by–well, by a lot of things, but one of those things was weaving.  I had read a description in a book that described weaving as “shuttles will fly” and I couldn’t get that imagery out of my head.  I could see the women at their looms, hands moving smoothly and quickly to make intricately-patterned cloth.  The image was tantalizing and magical and I wanted to do that.

About 6 years ago, I opened a small rigid heddle loom on Christmas morning.  A friend of mine, with a large floor loom, and I spent a couple of hours putting the loom together and, after she left, I stared at the loom on my kitchen table with some trepidation.  What the heck did I do next?  After a browse through the first chapter of the How-to book, gifted alongside the loom, I decided to try to measure the warp.  

I didn’t have a warping board or, rather, I did but I didn’t realize the loom itself came with warping pegs and could double as a warping board.  I decided the next best thing was an alternative method described either in the book or found by Googling; I can’t remember which.  I attempted to tie the yarn I was using to a kitchen chair, thread through the heddle, and tie it onto the rod at the edge of the loom.  I don’t remember why I decided that I had measured incorrectly (or maybe I had just tied it on incorrectly and needed to redo it?), but either way I realized that this method was not working for me and I undid it all.  To be fair, having to eat dinner at the table was probably also a reason to pack it all up.  

It stayed packed up until about two years ago when my husband and I bought a house with enough space to give me a craft room.  It now sits, all set up on its stand, in the corner of my craft room, waiting to be used.  It has waited for two years.  At first it was because I had realized that the loom would double as a warping board and was waiting for the pegs I ordered to arrive.  Then, after I found the pegs that had come with the loom in the first place, it was because I needed to detach the loom from the stand to use the pegs.  Then it was that I hadn’t quite put my craft room together yet (still an ongoing project) and so I didn’t have the space or the time to focus on it.  Finally, I decided to worry about measuring the warp later and just throw a small amount of yarn on the loom and weave something small, maybe 3 inches or so, just to say I had woven something.

Now, about 6 years after receiving the loom, I have woven nothing, not even something only 3 inches in length.  While procrastination is in my nature, it ramps up more when I’m nervous about something.  In this case, I’m scared to mess up at something new, more than I am being bad at it.  I know those two things seem identical, but being bad means that I am weaving correctly but it doesn’t look pretty or polished at all.  Messing it up means I am weaving incorrectly, that I’m doing it wrong.  

I’m not sure when I’ll take the plunge, throw some yarn on the loom, gather up my courage, and weave something small.  I’ll let you know when I do though.