Weaving Diary

It all started when I was given a home loom in a class.

It was a class that explored programming and interdisciplinary collaboration. We were supposed to be able to use the large loom in campus to learn how textile patterns are designed and made. But due to the COVID-19 situation, we couldn't get on campus and our instructor purchased us a small loom in a size that we could set up on our desk. We didn’t have to return it until the end of the semester. It was too much fun. After I first started weaving following the video tutorial, I knew that I would love this. The soft, cozy wool, the looping motion, the beautiful, charming textures ...... it was all very relaxing to me, almost like a kind of therapy.

So I started exploring more possibilities on the loom. From a young age, I was considered a child who was not careful and patient enough. My teachers always said I could do better, but I just wasn't attentive enough. I always felt very inferior about this. I could see it in the crafts. I didn't know why I came out rougher than the other kids, even though the steps and procedures were exactly the same. It seemed that if I wanted to achieve the same result, I always had to spend more attention and effort than the other kids, which made crafts less fun. When I was faced with this home loom, I thought to myself, "I have to do something for myself this time. Don't care how well it turns out, whether it will be appreciated by others, just do something for the sake of taking care of myself at this particular time.”

So I started stumbling through my weaving studies, realizing that I didn't like to follow tutorials, I was just bent on figuring out how to get the wool to form different textures and patterns on the loom in my own way. As a result I made some odd things that I guess were a little bit removed from what the general sense by good textiles. But I had fun with it. I realized that it dealt well with my self-loathing. I allowed these strange pieces to exist, just as I allowed my clumsy self, who was always making mistakes, to exist.

Later in the counseling, the counselor told me that I might have mild ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). That's why I always need more energy to focus and stay patient and why I sometimes make careless mistakes. It occurred to me that, all of these mistakes are because I'm not quite the general kind of human being, don’t mean I'm in any kind of moral issues. It's ok. Maybe weaving is indeed a good way to get me to face myself.

Because of some long-standing problems, my emotions are not stable. I’m not very good at identifying and dealing with my feelings, so the counselor suggested that I keep track of my emotions, meditate, and try to analyze my feelings every day. It was really hard for me to carve out such a time for myself to do it in my daily schedule, and I couldn’t sit still without doing anything and just face my inner self. So I have not been able to complete this task assigned by the counselor. One day it occurred to me that maybe I could combine the emotion journaling and weaving together? These two things had a subtle commonality and I realized I could use weaving to keep track of my diaries.

It was a non-verbal record that greatly reduced the mental load of organizing words and recalling events. I have quite interesting Synesthesia, so different events and feelings have unique colors and textures in my mind, and they are join together in an abstract way to make up each day of my life. I think it is perfect for textile patterns. Although weaving doesn't fully represent all of this abstract Synesthesia scene, it helps me to analyze and record these feelings to a great extent, and when I look back, I can know what my emotional state was at the time and how these things affected me, helping to heal my emotional issues.

I happened to have a habit of collecting all kinds of wool balls at second-hand craft stores, and I bought a lot of small wool balls and trimmings at low prices, which gave me a pretty rich source of material for my dairy. I quickly became fascinated with the weaving diaries. You can see the colors and materials build up on the loom and turn into magical entities, and it helps me pour out a little bit of what's in my mind. The weaving repetition also allowed me to relax myself into a meditative state, providing a unique time of healing each day. Weaving diary is perfect for me.

In the process of weaving, I realized that fabric is a material that is very intimate with humans. Humans are always in intimate contact with fabric, and fabric has the best chance of retaining traces of humans. Just like I use weaving to keep a diary, in a sense, I preserve my own traces in this way. I am being recorded by the fabric in the process of weaving in a way that I may not even be aware of, the material is unconsciously recording my movements and body states at the time. I think I am the subject in the recording process, while I may be the object being recorded ...... This idea gives me an almost reverential value for the fabric I am weaving with my own hands. As you are about to see in the picture, this is a diary from 02.24-03.10 2021. More precisely, this is a copy of me from 02.24, 2021-03.10, 2021.