I have been accused of laziness all my life, first by my mother who had an insatiable need for help in dealing with six other small children, and then later by myself as I internalized high energy and accomplishment as goals of a worthy life. Unfortunately my energy levels have always been low to middling and my health issues lately have made the wide gap between intention and actual accomplishment very clear. Trying to keep up with the never-ending list of "shoulds" feels exhausting and, in the end, not possible. I feel like I have been running on a treadmill designed for some other more sparkling person which dooms me always to fall behind. Having had enough therapy to realize the futility of this makes me burrow more deeply into what I find important and consider anew the pursuits that have given me purpose and joy. That always leads back to textiles and tablecloths and the power of gathering, which still moves me deeply. Even in the midst of my greatest lethargy I want to make special places that embrace and enhance the connection between people. I still want to set the table even though the effort seems ever more Herculean.
Just lately a design for a winter tablecloth that I made several years ago but failed to bring to a finish, has been floating into my head. I was trying to come up with four square cloths that telegraphed the seasons in the most simple and essential geometric ways possible. Stripes for summer, polka dots for spring, squares for autumn and triangles for winter, done in appropriate colors to lay the base for any table set in that season. I started with winter because I thought it would be the most satisfying. Laying out the pattern on cotton was hard because keeping straight lines means drawing the pattern strictly on cloth that resists keeping straight, and then taping off every frigging triangle to keep the wayward wax contained in something like a regular pattern.
I went to my usual lengthy effort, waxed the pattern over many hours and several days and then dyed it. It turned out awful....a sort of beigey-blah that can result with natural dyes if you are not careful.
The wax broke so much that I didn't feel like I could just dye again without compromising the pattern. The prospect of re-waxing and re-dying was just too much and I gave up. I stashed it in my failures box and there it has languished, but now it is knocking on the fringes of my brain. Do I have enough oomph to go back and try again? Is the pattern worth the effort? I probably will never make a conscious decision, I will just go down and get it out or I won't. We'll see how insistently it continues knocking.