extraORDINARY

Lockdown.

A space where I am being unpicked and repurposed.

Shona – a craftswoman. #ShonaMasonMakes

A woven garment and an unpicked dress. Repurposed. In/Complete.

Shona, a recent conversation about being unpicked and repurposed took me to your Facebook post about your new In/Complete boxy jumper … and as I talked I realised that God was very much catching my thought attention! Here’s where that took me! Nicola 💚

The bias binding … an old dress that could have easily been thrown out as of no more use – it had served its time – was worn out … BUT …. with a skilful eye to detail … the Craftswoman unpicks and repurposes it to be the perfect finishing detail on a new garment for a new season.

Like a flourish that completes, perfects, enhances and finishes the new.

That new garment itself is woven by the same skilled Craftswoman … time … effort … energy … creativity … taking the yarns from other skilled people … people skilled in their craft … a collaboration of talent … one relying on the other … none of them knowing what the end of the journey for this yarn would be .. but taking time over the formative stage.

The yarn becomes cloth .. the cloth is cut … the beginning of the final form starts to come together …. but, even here, the garment in its finished form is still unseen … unknown … incomplete …

… although it is seen, known and complete in part … it is not yet what it will finally become … even in the Craftswoman’s eye!

The cloth and the binding come together and are joined by the woollen sleeves of a single yarn – a contrast of textures and colour.

The garment is complete … yet In/Complete …

… the Craftswoman’s original intention was for it to have a big sweeping turtle neck … but something shifted and changed within her and her thoughts changed and the garment became Complete in it’s finished form …

… BUT … the Craftswoman is not yet finished!

She will go on to craft a loose cowl … a separate piece that can added or removed as the seasons shift … making the garment more flexible and more adaptable than perhaps was ever her intent … or even in her wildest imagination for what might become of that yarn when she first saw it … held it … began to dream for what it might be.

Then it will be complete … perhaps for a season … perhaps for ever … perhaps in time it will again be unpicked and repurposed … but for now … it is In/Complete.

And so I am reminded of Father … “This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ‘Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.’ So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him” …

… and I am struck that the clay had became marred … even in the expert potter’s hand … BUT … he unpicked and repurposed it … as seemed best to him …. and I wonder … what became of that pot … what was its final form in that season … did it become something else in a different season … what was its In/Complete journey?

I also am In/Complete. Being unpicked. Being skilfully repurposed.