and then....

in which Sarah clutches a mug and wonders what she will make next

It’s a thing, isn’t it, finishing a big project.

“Really? That fun/absurd/bewitching/overwhelming/crazy-delicious idea actually exists? And now it is finished? And it fits? And I like it? WOW.”

My brain, still cruising on yummy creative hormones, conveniently forgets the uncertainty, the frustration, the dead ends, the winding path, the mess. “Well THAT was FABULOUS! Must have MORE!”

And why not? Who wouldn’t want more of that intoxicating feeling.

Except—where to find it.

Another paper shirt? Well—no. It would hurt this one’s feelings if I tried to replicate it. Plus I’ve promised the next few months of coffee filters (generated one per day), to the long, quiet tapestry waiting patiently by the window. And it has feelings too.

It’s a good anchor, this tapestry—restful, satisfying, rhythmic—and nicely self limiting material-wise so I can’t overdo and trash my hands. It’s also been the thing I’ve turned to this winter when not 300% immersed in something else. Except this time I can’t; having diverted all its materials-in-waiting into a certain shirt, there is no weft left to work with.

Well ok then. Fine.

Not the big tapestry and not another paper shirt.

I do have a small stash of filters to cut and spin for said tapestry, so I can get right on that. Plus some yummy milkweed to twist. And my spindle is ever ready to twirl. In other words— no shortage of yarn-making treats to keep my fingers content while I pause to see which of the 10,000 other ideas floating around is actually worth trying.

And pausing is important.

I believe in pausing.

Not that I’m good at it. At least not unless my hands are fully occupied. And since my hands need to rest I’ve been trying to pause while clutching a hot mug of something instead of handfuls of fiber. Practice has led to improvement.

Or so I like to think.

It may actually be that since I spend more time with food these days, the pauses have become a salad or a pot of soup and I don’t notice them as much. And that’s fine too.

Because…FOOD!

I mean— YUM.

What’s not to love about food?

circa 1969, age 8, my first invented recipe. I think my family even ate it. Or at least pretended to, which was enough.

spelling has never been my strong suit

Indeed, from childhood experiments and after school treats, to summer jobs as a live-in mothers helper, feeding hunters in the Idaho Wilderness, and even making breakfast every day—food and I have had a grand time over the years: making snacks for fussy nine year olds, learning how to please their equally fussy mothers, figuring out how to make the same five ingredients interesting for the six months between trips to the grocery store, learning to pressure can an entire elk on a wood cookstove (90 minutes at 10 lbs pressure plus two for altitude) while sipping the serviceberry wine you fermented yourself in a garbage can— what better thing than to find I have the capacity to be endlessly engrossed and entertained?

Endlessly that is, until 1988 when I met my husband Dan and he took on all the cooking and grocery shopping for our little family. Oh I made the odd batch of cookies or piled lettuce in a bowl for a salad after that, but once we got together the kitchen became his studio—the place he could shed the cerebral world of theoretical chemistry and reconnect with the messy deliciousness of our life. And for the most part, I agreed that this would be so.

Not that it was all cake and curry. It was, of course, a big adjustment for me. “Y’know I have made that thing a thousand times--what if I just...” But he liked having to the kitchen to himself, and since I don't share my studio with anyone, it made sense. Also it turned out that he was more inventive than I as the five-ingredient elk-centric years had left me with a limited repertoire. Except for lentils¹ which he refused to countenance, he never failed to cook delicious things. (Well, there was that one time when I was pregnant and commented that supper tasted like sheep manure, but there is no need to dwell on that.)

It also turned out that not planning meals opened up brain space for planning things to make with yarn. And since I love yarn perhaps even more than I love cooking (I left college twice because wool was more compelling than French or physics),² I learned to weave food into tapestry³ and gradually forgot how to work with actual ingredients.

Two Recipes for Coffee Cake (detail); hand woven tapestry; 48" x 24"; wool, natural dye ©Sarah C. Swett 2007

It might come as no surprise then, and is certainly telling, that when Dan was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2019 his biggest worry about the future was how I was going to feed myself. Indeed the day we got home from that first earth-shattering oncology appointment he threw himself into explaining how to make some of the staples on which we relied.

It’s telling, perhaps, that I jotted things down in a little handmade book with coffee filter tapestry covers when I hadn't actually made coffee in three decades. Also interesting that he seemed particularly interested in my gut health.

My response, in turn, was to weave a couple of his canonical recipes into tapestry.

Flour, Salt, Olive Oil: Dan's Cracker Recipe (in progress) Hand Woven Tapestry; 9" x 12" hand spun flax and wool; natural dyesn...

Dan's Digestives Hand Woven Tapestry; 25" x 19" hand spun flax and wool; natural dye

As it turned out Dan responded well to the insane but effective chemo, and though everything tasted terrible to him for the first six months and he lost 50 pounds, he continued to cook for the next two and a half years—eventually regaining both his ability to enjoy flavor and the pounds—major triumphs, Indeed, since this time overlapped with the first years of the pandemic and the spread of curbside grocery pickup, he could still do the shopping from his sickbed sofa.

In turn I was beautifully fed—which meant I didn’t get around to actually reconnecting with the stove until last year and, vegetable-centric as I am, I’ve since focused on carrots and lentils and lettuce and interesting grains from the bulk bins at the food coop—simple but enticing stove top, one pot things that don’t demand an oven.

But early this week while putting things to rights after finishing the paper shirt and wondering what I was going to do next, I caught a glimpse of the Digestives tapestry pinned to the wall, retrieved Dan’s grandmother’s biscuit cutter from the back of the drawer, and got to it.

And you know how one thing leads to another?

Fringeless Four Selvedge Warp (hand spun silk); PVC pipe loom

And another?

And before you know it the week has vanished—

cook: coffee filter yarn (an experiment with a new kind so not stealing them from the big tapestry), hand spun wool words and warp, natural dyes 3” x 5” food: millspun linen, hand spun wool words, hand spun silk warp 3” x 5”

—and the cool thing you didn’t know you were longing to make next—

—is already done.

1. I always found this a little irritating as The Palouse where we live, grows a quarter of the lentils in the US, and exports them worldwide…

2. I left in 1979 because knitting was more interesting than anything I was studying at Harvard, and 10 years later, because the University of Idaho then had an incredible weaving program and my teacher, Shirley Medsker, introduced me to tapestry—so what could I do?

3. According to my website archive, 2000-2003 saw me weaving a fair number of plates, glasses, mugs, loaves, apples and such, including the entire Jane’s Picnic series of four tapestries about food and textiles. Like I said, 300%…