Rug is coming together and I'm in love with it again: reflecting on the creative process

You know that stage where you hate what you're making and think it's totally shit and you're questioning all the life choices that lead to that particular moment.

Well I had that,  and pushed through it and now it's really coming together and I'm  in good dialogue with it and understand what needs to happen. And I'm in totally love and so excited to finish it.

What a roller coaster. But you can always depend on the creative process. It won't ever let you down if you apply yourself with a full heart and a curious mind.

I never had such an accentuated version of this before and I am attributing this to the bereavement and associated emotional burn out.

Falling out of love with my work this time followed a cycle of numbness and detachment. I was just going through the motions a bit rather than properly connecting to the work. And therefore myself. 

Falling back in love required giving myself permission to step away from the pressure, reset your nervous system, and rediscover the joy of the process itself. To allow myself that joy at a time where there is so much sorrow. Sone internalized nonsense about not being allowed that came up and I am healing that as I go.

I am genuinely fascinated in carpet as a medium. I'm interested in the limitations of a material and how that can become a way in to expand my practice.

It feels like an extension of my subversive stitch works because it is a deliberately feminist re-appropriation/ reclamation of a craft: carpet making. 

I feel like the material carpet has a gravity to it because of it's universality and because it is metaphorically rich. 

It is practically desirable and can be opulent or decorative too. 

It is something underfoot that we walk all over, that absorbs all our stains and dirt. That has to be tough but is also chosen for its softness and comfort.

Made well, they last for hundreds of years. Thus rug will outlive me. That is profound.