weaving studio

My plans for 2023

/ jlevack / 3 Comments

Welcome to 2023!

This year marks my 10th as a weaver, wow time sure flies by. Since the day I first saw a loom being operated up close and fell in love instantly, much has changed but not my love of weaving and learning.

The past few years have been weird ones, for all of us really. Covid changed things for me (even though I managed to avoid it until just last autumn!). I went through a dry spell of sorts, what I was calling a bad case of Creative Ennui. You’d think that being forced to curtail public activities would have driven me into my studio, but it didn’t. I spent over a year not weaving for the most part; I just could not dredge up the interest or creative spark.

You’d think I’d look back at that time and think of it as dark days indeed, but I don’t. I read a lot, I got a dog, I spent a lot of time with my husband. I reorganized stuff in the house, read even more books, and just kind of let myself be. It allowed me to just…take a breath, which was exactly what I needed. I hadn’t even known that I was holding my breath until I let it out eventually.

Even though covid is still around and I’m still taking every precaution I know, things feel a bit more back to “normal” now. It is, I guess, the new normal. And I’m back in the studio much more often! Back, and refreshed, and being thoughtful about it.

For years my “Type A” tendencies (business) were at war with my creative and decidedly NOT-Type-A temperament (artist). I could not decide if I was a business or a hobby or some sort of weird hybrid. But what I realized over the past few years is that it doesn’t have to be either/or, you know? Commissions made me HAPPY when I got them (business), and then sucked all creative urges (artist) out of my system. Creating to please other people and their often inchoate ideas of what they wanted just stressed me out.

I know very few weavers who make a living with their work, and honestly – I don’t want to be one of them. What fills my soul is the craft, the planning, the tactile pleasure of fibre, the rhythm of the loom, and having a place of my own in which to do it. Taking breaks away from the studio are also necessary, I’m in the lucky position of not having to do this to make a living. I’m lucky if I what I make keeps me in enough fibre to make more. And I’m okay with that – really really okay with it.

What you see below is a gallery of things I made in the past while, just because I wanted to. Felt good.

So this year, back in the studio and looking around at what I have, what I want to do, and how I want to do it, I’ve decided that this year will have two overarching themes –

1. zero waste, and

2. no commissioned pieces.

I have a LOT of fibre in the studio. Like most weavers I’m drawn to pretty fibre, and I buy a lot of it “just in case” for future projects. Sometimes there’s a price I can’t pass by, or a colour I can’t get out of my head. While I was trekking through my creative desert over the past few years, instead of using the materials, I started accumulating them. Maybe I thought that having more, or different, fibres would help me joggle out of my small crisis?

What it did, instead, was make me rethink what I was doing and why. So, I will be “shopping” from my own shelves for the rest of the year and will see what comes of it. Everyone who works with fibre has a few piles in their stash – stuff we love to use, colours we hate but bought for some reason now unknown, fibre we’re saving “for something special”, fibre we couldn’t pass up because of the price or opportunity….

So. I’m going to dip into all of it. I’m going to be profligate and enterprising and see this as an opportunity to make good use of what I have. It’s the weaving equivalent of using up the food that’s in your freezer, really. You never know what unexpected delights you will make from those forgotten things. And I hope it will make me think long and hard about how, for me, accumulation took over from creation.

A picture of shelves floor to ceiling, full of yarn
Yeah, it’s… a lot
Overflow. Once you start buying more things to put your things into, you have to stop and reassess

So, that’s the “Zero Waste” portion of my year’s theme. What about the “No Commissions” part?

Well, as previously mentioned, commissions are for me a bit of a problem. I’m so happy to get one, but then I become paralyzed by them – I worry that the picture someone has in their head will not be matched by what I make. It stifles my urges to experiment, it makes me want to just get it done instead of enjoying the process.

I want to weave joy into every piece I make, and commissions just didn’t let me do it. I was never quite pleased with something, if I was weaving it with a sale in mind.

So, no commissions. I’m still going to be selling, don’t get me wrong here. But I’m going to make things and then put them up for sale – there are a few retails places I may be putting them in, but for the most part posting them on instagram will be how I offer what I’ve made.

Just as my studio is open by chance, so too will my creativity be. I’m good with it, and hope you will be too.

Picture of my door sign, saying I’m “open by chance”
Open by chance, and also selling by chance

Done!

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Back in October of 2018, I was talking to my husband about the mythical weave shed that I imagined for myself. I may have been talking about it for the past several years, to the point where the myth was taking a very definite shape in my mind. In October, we both started talking about it as if it were a real thing, and it was just that simple – one of us said “we could actually do it, you know” and the plan started to take shape.

So, Berwick Weaving Company now has an actual building to itself, and I could not be happier. Have you ever made something happen, from dream-to-actuality, and at the end of it realize that you have literally made your dream come true?

I have, and it’s terrific.

The road to the studio, from when we hired someone to when it was finished, was surprisingly short. We got quotes in October/November, and they started the building process in January. Working through a wet and windy wintertime, the studio emerged in about 4 months. They were quiet, respectful, and responsive. I am happy with our builder, Bentley Built Homes. It may be the first weave studio they’ve built, but it may not be their last.

Before, and after.

It wasn’t always entirely smooth, but putting it all in perspective the process was remarkably freer of angst and stress than I had expected. The building is so quiet, and such a difference from the old weave room that looked out over a busy street! It’s warm, sturdy, and peaceful. It’s tucked in underneath my favorite old maple tree, and looks remarkably like it’s been there for ages already (though I do need to do some landscaping).

It took about a week to move everything in and organize it all – organization was always my biggest worry, because weaving comes with a lot of gear. But I’ve been in the studio, working, for about 3 or 4 days now, and I really couldn’t be happier. The efficiency one gets from knowing where everything is in a space, from everything having a place, is valuable.

The studio is not a retail space; it’s really just a more private and efficient space for me to work. I do plan on setting up a studio tour maybe, and as always if people want to visit they can message me through Berwick Weaving Co.’s facebook page or email me and set something up. I am “open by chance” – no set hours.

For those of you interested in that storage I keep talking about:

These shelves are terrific. Taking advantage of the 10 foot high ceilings, the shelf is eight feet high, and eight feet wide. Twelve inch deep shelves, so I don’t lose anything behind something else. I was shocked at the amount of fibre I actually had – in the old weave room everything was compressed, or boxed, so I had no real idea until I took it all out there and started sorting! I love it, and every time I look at it, I am inspired. I find it so useful to have it all out, and in view.

Some weavers keep their fibre stored in plastic boxes, or tubs. I just can’t do it. This will require more dusting than if I’d chosen to do that, but it’s worth it.

On the other side of the room, I chose to repurpose shelves I’d had made for my in-house weave room. I’m very happy I did – I love the look of them, and the cubbies will prove useful.

I’ve managed to fit all the looms in, save one small rigid heddle loom I decided to keep in the house. It’s a convenient size to use in front of the tv, or in the sitting room.

I found a place for my beloved mangle, and put a good sized table in as a workspace, or for (future, planned) teaching space.

I love this space, and am over the moon with it. I look forward to many happy hours in there. Thanks for taking this journey with me.

Progress, and Planning.

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Things are pretty exciting here these days, as far as the construction of the studio goes. The back garden is transformed, and it has made me realize just how different something can look if you change one thing (or, in this case, a progression of small things that are turning into an entirely new view).

We began with this:

The day the Big Adventure started. The old garden shed is now gone.

And today, this is the view.

Window day! As cold a day as you can imagine, and the workmen were stalwart and hardy

Quite a progression!

It’s really quite something to see a building happen. Those men are nothing short of heroic – framing in sleet, roofing in snow, installing windows in frostbite conditions! I keep thinking of the lovely warm studio I’ll be sitting in next winter, but those guys must be cursing this weaver and her stupid studio, I swear.

My big disappointment this week was that they put the windows in and then nailed plywood over the doorway. I had been planning on creeping in there after they left, to dream about the layout of shelves etc. As disappointments go, this is pretty far down on the list so I’m not going to complain.

What my impatient desire to see inside it says to me is that I have, in a way, forgotten that there’ll be plenty of time later to be inside it. It’s a funny thing, magicking a building out of nothing – you get so caught up in the planning and process that you forget the reality of it – that one day (fairly soon!) they’ll tidy up and leave, and I’ll have whole new routine – walking out there of a morning to sit in a pool of sunshine and weave away the hours.

And a new routine is needed. These past grey winter weeks I’ve been very excited about the process of planning projects, but not so great on the follow-through. Kind of like, well, my feelings about the building going up out back. The planning has been terrific, but the reality of it means work.

Linen warp, wound on the reel. One of my favorite parts of the process – out of chaos comes order and beauty

It’s easy enough to feel like you’re doing something when you’re planning – researching, reading, winding warps…. These are the recent ones; busy work because I’ve been reluctant to get my arse on the weave bench and just do it. The weather isn’t helping, and I had a touch of the flu, and I just haven’t been dedicated. The current weave room is crowded and not entirely conducive to actually spending time in it, and the human brain is capable of a multitude of excuses.

But I think that we all go through dry spells, right? Times when we spend more time thinking about what we’ll do than actually doing it? I’ve struggled with this the past few weeks and have come to realize that it’s all actually part of the process. We aren’t machines – we need to take time to dream and plan, to make mistakes (cut off warps that just don’t do it for us, to flip through one draft after another, and find none that speak to you). This is fairly fertile ground – it’s a way to refocus, to experiment, and to visualize the things we make – be they scarves or tea towels, or studios.

We can’t beat ourselves up because we aren’t producing all the time. We need downtime to figure out what we’ll produce; to think and dream and visualize. We tend not to prioritize this part of it, because we live in a culture that privileges busy over calm. We can’t fit this part of the process into the interstices – we need to allow it, and use it, and wait until we feel that spark again, right?

So maybe it’s not a dry spell, but a fertile moment. A moment when we germinate ideas and our sense of what our practice is. In the Spring (soon to come) these seeds sown now will begin to sprout and grow. Like this idea that became a hole in the ground, then became a studio, good things come from these times when we are quiet and thoughtful.

I dragged my long-suffering husband through IKEA this past week, looking for storage solutions for the studio. I don’t want to buy anything until I can stand in the space and think about it, until I have exact measurements and a plan, so all I wanted to do was to look and touch things to help with the planning. He trudged, dead-eyed, through the store, while I learned this sort of thing is best done alone, or with a like-minded girlfriend. I have narrowed it down, though, so even though it caused him some distress, I have a better idea of what I’m going to do inside.

“Billy” bookcases with these lovely cubbies, as opposed to long shelves. Perfect for sorting fibre

“Gnedby” – I assume they’re actually meant for CD storage, but will be perfect for 8/2 cottons

I’ve settled on a mixture of “Billy” bookcases with “Gnedby” sections for the smaller 8/2 cotton. The ceilings of the studio are 10 ft high, so there will be room for Billy extensions. Billy can be installed either with or without glass doors, so some of it will have doors – the sections closest to the window with southern exposure, and those in which I’ll be storing inventory.

So, as with my weaving practice, the studio build also requires some quiet moments in which to plan the final products. It’s not about producing, but about producing well after contemplation and planning.

A Studio is Born

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I’ve been weaving since the Fall of 2013. As with most weavers, the looms started to fill the place pretty quickly. This craft does not have a small footprint, and the tools of the trade can be fairly unwieldy.

IMG_4253I remember buying my first loom. I got it online, used, and I knew absolutely nothing about weaving or looms except that I really wanted to do it. The previous loom owner actually delivered it to my house and reassembled it for me, in my front sunroom (thank you, patient and harried loom man, for doing that!). For a month or two before I took some lessons with a lovely teacher, I would just go in there and look at it, and take in the loom-flavoured air – a mix of wood, cloth, dust, and promise.

I moved my desk into another room, and figured that I still had lots of space. Over the years, that room has been completely transformed. I took out the couch, the chair, the books. In went another loom, built-in shelves for fibre and tools, benches and boxes for fibre that wouldn’t fit on the shelves. It’s a beautiful room – about 11’x13, with two walls of windows. It also has three doors, wonky heat, and is a sun trap in the warmer months.

It’s also crowded.3D6530DD-8033-4B30-8491-A3DCB9658A7D

I have to move a loom to get to my fibre, move it back to get to the other loom. My warping reel is folded and in front of a shelf, and I have to move it to access my sewing machine. Then I have to take the machine out to the dining room to actually use it. It’s a drag, and it makes me a less efficient weaver.

So yeah, it’s hard to work in there. I know it’s already a massively privileged space, but I am lucky enough to be able to look for solutions to make it better. I have for most of my life,  fit whatever I did into the spaces I had. It wasn’t always a good fit, and there’s been a lot of making do over the years – a Harry Potter office-under-the-stairs, looms spread around 3 rooms, home offices with kids nearby, etc. A life lived with buckshee solutions is not a solution forever.

So that’s the problem.

The solution? Build a studio in the back garden. Have you ever visualized something you wanted, and then made it happen? A big ask like this seemed ridiculous, but I thought about it for years, made a Pinterest board , and dreamed. Then one day it occurred to us that we could build one and oddly, after that it was simple(ish). I think that making an imaginary future-studio a part of my headspace finally opened up the opportunity to bring it to life.

I spend a fair amount of time looking online for pictures/blogs about workspaces. I’m kind of fascinated by the areas other people use to make their art. There’s something so beguiling about dedicated spaces.  When I started this whole thing, I had a lot of ideas, a lot of misconceptions, and absolutely no idea at all what I was doing.  I looked online, and never really found what I wanted – a blog about the steps involved in making a dedicated space, from start to finish. Pictures about the things that matter to me – storage solutions, lighting, space management. Even the building process itself is mystifying to me.

So, I”ll demystify some of it, here.

We’re in the very early days – they start on Monday with the machines that will remove the current garden shed and start to dig a big hole for the foundation. That is not, however, the start. As with weaving, the process of setting up takes quite a while! We started this process in October – 4 months ago – and it has taken that long to muddle our way to this point. We ended up working with a terrific local company, Bentley Built Homes, and they have helped to shape all of my ideas into something concrete.

Over the next several months I’ll keep you filled in on what’s happening here with Berwick Weaving Co.’s new digs. Once it’s open, it’ll be so nice to have people drop in for a studio tour, or lessons (or even just a coffee, if you notify me first). I’m so excited about this – making a dedicated space that is quiet, peaceful, organized. Making a space that is uncluttered, airy, and light-filled.

This process has made me think about my process – what I want from my weaving practice, how I want to move forward, and why I’m doing it. The construction process will probably disrupt some of my work, but it’s also going to focus it, I think. This year, I’ve decided that I’m going to be sole instructor and student of my own impromptu weaving school – there are things I want to learn to do better, processes that I haven’t tried or that I couldn’t try because of other commitments, space constraints, a cluttered mind.

Pop back in for occasional updates. I’ll leave you with this tantalizing view of the plans.

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