New Skills Are Exciting!

[Looks like a ruana!]

Today was an exciting day as I learned a new skill: sewing ruanas. Ordinarily I weave the cloth, cut it off the loom, fold it up and drive great batches of it to Lowell. If I see the final result before it's sold, it'll be months after I wove it.

This has led to a strange disconnection for me. Learning to sew ruanas bridges the gap in a big way. I can cut the cloth off the loom, stitch the edges, shrink it, cut it and sew it all in one day. It lets me remember how tight I was beating it, how thick the weft yarn was, etc. and see just how these factors affect the final garment. Overall, I think this skill will accelerate my learning to a great degree if I can make a habit of using it.

And then there's the plain exhiliration of it. I can hardly believe that I'm living my dream. I really, truly have the skill to take ordinary cones of thread and transform them into garments that people drape over themselves and feel glamorous. That is so cool!

Of course, it was slow going today. The first one felt like surgery as I interpreted written instructions and photos for the first time, having never seen the process in real life. I have this voice running in my head that can be overwhelming, "make sure the outsides face each other", "always end with the flat side of the seam to the outside", "mind the pattern placement when you're pleating", "don't stretch the cloth", "clip both threads immediately - snip, flip, snip", and so on. The more I do this, the more I'll be able to run on autopilot and really focus on the craftsmanship instead of the process.

By tomorrow night I will have sewn 8 ruanas and have another 4 woven. Maybe I'll take half of Friday to sew those 4 as well. If I'm that fast by Friday, that is. I do need at least half the day completely off.