There are no mistakes

Years and years ago, I had the opportunity to be around an extremely talented woman who could take just about anything and make it seem exotic and glorious (Barbara Chapman, if any of you know of her).  I remember her telling me there are no mistakes.  I have to say that I never quite got on the program with that concept, but I like the sentiment a lot.

A few weeks ago I had something go terribly wrong with some very specific things I was dyeing.  I'm not sure yet what happened, possibly the change of my water source over the summer...I'll have to do serious diagnostics later this month or next.  All I know is that a whole lot of roving ended up not looking like I wanted it to look.  It was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back, to be honest with you.  I felt  pretty down in the dumps.

Last week, when I went on my fall retreat, I decided to take those same rovings along to contemplate what may have happened by studying them.   I have had some physical problems for several months that have kept me from doing many of the things I like to do, including spinning.  I hadn't planned on taking my wheel on retreat, but did so at the urging of Mr. Sunflower.  I'm sure glad I did.

I decided that my pain was there no matter, so why the heck not spin.  Guess what?  The rovings looked really pretty once I had them laid out and subtracted my expectations from them.  I managed to spin 8 of 13 of them in three days and loved every minute.  Now I have some new yarns to put on my Etsy shop when I reopen in early November (if I don't decide to keep them for myself).

Barbara was right after all, I just needed to let myself be more open.