The Next Stage

July was a difficult month. This was partly because of my San Francisco-flavored seasonal depression, brought on by cold grey weather for weeks at a time. It was also partly because of some big problems with the weaving.

Tension issues and threads trapped in the beam forced me to weave at half speed with super-heightened alertness and caused me to stop often. This is a tiring way to weave, so my days were shorter. Then, a production planning miscalculation lulled me into thinking this rate was OK and kept me from pushing harder. Oops.

The big lesson here is not to wind beams with a fever! A few hours gained can cause weeks of pain later.

It's been over three months of difficult weaving. Each beam has been harder than the last. It seems like every day I learn to identify and keep track of another thing that can go wrong. The whole time I've been telling myself "it can't stay this hard forever." Thank goodness that's actually true.

In the last two days things have completely turned around. The problems on the beam ended. All my practice with real problems means that now I'm fast and accurate when there aren't problems! I also figured out that I will be able to pay September rent on time (barely) and I got a cheap ride to Wolf Creek.

As if that weren't enough, I also got some clarification on the future of my weaving contract. I weave faster than the cloth sells, so Annie is stockpiling it for a while. She can't afford to do that forever, so by next year I need to have another gig.

She has offered to help me by working out a deal to sell my own line of products in her booth at various shows. I'll also be working in her booth sometimes, putting me in front of customers to get feedback on my designs. Sweet!

So now I have a list of goals for my time at Wolf Creek:
- find my place within the community that's on the land now
- get caught up on my weaving contract
- design and produce my own line of products for the holiday season
- work with Cobb to repair his yurt
- design a yurt of my own
- craft a proposal for a longterm Wolf Creek stay

I think that's quite enough to accomplish in just two months. I'm excited for a chance to get out of the city for a while. It's easy to arrive in the unstructured environment of a spiritual retreat center and lose track of why you're there. That's not really an option for me this time. It's going to be amazing.