slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Letting go

    I’m in bed with my laptop, endless coughing, sucking on cough drops, and drinking a variety of hot liquids today. So I figured that I may as well do a little blogging.

    Along with a bunch of my stuff that was clogging up my storage, I let go of my self-elected leadership of the Greensboro Fiber Guild. It is nice to get together with my fiber artist friends now and then, but I felt like it wasn’t going to go where I hoped and it felt better to honestly say I’m done trying. At least I did try. I used the excuse of getting my last class in my art degree program done. That was truthful, because the class I registered for requires an enormous amount of research and written and presentation work. Our first class was canceled because of icy weather, and I read a huge amount of pages about art exhibitions, and was trying to deal with getting together outside of class for some group work, when I realized that spending sixteen weeks of my precious life in stress-filled misery to graduate in May was not worth putting all this effort into a subject that was surprisingly boring to me. Plus I hate group work with the intensity of a thousand suns. So I’m dropping the class.

    My loom is in the living room, and I’m slowly, slowly, slowly inching forward on getting it warped up for a new project. The only way I could move forward was to let go of my original plan, and change to a plan that wasn’t as efficient but excited me. I’m going to weave some fine overshot scarves with 10/2 black mercerized cotton and hand-dyed silk. I almost finished measuring the warp yesterday, when I finally let go of the idea of charging ahead no matter how I felt and went to bed.

    I’ve been trying to find an inexpensive way to travel to India Flint’s workshop on Madeline Island, Wisconsin but it just ain’t happening. The prices keep increasing, and I’m not going to book the flight for a while yet anyway. Maybe something will change for the better.

    If I don’t get into Paper and Book Intensive, I’ll go to Focus on Book Arts again in Forest Grove, Oregon. It will be about the same amount of money for half the amount of time, but good instructors and classes and an awesome little town. Or maybe I’ll just do the one trip to Wisconsin this year.

    Now I’d like to let go of a large amount of congestion in my chest. Time for hot tea and the vaporizer.

  • Paper and Book Intensive

    Now is the time of year that most of the class and workshop schedules come out for 2013, and it has been making me crazy! I am so addicted to these retreats. I realized that I am not going to be able to do Art-is-You Petaluma again this year. Too much is going on either at work or in my personal life during those times. And taking this workshop with India at the Madeline Island School of the Arts ain’t exactly cheap money-wise (but, oh, the riches I expect to gather from it!), leaving me with little to work with financially, since I don’t do these retreats on credit. Well, actually I did the last one on credit and broke my rule, but I don’t plan to break it again.

    So I just up and decided that the Paper and Book Intensive was way too terrific and too much of a bargain to pass up this year. Amazing teachers and an all inclusive price for lodging and meals for 10 days, on a beautiful oxbow lake close to Lake Michigan, and a serious book arts curriculum where I can learn some skills and knowledge about historical book binding as well as art design. The airfare is not horrible, and it is one long day’s trip if I really had to drive it. It would probably be cheaper to fly. It is cheaper to fly to Grand Rapids, which is a closer airport, than to Chicago! I’m beginning to see that the biggest airports don’t always have the best prices.

    Here’s the kicker – I announced on Facebook that I had applied to PBI and my friend Judy who I met at Journalfest in 2010 and roomed with at Focus on Book Arts said that she had too! Judy and I will make great roommates.

    It’s not a done deal yet. I’ve applied and I have to be accepted. I hope that it happens because between this and the five days with India Flint my art is going to be kicked up several notches this year.

  • The “Whatever” Book

    My good friend and mentor Susanne Martin lend me her marbling vat, supplies, and expertise the day after Christmas and after eight hours at her place I came home with quite a few nice sheets of marbling. I brought along a stack of colorwashed papers that I was mostly disappointed with, and captured the leftovers in each vat to rescue the papers. There were other people marbling also, so I was able to print with some colors that I would not have chosen, and get ideas from their choices.

    It led me to finally, finally produce a blank journal this past weekend. What was funny is that I used the rescued papers for this book, my favorite one, and my least favorite one. This is why I find it difficult to get rid of anything – I have found a perfect match for mistakes or disappointments so many times.

    The book cover is upcycled from a novel titled “Eden’s Lost.” I left the title on the spine barely visible. I like to retain a bit of the original book somewhere when I upcycle it. The binding is longstitch; the paper is Stonehenge. Dictionary page entries collaged on the cover (inside and out) are for “whatever” and words with “when” and “where.” I call it the “Whatever” book because the pages are suitable for whatever you’d like to do with it, but I also chose that word because I had just read that the word “whatever” had been voted the most annoying word for several years in a row. I can understand why, but sometimes I get annoyed at the contortion of a perfectly fine word’s meaning and wish to restore its reputation. I guess that it is part of my love affair with words.

  • 2012: The year of Ireland and sputtering ovaries

    This, my 51st year on this go-round on Earth, was a roller coaster ride! I have also discovered, in looking back, that I really did not blog much.

    In January, my focus was on healing. I had surgery in two places, my left wrist and my left palm. It took longer than I expected to heal, but I decided that I couldn’t wait any longer to play with some dye and fabric. I also painted this acrylic piece, unusual for me to paint on canvas, but it was an unusual time. I reintroduced myself to a sewing machine, inspired by the work of Jude Hill and her students, because I could not hand-stitch. These boros fascinate me – weaving strips of cloth and stitching them together pushes my buttons on so many levels.

    In February, I celebrated my 51st birthday, my 7th blogiversary, and began obsessively planning our trip to Ireland. I also started weaving on my loom again, and put together a couple of little books, both of which belong to new owners now.

    March was mainly focused on my paying job, as it often is. I wasn’t well enough to tackle the enormity of the garden clean-up to get the Back Forty going again full on, but I enjoyed the time I had left with my buddy Guido.

    April was full of menopausal craziness and anticipating the big trip ahead, but I did take a few great photos of my hometown and nearby sites.

    May was seriously all about Ireland. I couldn’t possibly pick only two of my favorite photos to post here, so go to the posts. We spent our 25th anniversary between Kenmare and a beautiful inn on the seacliffs of the Dingle Peninsula. Our journey left me with a heartache to go back, and we both agreed that we will start planning for our retirement there.

    June: I guess that I did get a little gardening done.

    We spent the last week of June at Lake Waccamaw.

    In July, I had a great weaving month. Mainly because I played. It is good to play.

    In August, not only did this website get buggered up, my laptop got such a nasty Trojan horse that we finally wiped the hard drive. I decided that I didn’t care that much about having total control over my blog’s design, and began the move to WordPress.com. I have not regretted it.

    September brought the Art-is-You retreat in California, one of the nicest retreats I have attended, and that is saying a lot. Plus I got to hang out for about eight hours with one of my favorite people, exploring Point Reyes National Seashore and eating a great dinner in Petaluma.

    I finished weaving my favorite piece of the year in October, a tapestry based on a photograph I took on a short hike in front of our inn near Dingle.

    It was a tough month for me, though. My depression turned severe. I holed up in my bedroom more than ever. I didn’t write much in public about it. I had to send my buddy Guido over the Rainbow Bridge.

    I did get by with a little help from my friends JoJo and Lauren, who invited me for a beautiful weekend in Wilmington and Wrightsville and Topsail Beaches.

    November: Fun handwoven cuffs, a couple more books, Thanksgiving, hair dyeing, and some emotional healing.

    In December, taking back my kitchen, getting rid of stuff, and turning the dining room into a studio became my obsession. I took on some new responsibility at Elements Gallery. Fun with marbling paper at Susanne’s, which led to this book:

    Hopefully, my art mojo is back to stay for a while in 2013.

  • A bout with agoraphobia

    I am 95% finished with cleaning out the kitchen – I have two drawers to go, and they won’t be bad. It was the ones in which nothing had been touched for months, in some cases, years, and around the trashcan under the sink that had me horrified. The mice found those spots irresistibly peaceful and set up homesteads there, so it was a nasty job to tackle. Fortunately the large majority of the heirloom stuff was boxed up so that the mice couldn’t touch it, and I ended up throwing “away” most everything that wasn’t metal or glass and couldn’t be sanitized. I ended up with three big cabinets and five drawers to use for my art supplies. This was a rare instance in which I actually used bleach and a face mask in cleaning the kitchen. I had had it with the procrastination and I was taking my space back.

    One of the reasons this made me feel so much better is that the kitchen mess was a result of my struggle with depression. I couldn’t face it – it was overwhelming. I was already using a tiny portion of my kitchen to prepare food because I felt that I could control it and keep it reasonably clean. I got to the point where I hated cooking because the kitchen nagged me that it needed major attention every time I walked in there. I bought prepared foods from the farmers’ market to take to potluck parties.

    As a recovering agoraphobic, I realized that I was retreating from spaces in my own house.

    Once I got that (and I’m not sure that I totally understood it until just a couple of days ago), I knew that I had to move past it. That is the only way to deal with agoraphobic behavior. So I took it a little at a time until it was done. I feel so much better. I cooked soup this week and I worked in my new studio space. My kitchen space is smaller and manageable. I am not holed up in my bedroom now, although it does still beckon to me. I’ve set up my laptop in the dining room/studio.

    That’s the thing with agoraphobia, it will slip up on you if you stop paying attention.

    I try to write about my experience with it from time to time, because I think that it is important to talk publicly about mental illness. Agoraphobia is about your personal comfort zone and can take many forms.

    To those of you who can relate to this overwhelming anxiety of moving out of a comfort zone, if you haven’t gotten help, I urge you to either find a doctor or therapist who can help you and if you can’t make yourself go, get a friend to take you. Agoraphobia is a behavioral problem, but I was not able to deal with it on my own until I had taken medication for anxiety and depression for a few years. Now I fly and travel all over the world with great pleasure. I wish you the same.

  • Update

    Hey, I’m still around and I’m okay. I am not a holiday person and I get overwhelmed this time of year, even when all seems right with the world. I promise to write at least one good post this month – if nothing else, I’ll probably do a Festivus post and I do an end-of-the-year post every New Year’s Eve.

    Today and tomorrow I have taken vacation days to seriously tackle deep cleaning and purging my house and yard. It is taking me a month just to do this humongous kitchen with all the hoarded food and jars and many sets of china and crystal and glassware and flatware that we never use. I’ve had two people over to take what they need, and plan to invite another young man who is just moving out on his own to pick out what he wants. Most of the stuff from my husband’s side of the family is going into storage for whatever Sanford heirs want them, our wedding china has been sold, our wedding crystal is being stored or sold, I have boxes of stuff to go to Goodwill, and I’m starting a box of my Aunt Lib’s stuff for my niece who is named after her. Old paperwork has been burned in the woodstove, and what junk that is of no use or can’t be recycled is going in the garbage. I hope to finish the kitchen today, and I have a friend who has volunteered to help me clean up the garden tomorrow.

    When I am done, I’ll have storage room for art supplies, and I have moved my loom into the house from the back building. I’m going to take some time today to finish measuring and maybe winding a warp.

    Back to work.

  • Handwoven cuffs with ceramic buttons

    Handwoven by me – mostly cotton, soft and comfortable. Buttons made by Homeplace Pottery. The buttons are decorative. The cuffs close with velcro. $40 each, on sale at Elements Gallery.


  • Thanksgiving and Buy Nothing Day


    Pecan and pumpkin pies, by Lisa

    I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family and friends like we did. We have four great Southern cooks in my family – Willye Kate, my mother, Lisa, my sister, me, and Brooke, my niece. Here are a few photos from our dinner. Note the cornbread dressing (only my mother’s is acceptable) and the many casseroles, butterbeans, and deviled eggs. This is how we roll in North Carolina.

    Here are my two grand-nephews. Jake is the one modeling the gas mask. He has a great talent for antique and thrift store picking.


    Zeke was lost for two years once. His human mama finally gave up and went to the shelter to adopt another cat. She saw a cat that looked just like him. The animal shelter worker told her that he was not adoptable because he was mean and he was about to be euthanized. The cat was Zeke. I’d love to know what his story was. Believe me, this is NOT a mean cat.

    Today is Buy Nothing Day, a day that I used to celebrate here with much fanfare. Now I am more in favor of supporting small local businesses and supporting your local economy. But there is a lot to be said in favor of rejecting the travesty that the winter holiday season has become. Driven by sales, some people actually claim that they ARE spending family time by camping with the kids in front of Walmart or other big box stores on Thanksgiving in order to be first through the doors at midnight. This craziness is a family ritual that they want to pass on to their children.

    People, let’s please not go further down this road.

    The positive thing is that the Buy Local movement has spread and the Black Friday nonsense has gotten so nuts that I hear more and more that people are rejecting the pressure to buy buy buy for the holidays and returning Thanksgiving and Christmas to their original meanings. Of course you won’t hear this much in the news. There might be a token reference to the simplicity movement or the local movement. I hear this from friends and family and it makes me feel better.

    Remember how the news media did their best to convince you that the presidential election was still too close to call when quite a few polls and trustworthy, impartial analysts indicated otherwise? It is in their best interest to keep the frenzy of consumerism whipped up in the same way.

    The longer I live, the more I would like to get rid of most of my stuff and just spend my money on the essentials and experiences. Really, how much do we need? I live better than probably 95% of the world and I am probably considered to be lower middle class in the United States. If you’re thinking about giving me a present, please donate the value of my gift to a charity who will truly spend it to help the needy. I will be much happier if you do!

  • Life update

    I think that I’ve pulled myself together again. It’s been a a little over a week since Guido passed on, but really the whole bad situation started last December. In a way, it is a big relief that I no longer have to make the decision, and certainly it is a huge relief not to hear him cry and wonder if it is senility or pain. The last few days he had stopped eating, although he was getting around okay. It was time, and I didn’t want to forcefeed him or pill him or take him back to the vet or watch him starve to death. The vet’s office made a house call and he never had to get off my bed.

    I’m pretty happy about the national election. It went as well as I hoped and a little more. North Carolina continues to spiral downward with a total Republican majority in the house and Senate and governor and lieutenant governor. Yet most of the state offices such as attorney general, etc. remain Democrat. North Carolina is a very strange political state. I am ready to leave here but I am lucky to have a great job that I enjoy so I’ll probably grit my teeth and bear it. At least I live in a university town which is one of the blue spots on the electoral maps. Of course, I still have many issues with Democrats and President Obama and I will remain unaffiliated until they come back from their center right positions.

    I’m proud of myself for getting off my butt and arranging this election night get-together at Sessions in Greensboro. I am not a social gal and generally avoid parties and crowds of people like the plague. But these are my peeps and it was a wonderful occasion to get together with this crowd.

    Art making has ground to a halt and I’ve decided not to try to force it. I’ll make art for myself for a while and see if anything comes out of it that I’d like to put up for sale. In the meantime, I did put three new blank books in the gallery. Looks like I’m going to start doing the computer inventory entry for the gallery soon.

    Oh, and for only the second time in my life (the first being about 20 years ago) I had my hair colored, at Leon’s Beauty School. The base color is “cherry cola” and there are blond streaks on top. I like it a lot – part of my image transformation. I got tired of the fading mousy brown look. I don’t mind gray or white, but I am ready for a change. In 2013 my vision insurance kicks in and I’ll get a funky new pair of glasses. I’m wearing earrings again every day. Hell, at this rate, I might have to invest in some “organic” make-up. I haven’t worn make-up in years. Will dental caps and a chin tuck be far behind? Um, yes. Very, very, very, very far behind.

  • Political rant alert

    We received our first robocall of the day right after 9 a.m., equating same sex marriage with the destruction of America. You know, I don’t want to live in a liberal bubble, unaware of the crazy things that many people believe. But honestly, there is no freakin’ way to avoid it and I’ve had my fill of it. I find it interesting that as an independent, I get the most calls from the far right, and they are overwhelmingly negative about the Democrats and talk about extreme positions when they do talk about their agenda. The few calls I get from Democrats talk about why their candidate is best for the job. This is a big reason why I will never, ever vote for a Republican. The moderate Republicans have been run out of the primaries by the Tea Party. Even the centrist Dems are fighting for their careers in North Carolina. As a new independent this presidential election, I am definitely seeing the tactics of both sides, and yes, there is a lesser evil by FAR. I’m going to vote early today for a straight Democratic ticket. I know it won’t matter because the redistricting damage resulting from our last election ensures that we’ll end up with a far right state government majority. I get to retire in 16 years, hopefully (if I still have a job as a state employee), and then I am getting the hell out of here.