Yearly Wrap-Up, 2023

I decided to write my yearly wrap-up here and copy it to Substack, since it’s part of a set, so to speak. I didn’t write nearly as much on the blog last year – much of what was in my head was related to grief and writing on that subject doesn’t come easily to me. I grieved for my brother-in-law brother in my heart Tim all year long and I haven’t finished grieving yet. He was not just a relative; he was one of our dearest closest friends. On top of that I worried about my sister and her grief and her loneliness and her trauma, which looked to be overwhelming. She is healing now. Then my own life transition loomed ahead of me suddenly.

It was a tough year, but it had its good times.

In January, Sandy had half of his thyroid removed. At the time the docs said it was not cancerous, and then later said, oopsy, it is, but it ain’t that bad so let’s look at it again at this time next year! He’s had a year in which he has been forced to take meds at the same time every day, which he’s never really done, so that’s been a transition for him.

I delivered my tapestries to the Folk Art Center near Asheville in early January and I did an online stitching class and enjoyed some random slow stitching for the next six months. To my shock, one of my tapestries sold even though I had put a high price on it because I didn’t really want to sell it! It was titled “A Place You’ve Never Been” and was woven from naturally dyed silk thread. It now resides in California somewhere, I guess.

I turned 62 in February and Sandy threw me a small surprise party at our latest place to go for celebrations, Elm St. Grill. I was happy to turn 62 because it meant that if something happened to my job, I could apply for early Social Security if I needed it. Dunt dunt DUNNNNN.

In March, I went to the reception for the tapestry show with my sister and we enjoyed a little bit of shopping and eating out in Asheville. I bought a graphic art program and came up with some tapestry designs using my photos and different filters. At the time I was so excited and inspired! Just looking at this post (https://slowturnstudio.wordpress.com/2023/03/05/sunday-morning-coffee-pot-post-80/) makes me want to quit writing and warp up one of the other looms for the water tapestries. At the end of March, Lisa held a memorial party for Tim at the lake.

We did our usual Easter at Lake Waccamaw in April and some of our friends joined us. It was a rainy weekend but we had a good time and when it was great weather we went to Cape Fear Winery and Distillery. I started doing collage with old book covers and parts again.

May is traditionally our big trip month. I didn’t have the money to carry forth my plan to go to Scotland but we did have the airline miles and budget to go to Mexico, so we flew to Queretaro and then stayed in San Miguel de Allende for a week. https://slowturnstudio.wordpress.com/category/mexico/ It was our 36th wedding anniversary. I learned a big lesson from our trip to Portugal in 2022 and made sure that we had plenty of time for rest and we called Ubers to take us uphill.

Here I made the acquaintance of Jorge the Beautiful Mexican Beetle, who I later based a couple of small tapestry designs on when I went to the Tapestry Weavers South retreat and the Birds, Bugs, and Butterflies workshop led by Mary Jane Lord https://slowturnstudio.wordpress.com/2023/06/04/birds-bugs-and-butterflies/ in early June at the Yadkin Valley Fiber Center in Elkin, NC.

We spent another week at Lake Waccamaw in mid June where the weather was rainy but produced some awesome rainbows.

July was a crazy month. I finished the Jorge tapestries and started “Sissy and Rascal Share the Sunbeam.” Sandy had a stroke! I took him to the ER just in time and he got that clot busting injection and made a full recovery. I went to a transformative week long workshop with Bryant Holsenbeck, an environmental fiber artist who I’ve wanted to study with for years, at John C. Campbell Folk School.

August was full of doctor appointments and hopeful garden plantings and fig picking and the beginning of a new semester at work. I told my supervisor that I was feeling so much better because they had been so kind in working with me to recover from my depression and anxiety that I thought I’d try to stick it out for a couple more years. Dunt dunt DUNNNNN.

In mid September came another really lovely retreat, this time with Edwina Bringle, that fabulous artist who has taught so many artists to weave. This was a true retreat at a mountaintop venue called Wildacres near Little Switzerland. She gathered a group of fiber artists of all persuasions and we all did our thing together – weaving tapestry, weaving on floor looms, spinning, crocheting, knitting, needle felting, embroidery.

When I returned to work that Monday, I received a call from the budget director in our college first thing that morning. The powers that be decided to move my position to a revolving door job in another department that was mainly a finance and budget job, but without the upgrade in salary. After trying to negotiate a time frame of June 30, 2024 for the shift, the compromise was Jan. 1, 2024. So first, I submitted an FMLA request for my panic disorder, and then I began my retirement application.

October: a trip to Oak Island with one of my oldest friends during Halloween. Students are marching and rallying about the budget cut process (“academic program review”) at UNCG. Note the sign in the middle, which made me cry. Faculty begin organizing in earnest.

November: a wonderful weekend workshop in Wilmington with a tiny metal cover book on a beaded chain necklace by one of my favorite teachers, Leslie Marsh. Close enough that I spent the weekend with my sister, but stayed overnight in a Wilmington hotel because the weather was so nasty. I never posted about it but here’s some photos. I entered three collages in a local artist show.

December: full of retirement celebrations and lunches. My GOODNESS. What a lot of love and appreciation I was shown. Then Sandy and I went to Lake Waccamaw for a family Christmas on Dec. 27, in which we had a very good time. https://slowlysheturned.substack.com/p/ho-ho-ho

And beginning tomorrow, I will get what I wished for on this blog for years – an early retirement. Sort of a “careful what you wish for” djinni lesson, but I think it will be okay.

Once again, the problem with embedding links. So from now on, if you’d like to follow my personal journal blog posts, follow me here: https://slowlysheturned.substack.com/

Happy 2024 to you all!