Log Jam

Oct 28, 2020

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in Magic in the Water, Sunday Seminars, The Intentional Weaver

When working on a Big Project it can sometimes feel as though you are dealing with a log jam. There doesn’t seem to be any way to make progress, everything is a jumble. There doesn’t seem to be a way through – over or under, left or right.

But you keep working at it, one log at a time. Deal with this one. Move that one. Resolve this other one.

My life has been one log jam after another. Every warp seems to take on aspects of a jam – until it is free and clear.

Every design, twisted this way and that. Consider this thing and that. Choose this over that other.

Eventually? Eventually it flows again. It becomes smooth again.

It feels perilous at times. In the case of Magic, I was asking a pretty big price, but I had to in order to pay the bills. Would anyone be willing to pay what I was asking?

Initially I thought that the main audience for Magic would be guilds but in the end it was individuals who ante’d up the money and bought personal copies. One person bought two – one for herself, one to loan to trusted friends.

Over the years I’ve organized conferences – and dealt with more log jams. People wouldn’t answer questions, or posed them. Details had to be dealt with. Other people needed to be called in to help. Projects that could not be done by just one person so, many hands made light work.

After many years of juggling deadlines, marketing myself, I got tired. So I finally decided to step back (somewhat) from what I had been doing.

After publishing Magic I declared that there would never be another book. And yet…

Another log jam. Worrying away at this detail and that. I think it was version 13.7 that finally got handed over to a professional editor who took it into the final form. And dealt with all the technical questions of publishing.

I organized my ‘first’ conference in 1980. The second one was 1985, I think. Then chaired the ANWG conference here in 1995 AND installed the gallery exhibit – textiles by Jack Lenor Larson. Then 2019, ANWG again.

Each time, poking logs this way and that until the event flowed.

Now my goals are more modest. I have contacts. I have excellent guild members willing to pitch in and help shove logs this way and that. It made sense for me to set up the seminar series. The guild treasurer commented that doing this was just like organizing a small conference. She isn’t wrong.

But when you have a team you can trust? You can dig into that pile of logs, knowing that your co-workers have your back – and your front and side.

Fibre folk are a community in the best way possible. We share a love of fibre, in all its forms. We share an excitement about working with it, and seeing what other people are doing with it.

And so we come to the place and time when the seminar series will go public. Registration opens tonight at 7 pm for guild members (including associate members). You don’t have to belong to the guild to register but you need to wait for guild members to sign up first, and you’ll pay a slightly higher fee.

On a personal note, I have finally figured out my Zoom account (I hope!) and now that the series is about to flow, with other guild members taking over their part in the waltz, I need to pay attention to learning Zoom myself. I need to finish my Power Point presentation for my deadline – and test everything to make sure I can do what I *think* I need to do.

One log at a time.