The Power of the Mantra.

Recently (as in "in the last few months"), while exploring new techniques and learning things and doing pattern weaving as well as teaching stuff, it occurred to me how much I mantra-mutter to myself when I am learning, or doing more complex things (or even not so complex things that are new).

When I have a new technique, even if it's an easy, repetetive motion, I find that it takes a good while for the thing to imprint itself in my brain deep enough so it runs on itself. Take sprang, for instance - I've been doing the basic interlinking often enough now that I don't have to pay much attention to it anymore. I know how it is supposed to look at each stage of the thread manipulation, so I just watch my fingers dancing their way across the threads, and in case something untoward happens, I can stop and fix it. Double-layer sprang, though, is still a different beast, so when I sit there doing it, I mutter (or at least thought-mutter) "front layer, back layer, front layer, back layer" all the time, all the way through.

The same with knitting. That brioche stuff is still so new to me that there is a little voice singing out to myself "yarnover and slip, brioche knit, yarnover and slip, brioche knit" all the time. I know, from experience, that at some time this voice will not be audible to my inner ear anymore, though it probably will go on somewhere in the back of my brain. Which means that should I mess up and drop out of the sequence, it will be noticed in a timely(-ish, hopefully) manner, so I can stop and fix it.

When I do tablet-weaving, there is a whole bunch of things to mutter to myself - the work sequence, where the main diagonal slants when I turn the tablets this way or that, whether this is a pattern block or background twill, where the edge of the tablets with two dark threads stands. (Top. Band. Bottom. Warp. Top. Band. Bottom. Warp.) If you could hear all the things I think to myself, over and over and over again, your ears would probably bleed. Hell, sometimes mine start to itch from hearing the same things over and over and over again.

I was wondering, at one point, why I do this. Surely it ought to be possible to work a simple thing without telling myself how to do it all the time, for hours and hours?

Turns out... this seems to not be the case. I have often joked (or, let's face it, half-joked) that I have trouble counting to two when working textile techniques. I don't know why I need the mantra-like mumbling to myself most - but I have found that it is keeping me concentrated on the simple, yet still not ingrained task at hand. It makes it easier for me to look and imprint on my mind, again and again, how my threads should look at each specific phase of the manipulation. Much later, this becomes a subconscious thing, but until then, the mumbling helps. A lot.

So I have decided that mantra-mumbling is a wonderful tool to use while learning. (Best, of course, not done loudly enough that your workspace neighbour can participate.) And I have come to terms with needing a while before the little voice goes quieter, and starts to recede, and only goes on unnoticed in some back corner of my head until my fingers make a mess by accident.

What about you? Are you a mumbler too? And has it ever felt weird to you?