Weave Through Winter: Days 15-25

I'm currently participating in "Weave Through Winter," a project led by Helen Hiebert.  The idea is to create a paper weaving every single day in February. Here's what I've made so far:

• Days 1-6
• Days 7-14

And now, days 15-25!

This leaf is woven into an existing journal page - you can see the front and the back here:

The entire process of this weaving is available to members to watch in real time:

This weaving was painted AFTER weaving and you can see a bit of that process HERE.

This weaving is by far my favorite -- it also took me two days to make:

This is a weaving project that I came up with for ScanNCut Club members.  It's super easy to do and you can totally change the mood with different colors of paper:

This weaving is one of two featuring stars that just didn't work the way I wanted them to:

This weaving has an integrated hanging mechanism:

And here's the other star that just didn't work out:

This one was also kind of a hot mess:

But then I started playing with transparency, and I loooove the results:

And finally I stumbled across two collographs I had abandoned and decided to combine them:

Overall, I see some hits and some misses.  I definitely am rooting around to find my voice within the technique of paper weaving.  I am also discovering what I enjoy doing during the weaving process and what I don't. 

I wholeheartedly believe that quality learning requires 4 things: (1) a beginner mindset, (2) a hunger for knowledge & skill acquisition, (3) time and attention, and (4) reflection.  And I'm doing my best to be present with all 4.

A beginner mindset could mean a lot of things.  For me, it's...

• Accepting that I know nothing.
• Accepting that I will fail. 
• Trying new things every day.
• Pushing at limits.
• Asking questions.
• Exploring other's expertise.

A hunger for knowledge and skill acquisition is what keeps you going.  If you don't have that hunger, you won't have the motivation to keep learning.

This seems obvious to me, but perhaps it's not: You have to spend serious time and attention on anything you want to get better at.  It doesn't magically happen.  And time alone isn't enough.  Attention is key.  Which brings me to: reflection.

Reflection is the step that most people skip.  It's easy enough to make something and move on.  But taking a few moments to write down your thoughts or consider why something did or didn't work out -- this is the step that reinforces and sometimes even introduces learning.

Just a few more daily paper weavings to come!  I look forward to more exploration (and failure)!

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog!