Post #3317: Moving slowly

For the last ten days or so, I’ve had the most terrible flu which I can only liken to a combination of strep throat, norovirus, and bronchitis. I was off work all last week, and as of today (Monday), I am still not back at it. Although my acute symptoms have passed, I am left with an exhaustion and brain fog that make doing my job next to impossible, never mind the fact I can’t sit up for more than an hour without needing to take a rest on the couch again. I am grateful for a large bank of sick leave, and the fact I’m at the point in my career where I do not feel the need to prove myself to anyone by showing up in shambles as I did when I was younger (I shudder to think of all the illnesses I spread in the office in those days, but it was the way back then).

Fortunately, I’m now just well enough to make a few slow attempts in the studio. Yesterday, between stretches on the couch listening to podcasts and watching Netflix, I returned to the loom I’d been working on a week ago. In fact, the day I finished warping it—last Monday—I was already feeling unwell: achy and tired. As I worked to balance it for weaving (a process I think of as tuning the loom), a fever came on hard. I had to abandon it entirely, take to bed, and I didn’t really get up again for the next five days.

But yesterday afternoon, I felt the energy to return to it – and so I put the pins into the jacks and went through the balancing process piece by piece until it was done and I had a clean shed on my warp. From start to finish, this took less than an hour. I then started weaving my shawl, and made some headway before exhaustion overtook me and I had to lie down on the couch in my studio. Later in the evening, I got some more weaving done, and the meditation shawl is on its way to being woven (plus, it looks like there will be some extra fabric which I will turn into a cowl or some other yummy thing).

As is somewhat obvious from my last couple of posts, I’ve been bitten by the weaving bug again after a long absence from the loom. This coincides with the annual start of the #100dayproject, which I think could give me the structure for a bit of a deep dive over the next little bit. And so I’ve set up a page here to track my goal and outputs for the hundred days – my plan being to do something weaving-related every day, no matter how small. It could be a bit or reading or researching drafts, colouring sketches for projects, designing a new weaving draft, or sitting down at the loom to get some yardage in. Anything that furthers my goal of becoming more proficient as a weaver and designing textile projects.

While I’m still sick, I don’t expect any big leaps in progress on my projects, but I’m making a list of all the things I do want to explore over the next hundred days, starting with some finishing techniques on the piece of fabric in the photo at the head of this post. When it’s finished, it will go into my samples catalogue – something I use for planning future projects, and also sharing with others interested in learning more about weaving. After that, the shawl will come off the loom and I’ll have to figure out what goes on next according to both interest and overall energy.