The Rug That Wanted To Be A Fish

It all started with a trip to the library in Florida. Browsing...browsing...nothing of interest. How about a video? Comedies...dramas...how to's. Say, here's an interesting one, "How to Make a Braided Wool Rug." I take it home and watch it carefully. The downsides? You need to purchase a special tool, and wool material is pretty pricey. The reason this idea appealed at all was the shabby and getting shabbier condition of the oval, wool, braided rug at the cabin. I'd priced new ones and they were in the many hundreds of dollars and even into the thousands. For the cabin? I don't think so.
The following summer, on a visit to the Ben Franklin in Hoyt Lakes, I notice a sale on cotton fabrics. $1.00 a yard? I'm all over that. Lovely pinks, red flowers, white backgrounds, blues - this is going to be so cheery. How about I take the fabrics, tear them into strips, braid the strips, and make myself a cotton braided rug? Genius!
Then followed many hours of tearing fabric. After that step was completed it was time to turn the strips into braids. You know braids - like a little girl's hair. Three strips, hold the left one, right over center, left over right. Gotta be careful to turn those frayed edges in to create a nice smooth edge. Then figuring out how to connect the end of one braid to the beginning of the next so it would hold tightly and be invisible. On and on and on. Feet of braid, yards of braid, miles of braid. Enough braid to get to the moon and back. OK, that should be about enough.
Now to go about attaching the braid to itself so it will form a round shape. How hard could this be? Just take strips of fabric and use them like thread to "sew" the braid into an oval or a circle. Everything was going just fine at first. Yes, there's the center, now I just have to keep the tension of the thread loose and it'll be a done deal. Wait a minute, the edges are turning up. Maybe the tension is too tight. I take out all the connecting fabric and start again. The next try...same thing. I pull it all out again. Finally, after the third time, with great attention to fabric tension and the edges still turning, I decide that perhaps I'll turn this into a big, floppy hat. But no, much to my chagrin, after the initial turning up and widening out, the "rug" starts to narrow. What the...? I loosen the fabric thread tension even more. It's still narrowing until, for no apparent reason, it starts to widen again. OK, the rug is in charge and I'm the obedient creator. Finally, I begin to run out of braid. What have I created?
If I take the center and fold it up, it actually will stand and looks like a soft sculpture of a vase. So, this is the rug that wanted to be a vase. It remained my artistic vase for several years, until it found it's way to the bottom of a drawer where it remained peacefully for several more years.
Last year, in a fit of cleaning, I found it again and took it out. Holding it upside down by it's small center, it suddenly became completely clear what this rug was, after all. Small at one end, widening, narrowing and widening again? Hey, if this had a mouth and an eye, this would be a fish. What's more appropriate to have on your wall at a cabin? Of course you're a fish. What else would you be?
So now it hangs peacefully in my bedroom, secure in the knowledge that its' real and appropriate self has been discovered. You know, maybe that's true for people too. It can take quite a bit of time sometimes to acknowledge or find our "meant to be" selves. Or maybe we just change and evolve over time. Philosophy is not my strong suit and the chocolate brownie cookies have to be bagged up for the market tomorrow. The old cabin rug? It's in Don's shed and has been replaced with a multi-colored berber from The Home Dept.