slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    I’m all pleased with myself because I stayed up past 11:00 last night. Also because I was the one who suggested going downtown for First Friday. What does this mean? I must be getting over my physical and mental melaise of the last couple of months! I still slept over nine hours, but that’s okay. It was a good, heavy sleep with many interesting dreams.

    Sandy and I went to an art show honoring John Skau, benefiting Piedmont Land Conservancy. Local artists used the materials that John left behind to make their own works. I talked to his wife Judy and his son Drew, and we all agree that John would have been delighted.

    Then we meandered down Elm St., in and out of antique stores and art galleries, until we reached Artmongerz, probably my favorite gallery if I had to pick one. I love Frank Russell’s found art sculpture, and I like all the other art too.

    Sandy and I had a conversation with Betty Trotter, a mixed media artist whose collage paintings we admired, and she said that there was a half space available in the co-op and encouraged me to apply for it. The price is right and I feel that I would fit in well there, so I may be visiting the gallery manager on Wednesday or Thursday with some of my work. It is a very small space, but almost everything I do is small. It would be wonderful to have a gallery again. I miss Two Art Chicks, but this would be a much more serious involvement, since I would be part of the co-op rather than just having work in the shop. So I am very, very, very excited. I think that it will energize me to get some of this WIPs finished and begin some new projects, especially weaving and bookbinding.

    We also stopped by South Elm Pottery and Gallery (thanks, Greensboro Daily Photo) and spent some very pleasant time talking to Jim and Jane Gutsell. Sandy won a gift card at work that was burning a hole in his pocket, and we both have a weakness for beautiful pottery, so I bought a Japanese inspired cup and bowl, and Sandy bought two small vases/bottles. I think that he plans to use them as bottles – I saw them as bud vases.

    Then we went to Natty Greene’s, had an interesting conversation with an unemployed stand-up comedian at the bar, and watched the passerby on the street from our table at the window, drinking great local brew with our dinner.

    Now that it is getting warmer, I’m going to weave off the fabric that has been gathering cobwebs on my loom in the studio. I want to make some scarves and pretty towels from all the wonderful cotton yarns that I bought a couple of years ago. I have small tapestries. I have many old books to upcycle into journals, books ready to bind with handmade paper and painted papers. I have woven hats that I can sell, and I could weave some more hatbands for them. I have random weave baskets. I have some beaded jewelry from my beading phase. I think that it would be pretty easy to fill up that small space – I may have to make or buy some displays. Then I’ll be moving into art quilting, and fusing ALL of these things together. WHEEEEEEE!

  • Five years

    Ah well, you can tell that this blog is not as important to me these days, since I let my 5th blogiversary blow right on by without even thinking about it.

    Part of it is what many bloggers say after writing a blog for this long – how many times do I want to write about basically the same stuff? In my case, I started this particular blog as a garden journal and as therapy. I was changing my life a little at a time and journaling made my path clearer.

    Eventually, when this blog became more of a project to support and interact with my readers, I found myself connected with a huge network of foodies, organic farmers, urban homesteaders, and those who were eager to begin moving in that direction. I found that there was a growing number of blogs and websites and discussion forums out there that did a lot better job of educating and supporting newbie gardeners and sustainable food advocates than me, and that made me very happy. I backed off the urban homesteading subject and concentrated on my artwork.

    Because I was tired of writing about how to blanch peas and where I was buying my seeds from this year. I’ve learned a lot, but my life hasn’t changed much as far as food goes. I make the same dishes, pretty much. I still grow as much as my space and body will allow in my back yard, and I buy as much as I can from local farmers and food artisans. What I can’t grow, I buy at the farmers market. What I can’t buy at the farmer’s market, I buy at the local natural food co-op. After that, I go to the grocery or drug store. I have been able to avoid going to a mainstream supermarket for months at a time. I can afford to do this because I don’t buy a lot of processed food and the quality of my food is a priority for me. Food is still just as important. Food writing, not so much.

    I’m a secretary, and I’m proud of it. I’m not rich, and I don’t really want to be. I want to be comfortable, with a car that runs, and a small house with a garden, and in good health. Voluntary simplicity is a philosophy that I am very comfortable with. It’s nice not to worry about always chasing a job that pays more money but creates more stress. I’m satisfied. I’m not interested in making voluntary simplicity into a contest to see how little I can buy, though.

    Here is a blog that I just found through Grist: Possum Living. The author wrote a book about frugal living back in the 70s, and it has been reprinted. I like Dolly a lot and plan to keep reading this one.

    I wouldn’t be able to raise my own meat and poultry, since I am too soft-hearted to kill an animal. It takes very little time for me to fall in love with an animal. I also fall in love with trees, rocks, sticks, and coffee cups. Ask my husband. But I admire those who do raise their food animals with humane care. I don’t think that vegetarianism is for everyone, but I admire vegetarians too. I fall somewhere in the middle – I eat meat, but I am highly particular about it.

    The one trend that I see throughout the years of writing this blog is the tendency to care more about my priorities and less about how other people perceive them. I don’t waste a lot of time listening to people who talk about reality shows or fashion or whatever. If something or somebody gets on my nerves, I assess if they are really essential to my well-being or happiness, and if they are not, I avoid them rather than wondering if something is wrong with me for preferring solitude. I’m not willing to try that hard any more. And I used to, boy, did I used to. I tried so hard to be “normal,” to care about the things that “normal” people did. Now I think that “normal” people can adjust to me if they want to, and if they don’t, that’s okay as long as they don’t insist on me joining their club.

    Maybe that is simply growing comfortable in my own skin, finally, or maybe it is more of a willingness to be selfish. I was about to say that maybe it is a matter of aging, but I see too many older people who are caught up in consumerism and what it means to be a “real” American and in the “right” group. This is probably the kind of thing that I’ll be thinking and writing about more as I ascend the final year of my forties. Whether I’ll do it here or not, I don’t know. I’m on Facebook and Flickr a lot more nowadays, and those applications seem to be serving my needs. I can’t imagine totally getting away from being online though. I’m definitely hooked on that.

  • Random weave basket

    Looking at the computer hurts my head. Typing on the computer hurts my hands. But weaving this random weave basket from the Virginia creeper vines in the Back Forty was a very pleasant activity yesterday! I’ll finish another that I started in a few minutes.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    Um, remember my little plan to go natural for menopause? I’m getting hammered by migraines every night, beginning with headaches every afternoon. Plus, my new laptop is all boogered up somehow – today we’ll have to back up the files and reset it to factory settings. I’m on Sandy’s PC while he sleeps late.

    I’m going to try to plant some peas and lettuce now that I have a row cover, and do a little more cardboard mulching. Unfortunately I can’t do much because last weekend’s work set my hands back a few weeks in recovery. Yes, that’s right, I said handS, plural.

    So I hope that this weekend gets better. I don’t feel very positive right now but after I finish my little pot of coffee I hope that the world will look brighter and that I’ll be able to stand the light.

  • Back Forty update

    Divided and replanted about three dozen garlic youngsters sprouted from some forgotten garlic from 2 years ago. I think that they are a kind of hardneck, so I’ll have scapes in May if that’s the case! If not, they are silverskin, which I like just fine.

    Found some parsley I’d forgotten about too. It was hidden by a wicked infestation of English ivy that is going to be my major nemesis this year, I’m afraid. However, that parsley survived the cold much better than the other parsley did, so there you go. Nothing is totally good or evil in the garden. Except poison oak and ivy. Haven’t found a virtue for them yet.

    I ordered a few seeds and some Reemay from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange today. I realized that I will really need to do the tunnels this year to protect my seedlings from critters. I ordered a lettuce mix of sixty varieties (whee! I just love those mystery mixes), Nankeen cotton, which is a coppery brown, and Cossack pineapple ground cherries. Anne-Marie gave me a few seeds – she had loads of different pepper, eggplant, and tomato seeds but I am not starting seeds indoors this year. I took a few pumpkin, cucumber, and lime and Genovese basil seeds.

    I laid down cardboard on the paths where weeds tend to come up and Sandy put down new pine needles. We switched to pine needles last year when a flood ran through the Back Forty and washed all the wood chips that I’d just busted my ass to put down to the side of the house. Later we had another flood and the pine needles stayed put, and it makes Sandy happier about the back yard, so unless I see a real decline in the soil we’ll keep using the pine needles. I’m trying to decide whether to use wheat straw or compost as mulch for the vegetable beds. I’d have to buy the compost since I don’t have enough. Maybe I’ll do both to see which is better.

    Transplanted some feverfew volunteers to the strip between the sidewalk and the street. I send my toughest invaders up there, as long as they are pretty.

    I am achy and sore, but this weekend’s work made me happy. Ask me that around 7 a.m. and see if you get the same answer.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    We are all thrilled here in central North Carolina because the weekend’s highs are supposed to be in the 50s-60s. I’m going to get out into the Back Forty this weekend, do some cleanup left over from last year, and prepare some beds for spring planting. I have heavy wire hoops in place over a few beds for plastic and Reemay. Maybe I’ll buy some and try to do some salad greens in the winter beds.

    Sandy and I are cooking together now on weekends. Last Sunday I made goat cheese omelets, then he joined me in the kitchen where I was making spaghetti sauce for the coming week, and I guided him through making beef stew in the slow cooker. Most of the ingredients were local and/or organic.

    Later that evening, we made a scallop pasta dish that I don’t have a recipe for – it is one of those dishes that has developed through the years out of ideas from other recipes. We marinated the scallops in olive oil, lime juice, and garlic, sauteed broccoli florets and sweet onions in some of the marinade, added a cube of frozen basil and pine nuts, added the scallops, then topped it off with feta and parmesan cheese. This is a dish that we save for special occasions.

    I turned 49 years old on Ash Wednesday, and celebrated it on Facebook all day by posting the things that I would give up for Lent, which included:

    sobbing in my office
    crack
    watching NASCAR
    fried butter
    Bud Light
    running from the FBI
    saying the word “durn”
    kumquats
    self-denial
    pretending that your behavior is not slightly disturbing

    I could have gone on like this all day every day. In real life, however, I am giving up birth control pills. We’ll see how THAT goes after 30 years of estrogen supplements! What are you giving up for Lent?

  • Cardoon embroidery update

    Background finished. Maybe looking at this will jumpstart me to begin the applique on the cardoon flower, stalk, and stems, which is my next step. Then I’ll begin stitching the “thistle” part.

    Right now, I’m going home at night and reading about art and quilting and embroidery instead of doing it. But it’s all good. I just need to break out of this soon.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    This Saturday we woke up to snow on the ground. Again. Every frickin Friday for the past three weeks it’s been some kind of frozen weather. At least we don’t have three feet like our neighbors to the north. But everyone over the age of 12 seems to be pretty much sick of it around here.

    Last Saturday the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market was closed for the second Saturday in a row, and it really should not have been. The roads were not bad. So Donna Myers and Greensborough Coffee collaborated to host a “Fair Weather Farmers Market” on State St. on Sunday. Sandy and I went and purchased cheese, beef, and eggs. It was a great idea that I believe they are planning to do again, but on weekdays when I can’t go.

    I’ve been very lazy at home this week. Busy at work, though. We’re in the middle of graduate school application review and course scheduling for next year. I come home and tend to be in bed by 8:30 or 9 p.m.! I don’t quite know what’s up with that, but I figure that I must need it. A lot of times I am content to lay there, hug Theo, and just let my mind drift. Or if I fall asleep, I wake up in the middle of the night and read for a while. I attribute this to the prolonged cold weather and also my sinus infection, which is much better but probably has run me down quite a bit despite all the vitamins and neti pots and Mucinex.

    So I’m pretty boring right now, don’t have much to say. I’ll post the latest update on my embroidery later.

    An interesting group on Facebook has organized – Join the Coffee Party Movement. They are quite seriously developing a movement for progressives. I recently ditched the Democrats so I’ll follow this to see if they actually get something going. The Green Party lost me when they cost Al the election in 2000. I’d like to see a strong grass roots movement of something to counteract the Tea Party crazies. I assumed that the tea partiers would crash and burn under their own ridiculous paranoia, but in the same country where Dubya was elected twice I should know better. Americans are such sheep. The majority of us want to be told what to think for convenience’s sake.

    Sandy and I will probably head down to our neighborhood corner bar, College Hill Sundries, for the first time in a long, long time later this afternoon. They are having a fundraiser for Save College Hill. We have a great lawyer for our side, but of course we need to pay him. And the signs and flyers all cost money too, but I believe that it has all been money well spent. I just wish that our city councilperson, Zach Matheny, would advocate for his constituents in this matter. By all indications, he might even vote for the developer, which would be a real blow for true democracy, considering that the vast majority of residents oppose this particular development and he knows it. I think that he will definitely be voted out if he doesn’t vote on our side, because the rest of the neighborhoods in his district are watching too. One can only hope that he will pay attention and do the right thing.

    Latest addiction: Mahjong Titans, that came with my Windows 7 games. Augggghhh. What a time waster.

    Thinking about the garden for this year. Cherokee purple tomatoes, lots of butterbeans and peas again, Choppee okra if I can get it past the rabbit, hot and sweet peppers in pots. Cotton – Erlene’s green and Nanking, a copper colored one, both from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Garlic and leeks. I believe that I’ll buy tomato and pepper plants from Handance Farm this year instead of growing from seed. This will be the first year in a long long time that I have not started seeds indoors. I will be able to harvest my asparagus if it survives the cold and the weeds I let grow in it this year. I have enjoyed Tuscan kale all winter, but now with the snow covering everything for so long the rabbit has eaten the rest of it.

    The flock of robins that showed up yesterday is totally confused. They thought that they left the snow behind. They bombed my car with bird crap yesterday to the point that I could not possibly drive it to the car wash without washing it first. I mean, it is covered. At least maybe this snow will soften it up so that I can sponge it off when the weather warms above freezing and then I’m parking on the street for a while, out from under the tree. Damn birds. It’s a good thing that I don’t need to drive this car often.

    Okay, time to go to the market and then I promised myself some art time.

  • Cardoon embroidery update

    Step 2 – stitched the outline of the design, stitched the layers down with random stitches, and whipped stitch around the edges.

  • Another snow day

    This time my place of work closed for the entire day and announced it before we all left for work. I woke up earlier than usual, though. Any other day I’d be lolling in bed, groaning about leaving my warm cocoon. We’re getting a slick coating of ice over this snow now. Bad winter weather in North Carolina usually means freezing rain. We don’t get snow as often as ice. Today we’re getting both.

    I’m not especially happy, although I don’t mind having a day off. It’s that I’m bored, and that I’d like to go to the farmers’ market tomorrow morning, and even if it is open this crappy freezing rain is supposed to last through tomorrow. And there’s an artist talk and opening reception at Weatherspoon Art Museum tonight that I’d like to attend. It’s just walking distance around the corner from me, but if the roads are dangerous I’m afraid that they will cancel and the artist will go home. His name is Leonardo Drew and he uses paper and found objects in sculpture and assemblage. It is not often that I am actually interested in an artist at Weatherspoon, but I saw an installation going up on Wednesday and it looks fascinating.

    Sandy left for work about thirty minutes ago and I hope that his journey is safe there and back tonight at 7 pm. At least he doesn’t work second shift any more.

    I think that I’ll have my own art retreat day right here. I’ll polish off the leftovers from this week for meals, and let the cooking and housecleaning go. Play my new Lyle Lovett CD, listen to podcasts, This American Life, and Anne of Avonlea. Take a long hot bath and inhale some steam. During and in between, I’ll be stitching and painting and maybe bookbinding. I started this project this morning. I’ll be playing with this one, really trying to let myself go wild. The first step is to stitch the outline of the cardoon flower over these layers of painted fabric and cheesecloth, then I’ll tear this water-soluable paper away and add fabric pieces, stitching, and beads.