It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to sit down and talk about knitting, weaving and yarn, so in this week’s Taking Back Friday video, I catch you up on what I’ve been working on. But I also wanted to talk about time, my relationship with time, and how it has both literally, and physically, hurt me.
Now let me tell you a little bit about why there was no video last Friday.
One week prior to this, on Friday morning, we had just launched our Spring and Summer Seasonal Preview video plus I was recording our School of SweetGeorgia Live Office Hours segment which usually takes place for an hour or so. Then once that’s done, I take time to catch up on email and a whole bunch of other things. Now I had gone to the fridge a couple of times early in the morning, to get milk for the coffee or whatnot, and our fridge door handle came off. It’s been a bit loose for a couple of days and just needs a little tightening to fix it, but when it came off I thought I don’t have time to fix this right now. So I just hooked it back onto the fridge door. Then it happened a second time. Then probably around two o’clock in the afternoon when I finally decided to stop all the thing I had been working on and have lunch, I had completely forgotten about it. I pulled on the handle to open the door, and of course I pulled so hard to help release the suction holding the door closed, and the handle hit me right in the face. It cut me just above my lip, and then there was a lot of blood.
When I look back, it’s entirely my fault because I was telling myself, I don’t have time to fix that. I don’t have time to deal with this right now. I just have to keep going. And I know that this can seep into other things I do – the feeling like I just don’t have enough time.
A similar situation almost happened with my Sailing Sweater. When I first started this sweater, it was around the weekend of our SweetGeorgia retreat in Whistler, and I started knitting and all was good. But I had a conversation with Tabetha, our Design Director, about how I should have made a gauge swatch and how it might become a problem later on. And so during that weekend I stopped, I reflected on the sweaters I had made with this same yarn before (including one which could have used knitting with a smaller needle size), and decided to rip out the whole thing and start again. I didn’t want to make the same mistake I had done before.
It’s all about the second where you make the decision to fix something before it becomes a problem. Just like I should’ve fixed the fridge before it became a problem. So I have learned my lesson. I think about trying to make sure I’m more conscientious about doing things that need to get done, instead of thinking that everything will take too long in order to do it properly.
These things we are making, learning with fibre arts, they take a long time. It is a slow process that involves a lot of steps along the way. A lot of decisions that have to be made at each step to do things properly, correctly, to do things in the best possible way. Just being really conscientious about every step you’re making, to avoid taking shortcuts and to be careful every step of the way so you don’t cause yourself a big problem later on at the end of the day.
Watch today’s Taking Back Friday episode where I talk more about this, plus update you on the weaving projects I’ve been working on, including my finished handwoven Epic Cloth project! It came off the loom a couple of days ago and I’m so excited to show you the whole thing in its entirety, as well talk about what I have planned for this large piece of cloth.
I would love to hear if you made your own Epic Cloth project last year – what your process was like and if you found any challenges. I would also love to hear about any lessons you’ve learned in the past year, or any mistakes you’ve learned from.
