Every June I wait for the poppies in my yard to bloom. Sometimes they come around the 16th other times it is later. I mark one Summer to the next by the time they bloom. Once they come the lilacs and the apple blossoms have come and gone.
The blooms we have to wait for until the time is right. We cannot push them to open up for us. They come when they come and we accept this. They go through every stage, sprouting up after a winter and day by day they are nourished by sun and rain and slowly they come into being their most beautiful self. Suddenly they bloom.
Sometimes when I talk to people who have been hooking rugs for a little while they are unsatisfied with their work and feel as if it is not good enough. I like to reassure them that it is fine, and what they must do is hook more, and keep growing. Every beginner needs nourishment, like the water and the sun, beginners need to learn, and practice in order to grow.
And there are different stages of beginning. We begin again once we start using new and different materials. We begin again once we start designing our own rugs. We begin again when we begin hooking abstracts, or landscapes instead of flowers. Creating is a process of constant growth. At times that growth is rapid and at other times it is slow.
I have had to be very patient with myself as I tried new ideas and themes in my rug hooking. Each time I began a new theme, lets say for example, hooking abstract rugs, the first rugs were not what I wanted or imagined. But still they were what they were. I might call them good enough, but not the beauty that I had imagined. I had to settle for what I got.
This happens often enough throughout a lifetime of making rugs. And my job is to move through it. To make regardless. To create regardless. I am here and I am making. That is what matters. I don't get to decide when each series, or each rugs get to be the most beautiful. I don't get to decide when I bloom. I only get to bloom when the time is right.
I keep making and this making is like the water and the sun for the poppy. I keep looking at art books, walking, thinking, looking through the infinity for new colour combinations and I keep hooking. And time and time again I bloom when all things are right and all conditions are met. There is no forcing it for me. I must do the work. I must show up and do the work.
