Old Dogs - Old Tricks

It has often be said that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I am not too sure if that is true. It is far more likely that us "old dogs" sometimes are unconvinced that the new tricks really are new or that they are really useful. However my problem is that I am forgetting the old tricks I once knew. Let me give you two examples.

Weaving: I have been weaving throw rugs for a number of years. The rugs are in fact one of my big money makers at the market. I can, I thought, make them in my sleep. 18 or so months ago I made a few rugs and they did not feel right - they felt too thin and flimsy. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Last year I made a few more (I had a large stockpile so I didn't need to do too many), and they too, were too thin. I spun the wool thicker, I spun it thinner, I made it three ply as opposed to two ply, I changed the size of my reed - nothing seemed to work. The only solution was to beat the wool really hard after every pass. Weaving this way was noisy (which is a problem in an apartment) and my loom was moving all over the floor.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to try again. I made one little change in how I put the warp on the loom and the rugs are great! They feel thicker and just more substantial although I have not used that much more wool. It was such an obvious solution but it took 18 months of thinking about it before I figured out where I had gone off track. I had forgotten what I use to do. I didn't need a new trick - just needed to remember the old one.

Writing: Writing is hard for me - it always has been. I have a hard time organizing my thoughts, my spelling is atrocious, my typing is worse and I am far too inclined to wander down garden paths that are only interesting to me. The last two months have been a challenge for me. It has felt as if I have been spending far too much time writing. I write a paragraph, then delete it and far too often I end up just throwing it away and starting over. While I do not ever expect writing to be easy, it was getting just too frustrating.

Then I realized that I was composing only on the typewriter. That is not how I write. I need to jot down partially formed thoughts and concepts on paper before they are gone, organize them and then type. I just don't type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts. Scribbling down those loose thoughts as they drift through my brain allows me to keep the ones that I like and to scratch out the ones that I don't. And that allows me to stay on track. I wrote all of my university papers including my thesis out by hand. Not every word but the organization and structure was shaped on yellow lined paper. I love using the computer but I had forgotten that for me, processing complex thoughts is a two step process.

 So while it may look  as if this old dog is resistant to learning new tricks - the truth of the matter is that I am just desperately trying to hang on to the old ones.