Nothing Is Ever Wasted.

It's what I tell people, when they say, that didn't work out, or, I don't know why I wasted my time doing x, or some variant thereof.  No experience is ever wasted.  At some point, you will use it, even if it isn't directly.  So, when I found this very small silk piece and thought, is this actually worth working on, that should have been the thought that went through my head.  I'm ashamed to say it wasn't.  I very nearly put it in the bin.

Admittedly it doesn't look terribly prepossessing.  Habotai silk, hand dyed, tiny slivers of pale blue tissue paper that I coloured somehow, long stitches with knots either end... whilst it looks better in 'real life', it certainly needs a good iron.  It's one of those sketches, I think, that I've been talking about over the past while.  And it's so small, and so delicately coloured, that additional work won't make it into a silk purse, as opposed to the proverbial sow's ear...  And yet...  So I put it aside, and have been glancing at it for at least a week.  I'm a great believer in putting time into a process, particularly when there seems to be nowhere left to go.

And here's the upshot of that invested time.  I have quite a few strips of Lutradur XL, which I want to turn into textile books, but with no place to start, I've been avoiding them.  Perhaps this piece is the start.  It might not be in this current incarnation, certainly, but scaling it down into a repeating motif over a book would bring out the best of its delicate nature.  I have more of that thread, though not of the tissue...but I could recreate that, if I felt it was necessary.  Now, all I have to do is get on with it. A way in, at last.

I'm sure you've heard me say 'trust the process', more than once.  I just want to add something to that.  Add time into that process, when all seems lost.  Let your unconscious work out what to do.  It always knows.