Feeling at a low ebb creatively, like I am not making progress today.  I am trying to put a hand-dyed silk warp on the loom.  The warp is a mixture of several small lots of silk threads left over from various other projects and includes silk boucle, silk cords of several weights, smooth silks, rough silks, shiny silks and dull silks, all originally white or natural coloured.  A six yard warp was wound in three sections and then dip dyed in red, yellow and blue.  Overlapping areas became green and purple.  Additional sections were dyed in red and blue to serve as borders and weft.  The colours were set by steaming.  Moving to the loom, the yarns are super tangling and one of the threads is also pilling, causing the yarns to stick together in spots.  It is taking forever to put it on the loom – eight hours of my life I will not get back.  I’m at the point where I am wondering if I should just cut it up, throw it out and move on to the next thing.  The problem is, I really love the colours in bright primaries and secondaries – the blues and the greens are particularly gorgeous.

So I am pressing on.  How come no one told me that even when I am doing the thing in the world that I absolutely love, that there would still be moments when I don’t love it so much?  I remind myself that weaving is the making of slow cloth, making an article that will last beyond today and that my deadlines are, for the most part, self-imposed and arbitrary.  And so, I will return to this later, but for now . . . .

I am rewarding myself with lunch out.  I have been totally alone for the last five days and wanted to get out and be with people, even strangers.  I am sitting in the café with my notebook and sipping a “flat white” coffee.  Overhearing snippets of conversation from other tables helps me feel connected to the larger world.

After lunch I strolled through the park and along the river.  Huge tents have sprouted at the end of the field in front of the apartment – Cirque de Solei is in town.  Enjoying the afternoon sun and the view of downtown from the river bank.