I have taken a long break this summer. Really long. And it’s been great! Working on a book was uncannily like being a research student again and trying to finish my thesis. That is, even when I was not working on it, I had the feeling that I should be working on it, and so no break was ever free from the shadow of the thing I wasn’t working on. But now I have regained the capacity to switch off my working brain and turn my attention to other things. Like redecorating and reorganising. Like walking on moors and tucking into afternoon teas. Like weddings and celebrations. Like reading and sketching and reflecting on what I want to weave next. As I say, it’s been great.
The last segment of my long summer break was spent at The Booth in Shetland, where I had a two-week residency. It was a very welcome opportunity to reflect on my creative work and ponder new possibilities. I am not going to share those reflections publicly, but I did notice something about the ideas that I was considering: namely, that I had just the right spread of ideas for establishing some creative momentum. By spread, I mean across time, or developmental stage.
Gallery of summer
I took three broad ideas with me for consideration: two that I have been thinking about for some time already and one that is quite new. Of the first two, one is almost oven-ready. That is, I had pondered it enough to know what I wanted to try and just needed the detail of how to take it to the loom. In Shetland I had the time to work out that detail. The other is also much pondered, but I needed to gather some visual material to make the idea more concrete. In Shetland I had the time to gather the material and start to think through processes that could eventually get me to the loom. The third idea is a newer one: a concept I hadn’t considered exploring through weave before, and I had no idea what that exploration might look like. And in Shetland I had time to read around the topic and reflect on my reading.
As ideas typically outrun loom time by some considerable margin, it can feel overwhelming to have too many of them. But I realised that I felt myself in a very happy place to have these three potential projects to think about, with their different stages of development giving me an interesting range of work to do. Because it doesn’t always work out like that! When nothing is quite ready for the loom, or everything needs to be woven at once, then having three projects on the go can be a giant headache.
For once, though, the pacing felt just right. I always had something to work on, and – crucially – I could bring back three projects, each nudged along to the next stage. That ‘next’ is perhaps the most important thing as I dive into a busy autumn season, juggling a host of different commitments. Right now I am finishing up something on the loom, I have the next warp lined up and ready to go, and more ideas behind it in the queue: this is the momentum I need to keep my creative practice afloat as the bustle of post-summer crowds in.
Long summer was posted by Cally on 9 September 2026 at https://callybooker.co.uk
