I am a tapestry weaver. I spend the majority of my time weaving, and I hope to make the majority of my living from selling my art. I am also, currently, feeling uninspired and burnt out. This happens on a regular basis, and its arrival can be counted on at this time of year.
Creativity comes and goes in cycles, just like everything else in life. But when creativity is tied so closely with livelihood and identity, times when there is a lack of ideas for what to make next and lack of motivation to do it are always disconcerting.
What I like to do when I lack direction and inspiration—besides going for walks, writing morning pages in my notebook, and panicking that I’ll never make anything good again—is organize my yarn.
For a year and a half, I’ve lived in a large studio apartment with built in bookshelves spanning an entire side of the room. One side houses my books, knick-knacks, and small art pieces, while the other houses my ever-expanding yarn stash. The yarn wall often feels like a living thing, an explosion of color, a work of art in its own right. It’s a weaver’s dream.
This time of year the shelves are always a huge mess, reflecting the months of feverish making. Yarn literally spills onto the floor and often stays there. I am apparently too burnt out from holiday sales and marketing my work for my online shop to bother picking it up. I spend so much of October and November planning what to make for the busiest shopping months of the year, weaving small, gift-able items to sell at markets, and shouting into the void of Instagram that these items exist and are for sale that when it’s all over, it leaves a tangle of fibers and a void of creative energy.
Spending a few hours at the end of the year organizing my yarn inevitably reminds me of what I want: to just weave. That even if I didn’t make a cent from it, I would still want to be surrounded by this mess of yarn scraps, shuttle sticks, unsold weavings, and looms in various sizes. I remember yarn I forgot I had, and as I organize it by color gradient on the shelves, the fog clears and I can once again imagine landscapes and moonscapes and weird patterns I could make with it.
“Organizing the yarn” could also be cleaning the writing desk, cleaning the paint brushes, purging the clutter, cleaning up computer files; depending on what you do and where you’re feeling stuck. Organizing the yarn just means showing up, spending time with the raw materials at your disposal without any expectation of producing anything. And usually what comes from this process is quiet renewal and maybe, sometimes, something new and exciting.
Last year it was a new diamond-style pattern (pictured below) that was born out of wanting to use up small amounts of leftover yarn. This year remains to be seen.
But the act of touching wool and cataloging color is an act of trust. That if I show up in some capacity—even if it’s not yet to sit down and weave—that I am making myself available to inspiration, should it choose to come.
If you’re curious, check out my woven work: www.northwoven.com.
So relatable! I love imagining you organizing that large yarn wall and ideas popping!