Sunday, November 7, 2010

New Crazy Shawls


I just finished weaving three new shawls using thicker chenille yarns than I usually use and several novelty yarns. I started out wanting to weave something outrageous, but the original plan didn't work out. Am filing away that particular inspiration for a future project. It needs to gestate a while.

I don't have cable television, so until this week, I hadn't seen programs such as Project Runway. For fun, I rented Season 1 via Netflix. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the designers develop their concepts to meet the parameters of the various creative challenges. I was also thrown into a wave of nostalgia when I saw it was filmed at Parsons School of Design. Several of my NYC friends attended Parsons back in the 1960s when I lived there while I attended the Laboratory Institute of Fashion Merchandising -- all several lives ago.

Even through my life has taken me on many varied journeys from magazine publisher, journalist, farmer/rancher's wife, mother, English professor, I guess the fashion designing germ is still at work at a base level in my psyche worming its way out at my looms. I feel like I'm behind, however. The last 40 years haven't been wasted, but I've been distracted from some kinds of creative endeavors. Creativity builds upon itself, grows, so we'll see how far I can get on this particular resurrected life journey at my silly age . . .