Friendly weavers

This is a jacket that I made about 25 years ago for my older daughter. I wove the material, cut the pattern, and sewed it on the sewing machine. Chinese frogs for closers and a silver satin lining.

I remembered it for the first time in a long time when I went to a weavers' guild meeting today. I was walking down the hall of the library, on my way to my car, when I saw a sign that said "Illinois Prairie Weavers" and heard women laughing. Even though I'd intended to do nothing today, I ended up wandering in. And because there is something very welcoming about women who make things, I, usually shy of being a stranger in a group, ended up staying for the meeting and a lecture by Daryl Lancaster from Handwoven Magazine.

Sometimes I'm convinced that everything is yoga.

Lancaster talked about focusing on the process, not the product: how, if you set out with one goal, you'll fail to see any other possibilities that might be out there; how she weaves when she feels like weaving and sews when she feels like sewing and writes when she feels like writing, or, in other words, follows her intuition, instead of some sort of rigid schedule of How and When to do things.

This might not sound revolutionary to a knitter, or even to most weavers, but when Lancaster starts a project on her loom, she doesn't have a set idea of what she's going to make. Instead, she weaves fabric, yardage that she places on a shelf. The fabric sits there until the day when she finds a pattern that is right for it. The best example was this coat, called Evolution: the lining is a piece of fabric that she made years ago in a class for her fine arts degree. Lancaster dissed the polyester fabric she'd chosen and the funky silk-screen design of two-headed fantastical monsters. But it works perfectly with this pale green and bronze twill pattern; it was just waiting for the right home.

Lancaster reminded me a lot of listening to Sally Melville talk about creativity. She also talks about listening to the material, letting the sweater become what it was meant to be.

My favorite comment by Lancaster: the more body surface that we have, the more opportunity to embellish. She is so glass-is-half-full that she presents her experience of having breast cancer as a chance for new hair, new wardrobe, new body parts. Many of us, she said, have more than one body in a lifetime. We have the first body from before we were sick and the second body from afterwards. But it is just as important to love this new body as it was to love the old.

And this was the most yoga-part of all, because just the other night I was listening to Matthew Sanford, a yoga teacher who is a paraplegic, say the very same thing while being interviewed on Speaking of Faith.

Lancaster passed lots and lots of swatches and garments and patterns around, because weavers, she said, are touchy-feely people and like lots of hands-on examples. And each time that I took a swatch or jacket to look at, I forgot which direction it was supposed to go next. Listening to Lancaster, taking in all the color, touching the fabrics, I kept handing the stuff to the guy in front of me, who would smile, then point out that he'd already seen whatever it was. After a while he just took the piece from me, and then sent it towards its proper path through the room.

I'm drunk with color, I told him. He smiled again, clearly understanding how this can happen to someone who likes to play with fiber and yarns.