On mastery- more questions than answers...

In response to my post about "thinking", someone made the comment about obtaining mastery "if that's what one wants to do". Which got me thinking about what exactly mastery is. What does it mean to be a master?

It occurs to me that we can point to some forms of mastery. We can look at an athlete, a musician, a fine artist, a dancer, and say that they produced something flawless. But can we say that about a novel? A dissertation? A composition? A theorem? It seems the products of our hands are far more likely to be objectively considered perfect than the products of our minds.

So what does it mean, then, to obtain "mastery"? Is it the act of producing a flawless object, or is it the journey required to produce that object? Can one be separated from the other?

And when does one become a "Master"? Is it a title one assumes on one's self? Is it a title one accepts from one's peers? Or from one's students? Or does true Mastery come when one accepts that one knows nothing? (Or perhaps one should not write blog posts when watching "Kung Fu Panda".)

Is Mastery even something one can seek? Or does the very act of seeking it nullify it?

What do you think?

Interlude- Drawnwork and Needlelace

The shift is very slow going. I'm possibly intimidated by the scope of the project, or possibly the actual size of the panels that need to be embroidered. The motifs themselves move quickly- 40 minutes or so. So I should be much further along, but I'm trying not to feel too guilty about it.

It occurred to me that perhaps I needed to do something smaller for a break, so I could finish something and feel like I accomplished things. I have a tendency to choose huge projects requiring hundreds of hours, so I needed to do something smaller.

I was considering the categories for Athena's Thimble, and realized I still had no ranking in 4 of them- drawn/open work, lacis, needlelace, and padded work. I had started working on a raised-work bee at Pennsic, and I may go back to that. But I decided to give drawn thread work a try.

I began by taking a piece of 3.5 ounce linen (approx. 80 threads per square inch) and remove 6 threads together. This may have been slightly more than I wanted, but I wanted it to be visible. I did a hem stitch to create a half-inch hem, and then went back and worked the drawn threads in both directions, creating, in theory, little boxes. Somehow, I got a torque in the material, so my lines slant- this may be a result of tension, hemming, or of removing too many threads. I should experiment in the future. I then decided to add a simple needlelace border, using 40/2 linen thread. Ideally, I would like to use 60/2, or perhaps 90/2, but I couldn't find those in my stash. the 120/2 was simply too lightweight too work. Overall, I'm happy with how my border came out, but it is a little "thick", probably due to the thread weight. The border was worked by making bars and covering with a buttonhole stitch.