When the student is ready...

...the teacher will appear.”

It’s a pretty famous Buddhist saying. And it just became real for me.

When I posted my 2010 wannas, one of the things I mentioned was that I wanted to learn new weaving techniques. And that I’d joined a Su Butler’s napkin exchange as one concrete strategy to help me do so. I’d already told Su that block weaves was one of the options for things that I’d like to try.

I hadn’t done any block weaving before. The last few times I’d looked at that chapter in Deborah Chandler’s Learning To Weave book, she may as well have been speaking Zubulian — I didn’t understand anything she was trying to tell me.

At the February Southern Tier Fiber Arts Guild meeting, I asked a woman if she had a good handle on block theory, figuring I could get the concept if someone was telling me vs. reading a book. Unfortunately, she didn’t.

A few days later I got the new issue of Handwoven, and there were designs in there that were similar to what I had in mind for the napkins. So I got out my graph paper and started drawing, thinking that was the place to start.

Hah! I couldn’t even replicate the design in the magazine, much less create one of my own! And I sure wasn’t any closer to understanding what the heck I was doing.

So I pulled out Chandler’s book again. I started reading. Still looked like Zubulian to me.

Then all of a sudden something clicked and those foreign characters start to turn into English! I went back to the graph paper again, and could actually draw something that made sense! And I understood that each of those graph paper squares represent 4 threaded heddles and 4 throws of the shuttle, and how to plan all that detail.

Amazingly, within about 24 hours, I got an email hawking a new book – delivered electronically in PDF format – all about weavin block theory.

I haven’t yet figured out how many threads I’ll need in the napkins, so haven’t begun to do the final planning yet, but I KNOW I can design what I want. Even more surprising to me, I know that there’s at least an 85% chance that the design in my head can be woven on my beloved four-harness counterbalance loom.

Sometimes life is sweet. I try to really appreciate it when it is.

February 12th, 2011