what you plant has a way of growing

we had a bit of rain of late and now the weather is warm, so the garden is going crazy. the zucchini is abundant, as are cucumbers in the greenhouse and the tomatoes are loving this warm weather and starting to come on. my broad beans are finished and i only had a few purple (green) beans. my spinach has bolted. the indigo is ready to play with (maybe this weekend) and i'm picking the first real bouquets of dahlias this weekend. i've decided i love zinnias (they're now in my top five with lilacs, peonies, ranunculus and dahlias). i have one huge white pumpkin (and a few small ones). i'm going to have a good supply of hokkaido squash, which i have to find a way to store and keep into the autumn. i'm drying herbs and freezing them down to cubes (with olive oil, i'm looking at you, basil) so that next winter future me will thank present me. but most of all, i'm enjoying hanging out there at the end of my days, watching my lovely indian running ducks, who are so quirky and sweet and shy but curious and rather talkative and social despite their shyness. 

all of this contentment in the garden coincides with contentment at work. i've recently had an enthusiastic go-ahead on two things that i proposed and i'm feeling very positive about being given time and space to just make cool shit. that's all i really want to do. i don't want to be anyone's boss, or get a big promotion. i just want to work with great people and make things i can be proud of, while having a bit of fun. and i'm in the position to do that now, due to the seeds i've planted. what a great feeling! maybe we really do reap what we sow. how did it take me so long to learn that?

lessons learned at the loom

these photos represent three months of work. at the end of july, i began winding a warp in linen. i had chosen what are arguably swedish colors - two shades of blue, yellow and white. the stripes came out rather organically, i would listen to my intuition and then switch colors, creating some stripes wide and some thin, as the mood struck. we decided to call it julie's crazy stripes. 

as you may know, i weave at a little museum about 30km away from home. it's one of those places that have a kind of magic that's hard to explain. you just have to feel it. and you can feel it instantly when you step out of the car. you feel your shoulders relax and you breathe more deeply. 

i haven't done the project alone. the weaving group meets every wednesday and i can't always get there, thanks to being busy at work, so another person wound the warp onto the loom and threaded it through the heddles and prepared it. i got to do a little bit of this, so i learned about it as well, but it was mostly done by one of the other sweet old ladies.

the loom is from 1913 and i like to sit there and imagine all of the cloth that has been created on it. but it also means that she is a bit of a temperamental old thing and she needs getting used to. and yes, i think she's a she. though i'm not sure i can explain why. i just get a feminine impression when i sit at her. and lest you think all looms must be female, the one i wove my rag rugs on is definitely a boy. a young boy. 

there were multiple frustrations, because someone else set it up in my absence, it wasn't until i sat down and had woven 5-6cm that i discovered that there were a number of mistakes that needed to be fixed. that was frustrating and i'd be lying if i didn't admit that i had to take a deep breath and remind myself that i could just as easily have made the mistakes. threading 400+ thin threads through the heddles and the comb isn't an easy job and if you're interrupted, it's very easy to make a mistake.

but what you can't do is hide from that mistake. it shows itself very clearly and very quickly. a loom is an honest thing - it gives you what asked for and nothing more. so if you didn't set it up correctly, that will very quickly become evident. there's no fudging and no covering it up and just going on. mistakes are clear and obvious and it's best to just admit them and fix them before you move on. there's a life lesson in that, i'm sure. 

so we stopped, and we redid a whole lot. and i say we because i'm very grateful for the wise, experienced women at the museum, because they know how to fix such mistakes and they patiently show me how and help me. and i couldn't do any of it without them. and it's such a good lesson for me - asking for help. why is that so hard? why do we think we have to be perfect on the first try? why don't we give ourselves room to make mistakes and learn and grow? 

above all, this wise old loom teaches me patience. she's steady and predictable when you get to know her, but she doesn't hide anything - least of all my mistakes. she shows them to me clearly and she offers me the choice of living with them or undoing them and starting over. over the course of weaving these four linen tea towels, i have made both choices. i had a section of about 10-12cm that was so full of mistakes that i couldn't live with it. nor could i bear the idea of the time it would take to pull it all out. so i fixed what was wrong with the warp and then started anew. and i have that section of cloth and i'm going to make a pincushion or two of it, to remind me that even my mistakes can be useful. that feels like a powerful lesson. and i'm not even sure that i can fully appreciate it, but i'm going to try. 

elsewhere, there are small mistakes. a time or two when a single thread or two was a bit loose and so the thread got sent through on the wrong side with the shuttle. those i can live with. they can contribute to the charm of the piece. to show that it's handmade and that imperfections have their own beauty. that it was made by a fallible human and not a machine. 

and today, i finally dared to cut them apart. it feels like such an act of violence. i sewed a zigzag on the sewing machine on both sides along the places i was going to cut, so they wouldn't unravel and i wove a ribbon to serve as the straps for the towels. it was hard to cut that ribbon up as well. i spent so much time making sure every thread was right, that it felt like a violation to cut them up. but it also felt good. i sewed a hem on each end and i attached my handwoven ribbon. and it was satisfying. 

and now, they're soaking overnight in an enamel bowl of cold water. i will wash them tomorrow and that will bring them together into the soft, usable, absorbent tea towels they will become. and then i will let them dry and i will wrap them up and give them as gifts to two people special to me. and it will all have been worth three months of work and all of the lessons learned at the loom. 

the old man and the sea

i took these photos several years ago and stumbled onto them when i was perusing an old iPhoto library the other day. i don't think i ever used them in a blog post, or at least i didn't have any recollection of doing so. i can't decide which of them i like best.  i hadn't had my camera for very long back then and i'm sure i was using automatic settings, so i can't really explain the difference between the photos, other than that i must have moved a little bit and the camera decided on a different shutter speed in between the two shots. i can't decide whether i like the slightly overexposed one best or the darker one.

i can tell you, tho', that my photography has improved dramatically since then. it seems that practice does make perfect and taking a photo every day for nigh on five years means that you inevitably get better. in fact, i was looking through those photos from the early days and cringing a little bit. but we all have to start somewhere and we have to learn and perfect our techniques and slowly improve. all those photos i've taken have been steps on a journey and represent one of the longest sustained efforts i've ever put into anything (other than gathering academic degrees). i've come a long way, baby. and it will be interesting to see what kind of photos i'm making in another five years.

which of these photos do you like best? and why?

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speaking of photos:

really interesting article and series of photos of male affection

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speaking of the sea, the operation to right the costa concordia began today (live stream here).
here's a great piece on how they're going to do it.
they say due to hull damage/weakness, they've only got one shot at it.

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 interesting review of 1000 years of european history via an animated map.
it would appear it hasn't been easy to be poland.

in which she starts out pious and ends up her usual devious self

i'm learning - slowly, all too slowly - to let go of my expectations of other people. especially the small ones (both people and expectations). for example - if you were copying selected pages of a book that would give you an idea of what that book was about, you would find it natural to include the table of contents, right? apparently, that's an unrealistic expectation on my part. but i have realized that the level of frustration it causes me is COMPLETELY not worth the energy it takes. so i'm trying to let go of such expectations and their attendant sense of frustration. and on the odd occasion when i'm able to, i find it makes me feel lighter and generally makes my navigation through the world easier and much happier.

but it's hard. especially if the failure to meet my expectations makes the person who failed to meet them, in my head at least, seem less intelligent or perhaps downright stubborn. because those things aren't necessarily true. (tho' they are also not necessarily NOT true.)  but once i've decided someone is stupid or stubborn or unprofessional or all three, i pretty much write that person off and they have no chance with me again. this has not always been a good thing. so i'm trying to be less hasty in my judgements when people fail to meet my expectations.

the problem is that the we are FULL of expectations. it's how we navigate the world - cultural expectations, expectations towards what we consider politeness and fair treatment - our expectations guide our actions and behavior. it's so automatic that we don't even realize we have them. hence the frustration and disappointment when they're not met.

i do realize that this is all rather abstract. so here's the deal...i've recently been working with some people who i had professional expectations towards and i have been surprised several times when those expectations, especially of what i would consider a normal level of professionalism, were not met. i was surprised when i was asked to do something that i deemed contrary to my professional integrity. and in refusing to do this thing (it wasn't something illegal, or anything serious like that, it just felt unfair and unprofessional towards the client), i in turn disappointed the expectations of the person asking me to do it and it became a rather pissy vicious circle of disappointment. but i stood my ground because i felt my professionalism was at stake, as well as my sense of duty towards the client. and this wench person doesn't seem to be able to just let it go. she has actually said to me several times since how irritated she was that i maintained my professionalism instead of compromising and just doing what she asked - her argument being "we do that all time."  which frankly, isn't an argument at all. and made me lose respect for her even more, because she can't even put together a proper argument.

but i'm trying to take a deep breath, holding onto the feeling in the pit of my stomach that i did the right thing and just let go of it. being righteous about my sense of right and wrong isn't a good use of my energy either.

it makes it all much easier that i can clearly see a way to use her lack of professionalism to my advantage. mwahaha!