Weaving Our Lives: Lessons From the Loom

Weaver and author Paula Chaffee Scardamalia

Many of the Greek myths contain stories about mortals who dare to claim not only the power, but also the perfection of the gods. Remember the story about the weaving contest between Athena and Arachne? Arachne made Athena mad not just because she claimed to be a better weaver, i.e. perfect, but because the story she illustrated with her weaving showed Zeus, Athena’s father, in his less-than-perfect love affairs. Athena tore the perfect weaving to shreds and Arachne hung herself. Athena, in an act of mercy, changed the rope into a web and Arachne into a spider. So, Arachne would continue to weave but would no longer be a threat to Athena’s eminence.

 

In other cultures, perfection is reserved to the gods as well. The Navaho, for instance, when weaving a rug, deliberately weave a thread into the rug that looks like a mistake. That “mistake” keeps the rug from being perfect and serves as a path for Spirit to enter.

 

As women, if we accept our mistakes and failures as a path for Spirit to enter then we might take more risks in our work and in our lives. We could stop worrying about perfection and focus on experiencing life. As a weaver, the ideal of perfection will sabotage my choice of colors, my pattern ideas, and slow down my production if I let it. Mistakes are an inevitable part of being an artist, a mother, a woman. How we respond to mistakes makes the difference between an integrated or tattered fabric…

 

After I dress my loom with a new warp, before I weave the first weft, I have to weave in a waste yarn in order to evenly space the warp threads at the beginning of the fabric. Sometimes this is a fine thread to create a selvage. Sometimes if I am filling space in warp that will later be fringe, I use bias tape or even toilet paper. This filler is removed later during the finishing process.

 

The weaving of early adulthood, if we are lucky and have the support and guidance of family and friends, is like that filler. Given the heady experience of making our own choices about what to do after high school, who to date, what job to take, and whether or not to drink ourselves into a stupor at a party, it is not unusual to make mistakes. Some of those mistakes will be like filler at the beginning of the warp—taking up space to help the warp even out so that the weft of the weaving will go smoothly from thereon. Easily removable, yet not really part of the fabric. Some mistakes can be unwoven and rewoven.

 

Admitting mistakes is a challenge for all of us, requiring that we break old behaviors and ingrained responses. Unfortunately, though we may gather the courage to admit a mistake, sometimes mistakes cannot be unwoven but instead, must become part of the fabric of our lives. The ability to forgive ourselves is strongly tested. Life can change in a moment, and though we often wish for the opportunity to go back, to unweave, often we have only the choice to move forward, to keep weaving. We must fight our way through all the “if onlys,” to a place where we stand in the present moment and answer “What next?”