Attacking Inspiration

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
--Jack London via Linda Ligon

I’m working on a book of rigid heddle patterns, ideas, and designs which Interweave Press will publish in 2010. I’ve set mini deadlines for myself so I can keep on track. It’s the only way I can manage a big project like this—which means I can’t sit around starring at my loom for too long. I have to keep working until an idea presents itself. I think the words of Jack London pretty much sums up how I’m feeling these days.

Trip to Oaxaca:bamboo fence

Leaving the familiar for the unfamiliar has a way of heightening your senses and allowing you to see things in new ways. That’s one of the wonderful things about travels, especially if they take you far away from the every day.
Yesterday I arrived with my husband Barry and friends to the hills of Oaxaca, and today we oriented ourselves to our little village. We lunched outside beside a pond where the air was perfect and the Modelo beer refreshing, and on the walk back home bought some very good mescal from the back of a pick-up truck. We spied the internet café where I’ll make this post and watched a man unload firewood from his burro just outside our gate. We reflected on the contrast of the high tec just steps away from life lived seemingly unchanged for centuries.
Along the dusty narrow streets lined on either side with high adobe walls and fences, many woven bamboo ones like this one made practical use of local materials.

A plaited basket and some encouragement

You can use just about any pliable material to weave baskets. Here, I've folded strips of funny papers for a colorful low-cost, recycled-materials vessel. This basket appears in my book Time to Weave where I've given instructions on how to weave plaited baskets.

As creators, I think we sometimes get stymied by fear: we're not good enough, we think we don't have any ideas, we don't know if our designs will work... I want to encourage you to just keep going, try to push self-doubt away. The only way to improve and get to the place you want to go is to keep working. I try to keep this Maslow quote in mind when I feel uncertain.

“If you are afraid of making (a) crazy mistake, then you’ll never get any of the bright ideas either.”
-A.H. Maslow