"Tapestry weaving is like cooking"

I had a lovely trio of visitors to my studio last weekend. They were picking up some yarn for their mother/mother-in-law/grandmother who is a student of mine in Colorado. They were the kind of studio visitor you always hope for when people call up wanting to visit. They were so cheerful and full of joy. They loved the tapestries, excused the mess I was in the middle of cleaning up, and asked some lovely questions.

And at one point I started talking to the mom of the group about creativity. And she said that what her mother-in-law does when creating with yarn is what she does with cooking. She talked about cooking being a creative outlet and said that people would tell her she doesn't have to cook when she gets home from work and is tired. But she says, and this is the thing that got me, she said that she has to. Cooking is her creative outlet and it helps her work through the things that have to be worked out.

This is true of tapestry for me. When there are long stretches of time when I don't get to the loom, I get cranky. And I think that is because I am not spending the time working through the life lessons that have to be figured out through doing meaningful things. So if your thing is cooking, make sure you do it. And if your thing is tapestry, then you have to do that. There just isn't any other choice.