The first day of February, the author Austin Kleon posted a simple downloadable PDF on his Substack newsletter. I downloaded it because I thought, maybe this is simple enough for me to follow. The idea is to take the thing you want to get better at and do a little bit of it every day. February is the shortest month and also 28 days makes a nice 7 x 4 grid. I thought I’d try it and the fact that I was trying to finish the rocks tapestry didn’t hurt my motivation.
As Kleon’s poster says, you just practice every day and when you do, you put an X in the box. No rules about how long you have to practice or what practice even means. Just do it.
“Weave every darn day”* becomes concrete when you can use a red Sharpie to mark off the days that you sat down at the loom and worked on that tapestry. I found the marking through the days especially satisfying when I used a marker and red was the best. There were four days in February that I didn’t weave on the rocks tapestry. On the 28th I cut it off the loom.
I believe that this sort of consistent practice is the way we get better at things. I am not historically great at following things like resolutions or even tapestry diaries that require me to weave something every single day. I think I have that potential in me, but right now I’m taking it one month at a time.
One of Rebecca’s tapestry diary pieces woven with handspun. With almost no official tapestry in this weaving, it was a joyous watching of the handspun color change as I wove them in one pick at a time.
There aren’t rules about this. In fact I think it might be important not to have rules. The only rule for me was to start. I suppose it is about your personality and paying attention to what interests you. It is easy these days to get distracted by chaos and worry and since we can’t do anything about a lot of it, spending time making something is a valuable contribution to mental health as well as beauty and harmony in the world. So practice more and you’ll get better.
You can find Austin Kleon’s (author of Keep Going and Steal Like an Artist) Substack HERE. And if you’re curious about that tapestry I cut off thanks in part to that suggestion from Kleon and a red Sharpie, I am sharing more about it on Patreon. The cutting off video is coming up this weekend for members in tiers 2 and 3. You can find my Patreon HERE.
That leads me to ask, does it matter what “get better” means (or Austin’s phrase, if we suck less)? It doesn’t matter. Right now for me, the process is far more important than the product. As those of you on Patreon will see when you watch my cutting off video of Rocks 1, emotional responses to the finished project can be unexpected. But I maintain that the process, especially in times of anxiety and stress, is more important.
Go practice some. Things will feel better when you make something. If you want to try this way of getting yourself started, either make your own calendar page or just find the extra calendar the Nature Conservancy or Audubon sent you last year and find a red marker. Mark off every day you start even if you only work on your project for 5 minutes. You did it.
*Tommye Scanlin’s mantra is often heard among tapestry weavers. See more about that in last week’s blog post.