Good Bones

No clouds?  Who cares!  This looks rad!

Yes, I mentally prepared myself to see those swirly cumulonimbus I spent six days painting onto thread dissolve into a blur of color.  And it happened just as I expected.  After carefully reattaching the new "Cloudy" warp to the loom and beginning to wind on with a perfectly recognizable cloud pattern, the threads began to shift, slowly breaking down the continuity of the image over the 17 yards of warp.  From clouds on the back end, I found myself tying on a front end resembling the other half of that weather system: a rain-streaked sky.  I like to think poetically about things like this, and to see the positive side, because I simply can't afford to lose all the work I've put in to this series.  But I've realized that I never was in danger of losing it.  Well, maybe losing clouds, but certainly not scarves.  The cloud pattern may not be distinguishable throughout the entire length of warp, but the ebb and flow of color that my shifting threads left behind is, I think, just as beautiful and perhaps more intriguing.  Perfectly lovely scarf material.  How do I keep getting lucky like this?  Sometimes I feel like the beauty or interest or excitement that reveals itself in my finished scarves happens in spite of all the dumb stuff I do along the way.  Occasionally I get what I expect, but often what comes out of these highly involved dyeing, painting, warping, and weaving processes is a surprise.  I can only conclude that the foundations of my ideas and processes are solid.  When stuff goes wrong on the surface (e.g. clouds shifting into scattered lines), my underlying principles (a desire to highlight and celebrate the beauty of line, thread, and structure in weaving) hold up the rest.  So whether or not my intended idea actually works, what I get is good in its own way.  As I continue to build my business, it is comforting to find that Little fool does indeed have good strong bones.  About the clouds, though...I might need to rename this series.  And pretend I knew what I was doing all along.