A blissful beach holiday with no phones or internet.
Days of walking and watching, fishing and resting.
I filmed this yesterday afternoon because it felt like a bit of milestone. In steaming hot weather, with a pedestal fan blowing on us, my 9 year old, set up and weaving mostly independently on the rigid heddle loom while I was weaving at the floor loom. It’s funny how things can happen so naturally and then you suddenly realise you’re living a dream moment. I posted it on Youtube, thinking it would probably be largely overlooked as viewers seem to prefer my instructional videos to anything else.
But what a response! Quite a few commented that the video had brought tears to their eyes, for different reasons. For one subscriber, it was that her parents had never invested the time in her that she craved. For another, the video brought back wonderful memories of her own creative homeschooled upbringing. Many commented on the simple beauty of the video.
Wow, was I surprised. And so pleased. It reminds me that I am so blessed to be able to share with others in this way. It encourages me that, even if I feel like I don’t do a good enough job as a parent, others think I do. And it gives me joy, that God has much work for us to do, if only we will co-operate, love and trust.
I hope you are all having a most blessed week, until next time š
But, I changed my mind and decided I needed it for the shawl instead! Plenty of time and unwinding later, I was ready to wind a shawl warp instead. The warp went onto the loom like a dream, in fact tencel itself is rather dreamy.
The threading is the part that takes me the longest and I’m hoping my speed will increase eventually. After pusing myself to work late one night, I finally had the reed sleyed and the warp tied on. I was ready to weave!
Except I wasn’t.
I had put the reed and beater on backwards. Yes, I actually did that! Untie the warp, unsley the reed, remove it, turn it around, re-sley the reed, re-tie the warp and presto, I really was ready to weave this time.
I chose another hand dyed tencel that I thought would contrast well and began. Uh oh. The tencel I had chosen for the weft was variegated. The pattern got lost in the busy-ness of the warp. I realised this was a possibility when I chose it as weft but decided to chance it anyway. It took me a couple of inches of weaving to realise it wasn’t going to work. Enter un-weaving (not nearly as fun as weaving, trust me!)
So…. (this is starting to read a bit like a drama and it sure as heck started to feel like one!) I chose a lovely mercerised cotton in Peacock as the weft and away I went. Ah, much better.
Then I realised. Some selvedge warp threads had broken and fallen away from the reed. When had that happened? I had no idea, but it was definitely a problem! My selvedge on that side was looking quite un-perfect.
Fortunately this was a fairly quick fix and I was back into the weaving. I’m about a quarter of the way through now, I wonder what other treats and surprises the next three quarters has in store for me!
The girls were reluctant to have a go – I think they are too used to drawing what they want rather than within a theme. It’s a great way to challenge your drawing skills and expand though, so I told the girls that I intended to draw a picture and so they could too. It worked!
Towards Christmas and in the holidays afterwards it started to dawn on me. Each day would start with that overwhelmed feeling, knowing I would be chasing my tail until I fell into bed that night. You would think after 12 years of doing this, I would have systems in place, but life is ever changing as people grow and every year is different to the last. I started thinking – does it have to be this way? What positive changes could I make to avoid another year in this state?
Well, a few years ago, I decided that I hated planning. I felt that if I spent the best part of my day educating the children, why should I spend my precious evenings planning for the next day? So I did away with all planning and I think that is where things started to go wrong, though at the time I felt I was freeing myself of a great burden. I think also over this time period, the kids, whether consciously or sub consciously, began to lost confidence in me. And I definitely began to lose confidence in me!
But now I was ready to give planning another try – not in the way that I used to. At the start of this year, I bought a planner from Homeschooling Downunder and printed out the pages I felt would be relevant. I bought colour coded folders and boxes for each child.
Just over a year ago I uploaded a couple of weaving videos to Youtube. I was just interested in sharing, considering I don’t actually know any real life weavers, I suppose I was welling up with excitement at all my weaving discoveries. And sharing is fun!
So, what happened? Well, very unexpectedly, the videos were well received. People started subscribing to my channel and talking about them in Facebook weaving groups. And they’re still subscribing and talking!
All of the enthusiasm and positive feedback inspired me to make more videos. The rest, as they say, is history!
I now have two Youtube channels. One is free to watch, the other is on a paid subscription basis. I started the paid channel because many (most) of my videos take hours in the planning, filming, editing and instructing. Plus the cost of all the materials. I have made the channel affordable and aim to have a huge library of videos available to subscribers, as well as exciting projects, techniques and the occasional giveaway. It’s the place that I’m happy to give away my weaving secrets š I’m really pleased that many have joined this new channel and hope that it grows over the next year.
Growing the dream.
All of the above has allowed me to hope a little more that my dreams may be possible. I may eventually be able to move past the “pocket money” stage of online teaching into the “actual income” stage. I may be able to start teaching real life classes.
And ultimately, one day, I may be able to have my own teaching studio. Big ask, I know!
in 2017 I’ll be putting a lot of work into my paid channel. Doing videos for both channels this year has been rewarding in many ways, but in addition to my homeschooling commitments I have found myself a little burnt out and suffering some niggly health conditions at this end of the year. I feel I spent way too much precious time sitting at the computer! So, the paid channel will be my main focus next year.
If you haven’t seen my channels yet, you can find the free one here and the paid channel here.
I hope you had a most blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!
I’ll try to make it here more often, really I will…
