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Exotica. 

When the Midlands Textile Forum decided on this title for an exhibition to be staged at the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham, (on from now until 30th September), I had to smile!  I could just imagine certain men of my acquaintance brightening up with the titivating thought of what they might see!!  But they would be disappointed.

Not in terms of the quality of work on show, but in the subject matter. 

Exotica refers to the plants that can be found at the Botanical Gardens which, although not large (15 acres), is perfectly formed!  Just like the exhibition.  22 works are shown by 17 artists in a long thin gallery with good lighting and plenty of space around the exhibits. 

Themes are good for exhibitions.  One study day at the Gardens led to different interpretations from each artist, and the range of textile techniques used, the different approaches, the different subject matter taken from the Gardens worked well together.

Themes are also good for individual artists developing their work.  I used to be a total scatterbrain, tempted by a myriad of techniques, a wealth of subject matter and influenced by everything.  (Some would say that I still am but I suspect they don’t know what I was like before!!!) 

For me, finding weaving was a turning point in my life.  From living the life of a musician, I found myself pulled to weaving.  It stimulated my brain cells, helped me to look at life with the eyes of a visual artist, and challenged me in many different ways.  Then, in 2006, I got the book Above The Earth.  Casually flicking through this lovely coffee table book, I was taken over by a total certainty that I had now found my genre in weaving - a total expression through weaving of what I am about.  I still have that feeling today, and am aware that this will probably be with me all my life.  Satellite and aerial images of the unpopulated areas of the world, away from the obvious visual physical damage that humans have perpetrated on this lovely planet, inspire me with thoughts of how to affect people’s perception of their world through weaving. 

The limitations of having a theme can be a positive thing - a jumping off point for delving deeper.  Limits are good for stimulating creative thought and lateral thinking.  As a child, how often can boredom develop into imaginative ideas for play, for making something out of materials close at hand.  I know for me as a child that I developed some crazy ideas that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t, but I always had fun finding out. 

Now I have found my theme for weaving, my world is opening up in ways unimaginable to me before. 

Do you have something that inspires you in a similar way?  Do you want one?  Sometimes just thinking about it can help address that overwhelming feeling that can come from too much choice.  Perhaps this week might be a good time to ponder what you want to be your special theme…..

I was watching an ants’ nest that had been disturbed in my garden during our most recent renovation activity.  The ants were scurrying around seemingly at random, running here and there without apparent purpose, until I realised that there was indeed a very methodical method in their running.  To me, the ants are identical, but I guess to ants, humans are identical.  I couldn’t recognise individuals but I could recognise patterns of movement that emerged as I took the time to watch what happened.

There were obvious patterns and tasks that were allocated to specific individuals.  You’ve probably read about the information that bees pass on to each other about locations of food sources through their dances.  Well, information of some sort was being passed around the ants with resultant changes to their behaviour when an obstacle was put in their way. 

That got me to thinking about how that relates to human behaviour.  We like to think we are all individual with our own choices, and independent behavour patterns, but we are also swarm animals.  Whenever we are together in big groups, you can see that behaviour emerging.  Just watch behaviour patterns at airports when there are flight delays or cancellations.  Watch the crowd at a sports match.  On occasion, and for the sheer fun of it, I’ve stood in a busy area and looked up a the top of a building, or the sky, and waited to see how many people look up too.  It’s quite funny!  Once one person looks up, another will do so and on and on until most people glance up just to see what everyone else is looking at.

The same kind of reaction can be generated by businesses looking to sell things.  If you can get people to think that everyone else is buying the product, then the swarm behaviour kicks in.  Just think of the January sales!! 

Swarms also have impacts greater than the efforts of the individuals involved.  If you can’t solve a problem on your own, and you ask a group of people for help, other people’s different approaches to the problem can help all of you solve the problem.  That’s called collective intelligence and nature uses it frequently.  So do the armed forces and rescue services. 

I love that we just have to look at what is happening in nature to see what happens in human experience.  We like to think that we are superior beings but we march to the same tune as everything else!!  We can express ourselves perhaps in more diverse ways, but really we are all related to everything else and that is a fact we should never forget.

As you might know, I subscribe to a great magazine on philosophy for people who aren’t necessarily philosophers but who like to ponder on some of life’s more interesting questions!!  This quarter’s edition of The Philosopers’ Magazine has a number of interesting articles including one on the intelligence of dolphins and contemplating that we should perhaps consider them as ‘nonhuman persons’. 

However, that is not what I am writing about today.  The central theme of this volume is should philosophy be taught to children in primary and secondary school?  Research which has been done in the UK over the last 20 years on teaching philosophy to primary school children has found that children ‘who have been through sustained Philosophy with Children improve in almost every other academic area.  Philosophers are traditionally asked awkward questions and to come up with alternative answers, and it really breeds independent thinking.  If we want a generation of people who will begin to tackle and solve the problems we have, we need people who think for themselves and who think differently.’  So says the author, Brooke Lewis, a journalist who is now working in Cambodia. 

I’ve been concerned for several years about the dumbing down in school of original thinking by students.  Because of the constraints of the National Curriculum in the UK, many of my teaching friends find themselves handcuffed not only in the content of what they teach but even how they are to teach it.  I am, perhaps naively, encouraged by the new coalition government’s view of giving schools back to teachers and reducing the bureaucratic restrictions of the National Curriculum and maybe philosophy can help our youngsters to think for themselves once more instead of the seemingly primary goal of regurgitating set facts and figures at exam time! 

The Philosophy for Children programme sounds heavy, but it isn’t.  Imaginatively taught, children are encouraged to think about morals, ethics, choices, through the medium of books, TV, films, songs, and practical life situations.  There’s an example of this in the article - discussing clones prompted by a new movie. 

It is this kind of in-depth, curious, thinking that I find myself searching for in myself and in others.  Quite often when I go out socially, I am dismayed at the level of surface conversation - inane chatter that skims across the surface of everything.  I know I am one of those people who gets too deep too quickly, and that this is uncomfortable for many people to handle, so I more often than not keep very quiet unless I’m with people I know or people who are happy to get meaty in a discussion.  But when you do find like-minded people and a wide-ranging, give-and-take discussion involving lots of different ways of thinking and sounding each other out, the joy is just wonderful! 

I’m not a person who does confrontation, but I am a person who loves to think about other people’s opinions.  These sorts of discussions lead to more open minds and personal mental growth.  My son and I still have great discussions about all sorts of things and it’s interesting to see how differently his mind works from mine. 

There’s also a young lad of 12 who visits his granny across the road from me.  We were looking up at a passing plane and the stars and got into a discussion about space the other night at a barbecue, and he was both very knowledgeable and very curious, sucking up all the information I could drag from the depths of my mind.  We had a brilliant chat about infinity and his granny said that that’s what he would do all the time if he could, but no-one has the time to talk with him in that way.  If our children learn to access deeper levels of thinking in this way, we could find ourselves in a more considerate, thoughtful era, and I’m all for the parents and schools that will help in this task!!

Conversations about intelligence seem to have popped up all over the place this week….

How many different sorts of intelligence are there?  So far this week, here are what’s come up in conversation….

There’s the obvious academic intelligence which seems to be all about remembering lots of facts and figures to be regurgitated at required times such as exams (which are thankfully coming to an end now). 

There’s IQ.

There’s common sense, and practical intelligence - things learnt by watching and absorbing practical things over the years.

There’s what I call ‘native’ intelligence - the kind of intelligence that puts separate bits of information together to make up a complete picture. 

There’s lateral thinking - which is separate from native intelligence but closely related - where seemingly random and unrelated things can be the trigger to solving another problem entirely.

There’s emotional intelligence - where people are aware of how others are feeling and respond accordingly.

There’s social intelligence - knowing how to interact with people in many different situations whether one-on-one or in groups. 

I also rate curiosity as a form of intelligence.  If you are curious about life, how things/nature/science works, if you are curious about how people think, if you want to keep learning about many different topics, extending your life experience through reading, listening to others, experiencing different situations, then to me, that is an intellectual form of intelligence. 

Why this discussion on intelligence?  My son, who has just turned 21, decided he wants to go into the army.  He took various tests, including one that measured ‘intelligence’.  From what he described, this test was designed to search out speedy reactions to many different situations - comprehension, lateral thinking, native intelligence, and others.  What it was not designed to do was measure academic intelligence - lucky for him because he is not that way inclined!  However, in other forms of intelligence he rates pretty highly.  In fact, so much so that he scored high marks and has been selected for a number of possible jobs that require his brains rather than his brawn.  A huge relief for his mother!!! 

The whole process led to a number of discussions with several people about intelligence and I find it fascinating!  What other forms of intelligence have I not included in my summary?  We place so much store by academic intelligence, and yet, once we are out of the education system, that is virtually the least used intelligence.  It is a rare school that teaches students about the other forms of intelligence that will be so useful to them in the outside world.  Why is that?  And what is the benefit of such a skewed approach to intelligence? 

My son, on exam results alone, although no dunce, is not a high flyer.  Yet put him in a situation that calls for a cool head and an ability to weigh things up quickly and accurately and he is a star!  And with a razor-sharp wit!  The army will give him the opportunity to develop those skills that he possesses, learn new ones and keep him interested and engaged.  Although as a mum it’s been a shock to the system, I know that he will have a purpose and be part of something much bigger than he is.  His intelligence is finally being given the recognition it deserves.

I read this little gem in a blog this week.  It was a throw-away comment on a business blog, but one that struck a chord with me.  The translation all depends on whether you start the sentence with an indefinite article or a definite one.  (I’ll bet that just took you back to long English grammar lessons at school!!!) In other words, if you write “a present is a gift” then you are talking about something usually physical that someone gives you.  And yes, obviously, someone giving you something is a gift.

However, the version I have been mulling over is the other one -the present is a gift.  That’s a whole other ball o’ wax!  All we have is right now.  What we’ve done in the past makes us into what we are right now.  The future is unknown but what we do right now is what makes our future selves.  So what we have right now is priceless!  We have the chance to change our lives - to rewrite our course through life - just because we have right now - the present moment. 

This is so mind-blowing.  I’ve thought about it before, as I’m sure you have as well.  It’s one of those student navel-gazing topics on similar lines to ‘why are we here?’ and ‘what’s existence’?  I’m sure you remember those heady days when you first got to grapple with life’s big questions.  I still have those days on a regular basis - usually from spotting something wonderful in nature. 

And during tough personal times, when we spend a lot of time looking in at the minutea of our day-to-day lives, and our relationships and our purpose in life, and reflecting on what might have been and what still could be, realising that the present is our chance to do something different, to change the results we’ve been getting, to alter the path of our trajectory in life can be a tremendous gift. 

I’m not talking glibly here.  I mean this.  I’m living it right now.  And one thing I learned this morning, whilst watching a buzzard seemingly hanging immobile in the sky, is that the present is for living, for embracing, for enjoying, for understanding.  Today I have really had a sense of the present as a gift.  I hope I always have the grace to value that gift and to embrace it with gratitude, joy and passion.

This weekend, I have been having a great time with a student called Zaf, who brought along her little Structo loom.  She bought it from eBay and unfortunately it doesn’t have a reed or a batten, so she was a little disappointed that she couldn’t use it. 

However, she has got down to weaving on a 4-shaft Ashford table loom (with direct tie-up pedals) and has been enjoying herself.  Whilst she has been weaving, we have both been having a think about how best to sort out her reed and batten problem, and have come up with a couple of thoughts. 

I have some narrow braid reeds that came from an original 14 foot wide batten on a narrow braid industrial loom.  These miniature reeds are solid metal and are only 1″ wide.  I was saving them to use a la Peter Collingwood Macrogauze technique, but Zaf’s need is greater than mine, and we have worked out a way to overlap 4 of them so that only a tiny bit of overlap happens.  I have also suggested that Zaf might be able to build a batten from Meccano, so that the reed will fit inside it. 

We have a small problem now in that the overlap means that there will inevitably be a larger ‘empty’ dent result in her weaving, but one way to avoid that, and perhaps not overlap the reeds, is for her to weave bookmarks or miniature mats.  I showed her the wonderful series of Cash’s silk cigarette cards that I have - 60 miniature jacquard woven silks of flowers that were woven to go inside boxes of cigarettes!  If you do an eBay search for cigarette cards, you come up with all sorts of designs, from tall ships to royalty, flags, and flowers.  They are exquisite and my cards were my first foray into the world of eBay! 

Zaf’s particular interest is in the Bertha Gray Hayes miniature overshot patterns, and she has the book written by Norma Smayda, Gretchen White, Jody Brown and Katharine Schelleng and published by Schiffer.  The book features the original sample collection and handwritten drafts of Bertha Gray Hayes, of Providence, Rhode Island and she produced the designs as sample cards, using name drafting for many of them.  The book was taken on as a group project of the Weavers’ Guild of Rhode Island in order to get Bertha’s designs out to the wider public, and is a tremendous example of how something wonderful can come from something essentially personal. 

Bertha was born in 1878, and lived through some eventful times and these designs are her response to her world, including the Roosevelt Era (1933 - 47) which saw World War II, and led to such designs as Stars of Vicotry, Bomber Flight and Parachute, for instance.  She was inspired by movies, and songs, as well as the visual world around her and they are magical.  Bertha was a recognised weaver of her day (along with such luminaries in the weaving world as Mary Meigs Atwater, Marguerite P. Davison and Harriet Tidball) and she died in 1947.  60 years later, the Weavers’ Guild of Rhode Island produced this lovely book as a means of spreading their pride in an imaginative weaver.  The designs are wonderful, and the book includes computer drawdowns for each of the samples.  In all there are 193 designs and Zaf is really taken with them.  She is thinking of producing them in silk and fine cottons.  They were designed for and woven on a Structo loom, so it is a lovely thing to do.   

In our hunt for a batten and reed for this little 9 1/2″ (weaving width) loom, we have been introduced to the Yahoo group on Structo, which will be of great help to Zaf in her further weaving projects.  If anyone reading this blog has a Structo batten and reed to fit this loom that they don’t need, please do get in touch.  Although our jerry-rigged idea should work, it would be wonderful to complete the loom in the way it should be!

How are the above 3 topics linked?  Well, the last two are easy to put together, but it would seem a bit of a stretch to join them to achievement!

Firstly, the achievement.  It’s been a dream of my son’s - a bucket dream (”what I’d like to do before I kick the …….”!) - to jump from a plane, freefall and land safely.  I certainly concur with the last bit of that sentence!!  Anyway, it was his 21st birthday on Friday, and he’s not a lad who has asked for much for Christmas or birthdays, ever, so his Dad and I decided that we would like to splurge out and give him an experience that he would never forget for this landmark birthday.  His choice was to do accelerated freefall from 15,000 feet.

Gulp!

Anyhow, (and slightly envious), I signed him up for a course.  What neither of us had realised was that there was an intensive day’s training in the classroom before he would be allowed up to jump.  Obviously safety is the paramount focus, and students are drilled in techniques designed to keep them alert, focussed and safe whilst in the air, having to report in to their instructors all the way until chute deployment. 

Accelerated freefall is when you jump solo (ie not strapped to anyone), but you do have two professional instructors holding on to your suit to ensure that you are safe.  The suits have stuffed padded tubes attached to the side of the arms, body and legs, which the instructors can hold on to.  As you get more experienced, they hold on less, until eventually, after several assisted jumps, they don’t hold on at all. 

Chris was initially disappointed that he wouldn’t be likely to jump on his birthday, but he got over it quickly and decided to enjoy the day which was amazing.  9 hours of training in body position, drills, parachute checks, alertness checks etc, was quite challenging mentally.  Then the forecast came up that wiped out Saturday and Sunday because of rain and high winds.  That was a disappointment.  

They sent up a scout plane to check on conditions at the end of the day, and with only light cloud cover at 7,000 feet, (they deploy the canopy at 6,000 feet), and wind velocity within safe parameters, and because he had done well with the course, Chris was offered a jump on Friday evening which he took with alacrity!  So he experienced his first free fall jump on his 21st birthday!  And what an experience.  He was thrilled and elated! 

Who knows whether he will decide to extend his course and become a qualified freefaller, or whether he treasures this one jump as an experience of a lifetime - he was really pleased with his parachute and landing skills, but not impressed with his freefall technique! - but this one jump has been a tremendous achievement in his life!  And I am so proud of both his achievement and his attitude to disappointment!

Back to procrastination and laziness - ok, so whilst they may not have a direct correlation with Chris’ achievement, in one way they do.  I have always thought of procrastination and laziness as inaction or the inability to decide on action.  However, I have now been shown another way to look at them.  Everything we do is an action - even if we decide to sit on our butts watching TV all day!  Procrastination and laziness are ineffective action.  For me, that is enough of a mind shift to eradicate them in my life.  If they are an action, then I choose to do them.  If I don’t choose to do them, then I eradicate them.  So the connection with achievement is the opposite side of the same coin - achievement is a positive action, whilst procrastination and laziness are negative actions.  I can still choose to sit and watch TV (although life is much more interesting than that!!), but now I know that I have chosen to do that!

Hunches and instinct are quite often dismissed by people as not important.  If you are an emotional sort of person, and you believe in hunches and instincts, do you find, as I often do, that more left-brain types look down their noses at you, believing you to be in thrall to your emotions and over-reactionary?  If you are more considered, do you become uncomfortable by feeling things that don’t fall into measurable compartments?  Like most people, I am a mixture of both, and on occasion have decided to ignore that feeling that something isn’t quite as it should be, usually to my detriment! 

One of the books I’m reading at the moment is ‘Blink‘ by Malcolm Gladwell (he of the famous Tipping Point).  The basic premise of the book is about how we make quality snap decisions about things and learning when and how to trust these feelings.  Most of us have this ability although it can sometimes be wrong, but it can more often than not be right.  The reason I’m writing about it in this blog is that it follows on really nicely from a previous post about spotting patterns. 

You may recall that I was wondering about how mathematicians, scientists, doctors and musicians also can make good weavers, and that my observation is that those kinds of minds are good at spotting patterns.  Well, in the first main chapter of Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the “critical part of rapid cognition known as ‘thin-slicing’.”  He goes on to explain that “thin-slicing refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behaviour based on very narrow slices of experience.”  It is fascinating reading, and if you are interested in why we can make effective snap decisions, it is a worth while book to read!

For me, one of those instant cognition moments came several years ago, during a walk with my previous dog, Kym.  It was winter (have I already told you this story?  Apologies if I have, but it’s worth repeating!)  The trees were bare and stark against the winter sky, and I looked up at the silhouette of a hawthorn tree and thought to myself - “that’s a fractal“. 

Then I did a kind of mental double-take.  I know I stopped walking and stared up at the tree, whilst my mind was frantically running around in speed-time, thinking things like “where did that word come from?”  “What on earth’s a fractal?”  “How do I know this?”  “Where should I go to find out about fractals?”  “Is this a proper word?”  I also know that I asked the dog what on earth a fractal is? 

We’ve probably also all had those moments of suspicion, when somone doesn’t seem to be acting quite right, only to find out later that they just went on to committ a crime or hurt themselves.  There may not be anything obvious either in their behaviour or their demeanour, but we are aware of something slightly off - something not quite fitting the pattern.  Also, there have been those moments when you feel that you shouldn’t do something just yet, and later you find out that you avoided a tragedy.  That feels like it’s crossing into spiritual realms, but it could be because your subconscious spotted something out of kilter and warned you off…

I’ve only read the first main chapter so far, but the book has me hooked!  It has an easy reading style and is full of real-life examples that get you thinking!  The subtitle of Blink is ‘The Power of Thinking Without Thinking’.  If you have a curiousity about things, you’ll love this book!

The title sounds a bit heavy, but this weekend has got me thinking.  It’s been a huge success but I have an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach about the shenanigans I went through to ensure its success!

I’m actually talking about a family celebration.  That should be cause for great feelings, right?  Well, for me, it’s been yes and no.  My dad recently turned 80 (his mum is 100 later in May!), and we wanted to do something to celebrate it.  But what to do?  Dad isn’t one for a big fuss, but still, it’s a milestone that needs to be recognised in some way.  So I booked us to stay with him over Easter and in the meantime my brother and I got together to sort something out. 

Then the deception began.

I’m not the sort of person who feels ok about any kind of lying - I was useless at it when I was a child, and have never got any better!!  So if I’m asked a direct question, I cannot prevaricate without it being so obvious that I’m just about to try to tell a porky!  So generally I don’t even contemplate it!  But you’ll know how hard it is to keep a secret about a celebration without lying on occasion.  Even though I know it’s a ‘white’ lie, and that it’s not doing anyone any harm, it’s still not the truth, and I don’t feel right about it.

However, that’s not really the point, because the point is that the person you are doing it for has a wonderful surprise and is totally delighted!  Happily Dad was.  But the whole thing about lies is that you have to remember what you’ve said to whom and when, and that is just so difficult!!  I’ve come to the conclusion that inveterate liers have marvellous memories!!  And that makes it even more sad that they don’t use their marvellous memories to do something positive!  Well, I suppose the results are superficially positive for them, even if everyone left in their wake is hurt!!! 

Well, we’re back home now and Dad is very happy and delighted with some marvellous memories of his own to look back on and his wonderment that we all managed to keep all hint of the events from his knowledge.  As for me, I’m just glad not to have to pretend and make up stories any more!!!

I went to a wonderful lunch party yesterday with one of my students, her husband, sister and friends.  It was an amazing collection of people.  After a delicious lunch with home-grown soup and salad (try growing a soup and see how that goes for you!!! <G>)   we all indulged in a little show and tell.  As the first person started to speak, I noticed that two four-letter words were already creeping insidiously into the conversation. 

These two quite often do.  They are pernicious wolves masquerading as lambs.  They subversively undermine the words that follow them.  They negate skill and creativity.  They are words we use subconsciously, self-deprecatingly, almost false modestly, which don’t help us in the slightest.  Neither word is inherently bad.  Both have other meanings which have positive meanings.  But in this context, those two words are poison!! 

The first word is ‘just’. 

The positive take on ‘just’ is “imminently, directly” and as such is very positive - you’re going to take action in the immediate future….  That’s great! 

However, in everyday parlance, especially amongst women (and Brits tend to be realllllly good at this!!), I’ve noticed, ‘just’ denigrates every achievement that it is used in conjunction with. (Ooch - ouch!  Terrible grammar - sorry!!) 

“This is just something I made” meaning ‘this took me hours and hours of painstaking work” translates into reality as “this isn’t worth your notice, I’m not a serious artist, I play at this, it’s a hobby, don’t take it seriously”. 

And we use it unconsciously all the time!  Having heard it used a couple of times in connection with some exquisite machine embroidery, I had to stop the proceedings and ask for the two words to be removed from our vocabularies for the duration of the show and tell.  From that point on, we were all consciously aware of when it was used, how often it was used, and how it affected not only the person saying it, but those listening as well. 

The other word that has a similar effect is ‘only’. 

“It’s only a small piece”, could mean “I’ve got larger pieces at home, but this is all I could carry”, but it often translates as “I can’t do anything larger/more intricate/ more polished”.  ‘Only’ can be a call-to-action word when it is used to imply scarcity - “There are only 3 more places left on this seminar” or “Only 5 more hours to get your order in before the sale ends”…..  You get the idea.  Let’s leave ‘only’ as a call-to-action, and not as a negative, somewhat pathetic word implying lack of skill, willpower, talent, creativity.

I’m on a crusade!!  Will you join me in doing what we can to eliminate these two words from their negative connotations?  Will you be aware of how often you use these words in the course of your conversation?  Will you see if you can find alternative, more accurate ways to describe what you do?  What we mean when we use these words is quite often so different to how they are interpreted.  Surely we owe it to ourselves to ensure that our audience, whether it is one person, or a conference, understands what we are saying without the gnawing effects of those two gremlins.

How about saying, “There are …. stages I go through to create this work”, rather than “I just do this, and then this, and then this”. 

Can we re-frame our language to eradicate ‘just’ and ‘only’ used in these contexts?  Yes, I think so. 

I have largely managed it.  And one thing I have noticed from doing it - my self-confidence has grown, and I’m prouder of my achievements in my weaving.  I am no longer apologising without knowing it.  I am no longer denigrating myself and my accomplishments in front of others.  If they don’t like what I do, fair enough.  If they don’t appreciate what efforts go into the work, that’s up to me to educate, entertain and encourage their interest. 

I am no longer going to sabotage - yes, sabotage! - my own talents and skills.  There are enough people out there waiting to knock down people who want to succeed.  Don’t let you be your own worst enemy!!