I have a confession. The thought of doing saline lavage of my sinus cavities kind of creeped me out. Which is a bit puzzling to me because as a kid, I knew that my father did this routinely. Frankly it creeped me out then; it creeped me out as an adult. Why? Who knows. I was just very resistant to the thought of doing this.
Unfortunately the environmental allergies I am plaged with were literally kicking my butt and the naturopath highly – yay, even strongly – urged me to consider it. To sweeten the deal he had some samples that I could try and if I couldn’t get over my aversion, he told me to just throw the container and sample sachets away.
So I came home with them, where they balefully stared at me all of yesterday and this morning until I finally opened the package and read through the instructions.
Huh. That was it? Didn’t sound too bad. Girding my loins, I prepared the squeeze bottle and tried it.
Well, I’m not a huge fan – it’s not something I’m going to look forward to to make my day but I am actually feeling a little better, certainly I’m breathing better, and that can’t be bad, right?
So I started thinking about all those years I had been creeped out about doing this and how just having the right equipment and clear concise instructions made it possible to overcome my aversion and banish the boogeyman to allow myself to do this. And how many weavers have their own personal weaving boogeymen.
One of the big ones is, of course, getting the loom dressed. I can’t help think that if they just had the right approach (for them) it would all go so much more smoothly. But we seem to get caught up in “that’s the way I was taught so I’ll continue to do it this way rather than learn a different method”.
Another one is advancing the warp. So often I see weavers who are weaving much too close to the reed. They don’t want to stop and advance when if they would just force themselves to stop and do that they would have much better cloth – fewer broken selvedges, fewer loops, fewer inconsistencies in beat.
One that really puzzles me is winding bobbins overfull because they don’t want to have overlaps of the weft. Especially stick shuttles – they wind and wind and wind until they have shuttles that are larger than the shed their loom provides which means they are causing needless abrasion shoving the overfull shuttle through. And all in the name of not wanting to have a weft join/overlap.
In the end, we all have to face our boogeymen and banish them. Our lives will be better for it.
Currently reading Troubled Bones by Jeri Westerson