slowly she turned

Sunday mid-day hot herbal tea post

February 12, 2023

The day is cloudy and chilly and the rain has off and on. I am so frickin lazy these days. Maybe when the weather warms I will be more inclined to leave the house, or do something productive within it. My plan was to go to Lake Waccamaw this weekend, but the forecast looked awful and I finally decided not to go. I have a lot of work to do this time of year anyway, and I don’t like driving all that way and back for just two days. Guess I’ll make a pot of soup.

I guess I’m depressed again. Just kind of blah.

Yesterday I finally went around with the vacuum and cleaned walls and molding and curtains of dust and cobwebs. I installed the four color smart bulbs that I bought several weeks ago and it reminds me of the black light bulbs of my teen years. Mainly we’ll leave them in daylight mode but it’s been fun to tell Alexa to change them to different colors. I guess I get my jollies where I can. The other night when Sandy was gone I had Alexa play Talking Heads and the B-52s all evening. I wonder if my neighbors could hear it. To make up for it I played spa music last night.

I canceled my reservation for the trip to Italy in 2024. It was too far in the future for me to feel comfortable with laying out a big deposit. Inspired by the photos and tales of my friends of going to San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico, I spent a long time researching the cost of going there for a week in May. Turns out that I have enough miles on my United card to cover both of our airfares and there are some nice places in the historic center of town that are affordable for a week’s stay if we split the cost. Sandy is enthusiastic about the idea so I reserved a place that has free cancellation until May 4 or 5. Then I remembered that Sandy had a hard time with the altitude in northern New Mexico. It may be because we went really high up in the mountains of Colorado for the first night on the way there, but it persisted throughout the trip. I am a little nervous about this, but he is on medication for his heart now, and he still wants to go, so I will probably move forward with this plan. I may try to find a place that is a little lower in altitude for the first two days to ease the adjustment.

I’d prefer Europe, but this is doable, and I need a trip to plan and look forward to in the near future.

The gallery sitting last weekend was peaceful and I enjoyed stitching and the few interactions I had with people coming in, so I signed up for that again in two weeks. Next Saturday, I have a massage scheduled, YAY. My neck has finally healed for the most part, but the discomfort never really goes away.

Next week is going to be meeting heavy, but because I didn’t go to the lake and I was able to download Citrix on my new computer, I got most of my data entry done. I’ll still have a really full week, but it won’t be so overwhelming now that’s not hanging over my head. Sometimes I am sad about my decision not to retire this year, but most of the time I realize that I have a good work situation despite the clueless administrative decisions made above the level of my department. If I can hang on for the ride as long as I can, it will be best to keep working. I could always get laid off in a budget cut anyway, and in that case there could be some incentives to retire instead of just quitting.

I’ve also spent a lot of time (for me) in the evenings watching embroidery and slow stitching and mixed media videos, so maybe the next time I post I’ll have some photos to share. I joined the Stitch Club at textileartist.org because they have several workshops by artists that I love, such as Cas Holmes, and some artists/teachers that I am discovering. I know how to do most of the techniques…it is the push and inspiration and structure of a class that I need. I hate taking art classes online, but that’s my reality at the moment and I’m grateful to have that ability.

And I’ve decided to leave the blog on WordPress for now, because I may need to develop the website side of it later. I’ll probably copy it over to Substack from time to time if I end up getting any subscribers there, but for now, this is the place where every post will appear. Mastodon has lost its shine for me, but I don’t miss Twitter either.
Saturday morning coffee pot post

February 4, 2023

Just barely getting it in before noon, because my racing thoughts kept me awake until 3:30 a.m. when I finally gave in and took a Xanax. I can also blame the book I’m reading, When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Penman. It was very hard to put down, even though I know the outcome of my 30+G grandmother Maude’s war to claim her crown from Stephen in the 12th century. Part of the excitement of reading this book is coming across characters who I think I’ve seen somewhere in the family tree on familysearch.org and trying to track them down. Last night it was Miles Fitz Walter. I have so many asshole ancestors, and since they all married into (and battled) each other’s families, it’s a big well of oppressors to drink from. I’m not proud of them, but it’s fun to be able to know something about their lives, which is impossible to know about the middle class and immigrant generations in between other than what can be found in censuses and wills. The day I found Uhtred from “The Last Kingdom” on my tree was a big day!

My thoughts were racing last night because I’m ready to warp up my 16″ Big Sister Mirrix loom the correct way, with heddles and all!, and start another tapestry. I know, I said that I was giving up tapestry. That’s such BS. I say that at least once a year. My problem is that I can’t decide what to weave next. I spent a long time looking through my photos on the computer last night, and I downloaded and then uninstalled Gimp when I saw that it is WAY too complicated for me. I need to find that site where you can upload a photo or drawing and print it out to a larger size on standard copy paper, like a grid, that you put together. I’ve forgotten the name of it. I did come up with a design that I liked based on the background photo of this blog, spent an hour doing alterations to make it into a cartoon, and then lost it. That’s when I uninstalled Gimp.

Anyway, I know that I have some other photos that I took of reflections in the lake so I’m going to look for them this weekend, and actually draw a cartoon this time. I’d like to do something abstract.

I am trying to force myself out of the house so when I got an email from CVA asking for volunteers to gallery sit, I signed up for 2-5 this afternoon. There is a fiber art exhibit from six local artists at the arts center. I was going to take my Mirrix, but since I couldn’t decide on a size last night to prepare it for weaving, I’ll take my stitching.

I know that a lot of my local weaving friends who have been in the area for a long time think badly of CVA for the way they treated one of our own and got rid of a big weaving studio at a time when weaving and fiber arts were making a comeback. Believe me, I am very cognizant of that ugliness and I spoke up about it, and I still would love to know what exactly prompted that terrible decision since they would not discuss it at the time. But now they are lifting a new generation of fiber artists, and those artists had nothing to do with what CVA did to Sandra and the weaving program in Greensboro. I want to support these artists. I am conflicted about supporting CVA but I’m working on letting go of my grudges.

Plus, it’s better than vacuuming these cobwebs I see on the walls and windows of this room right now. That will have to be attended to. It’s been one of those intense work weeks and I’ve been lazy at home, other than cooking once or twice.

Anyway, since I slept so late I need to get in the shower and eat something and go. Yay me, fighting against my agoraphobia!
Sunday evening Smiddicks Post

January 29, 2023

Can’t say that I’ve gotten much accomplished this weekend other than laundry. I looked over this stitching project and realized that life is too short to be compulsive about doing all this when I’m really not thrilled about most of the pieces. I whittled it down to the long piece and the mostly blue piece and spent several pleasant hours stitching while listening to Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow, leaving most of my thoughts floating in the air somewhere, not a care in the world. It was good for me, because thinking about the world outside of this little house has been bringing me way, way down. When I didn’t like most of the stitching I did this afternoon, I looked at it as an applique opportunity. So maybe this will become a stitch practice, or a mood journal of sorts. One thing is for sure, it is SLOW.

I had some amazing news on Friday after I posted my blog post – I sold “A Place You’ve Never Been” at the Tapestry Weavers South exhibition. Now, here’s the thing. I put a high price on it and “Cathedral” because I didn’t really want to sell them. I nearly called the curator to tell her to put NFS on both of them. But I thought, nobody is going to pay that price for either of them and if they do, I’ll put the money aside for something really nice for myself. The gallery commission was 50% so I put $1,000 on “A Place You’ve Never Been” and $10,000 on “Cathedral” (I REALLY don’t want to sell it.). So that’s $500 coming my way for the deposit on Laurie Doctor’s workshop in Italy in September 2024.

I’m not interested in making art for money. It sucks the joy out of it for me. You know, I just need something to do with my hands. I will never ever sell my art for cheap. It undercuts the value of my time and the value of other artists’ work. I’d rather give it away than sell it cheap.

However, I kind of fucked up, because I never thought I’d sell it, I didn’t get a good photograph of it in its final setting. I had wrapped it up to send it to another show in early May in which I was going to put NFS on it, and then I found out that I had to put it up for sale. So I never sent it, and I didn’t unwrap it. And guess what, I realize that I didn’t get good photos of the other two in their final form either. I finished getting them hemmed and backed and hanging devices on them at the last minute, and I didn’t stop to photograph them – just jumped in the car and drove with them to Asheville. I hope that I’ll be able to do it when I go to whatever kind of opening we have, whether it’s just a get-together or public. What’s funny is that for a while I was sharing so many photos of it in progress that I decided not to share another photo until it was framed and ready for display. Lesson learned.

Here’s a photo of it when I was testing out different color backgrounds, and a photo of it that my friend sent me when she was there and noticed the red “sold” dot on the card.

I spent several frustrating hours searching for the best, most affordable way for us to go to Scotland in May or June, and it just ain’t gonna happen. Sandy and I went out to the used bookstore where I picked up a couple of travel books on Scotland and Great Britain, and when we went out to eat, I told him that he was going to have to pony up more money for this trip because I haven’t had time to save for it, and I keep my credit cards paid off. This isn’t like Portugal, when I had the airfare already paid from when I’d planned to go to Ireland in 2020, and the accommodations were inexpensive, and I had two extra years to save up for it. He is worried about his medical bills, so we decided to try to do it in September. I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it then either, but I’m glad to have made the decision not to try it in May or June, anyway.

This clears the way for me to go to Penland this summer IF and ONLY IF I can get a scholarship, which, since I am older, I figure is a long shot at best. But it’s only $5 to submit the application, so I’ve decided to put one together over the next week or two. The deadline is Feb. 15, just before my 62nd birthday. I will try not to be disappointed if I don’t get one. I’ll just need to find another way to have fun this summer. I’m sure some kind of workshop will pop up that I can do in person. Maybe I just need to knuckle down and actually get a body of work together – now there’s a thought. Actually doing art instead of dreaming about going to workshops to do art!
Stitching

January 27, 2023

Half of Sandy’s thyroid was removed and the nodules tested. It is cancer-free. What a relief! He was in a fairly jolly mood yesterday prior to leaving the hospital – he had to spend a night there. Today he is hurting more, but all he needs is acetaminophen.

He was in the recovery room for hours waiting for a room, and he called me to tell me to go home. I packed up my and his stuff and headed to the door, where a deluge was coming down, then turned around and headed back to the waiting room. It was actually pleasant once I knew that he had come through the surgery okay. I was sitting in an area with three people who were quite entertaining and I had this stitching to do.

Yeah. There’s a couple of reasons I call my practice and my blog “Slow.” One is that I really am quite slow-paced in my artwork, and I tend to choose projects that take time. If I make something in an hour or so, it is a shock to my system, but I can say that very seldom ever happens.

Anyway, people in the online class have posted incredible work. I posted a couple of photos of my slow progress, mainly to encourage others whose work isn’t so wonderful or quick that they have company. I’m enjoying playing with the stitching.

I was surprised how long it look me just to stitch the pieces together and get rid of those pins. I flipped a few pieces by the time I settled down and decided to accept the challenge of pulling this busy background together. My main intention is to treat this as a learning exercise and a creative jumpstart with rules to help me along. I have pieces of cloth and lots of buttons and beads to include as I feel appropriate.

One of the rules I made for myself was that I have to use up all the pieces. Hmmm. Considering how slow this is going, it might be a year-long project, but okay. I divided them up into smaller groupings, and two of the squares are going on the covers of my stained needle book.

Here are the other groupings:

Will I continue with this? I don’t know, really. I’m not super enthusiastic about what I’ve done here. I might get a couple of interesting book covers out of this. The main thing is that I know that I will have little stitching projects in my bag everywhere I go, and doing that is better than whipping out my phone to play a game or check social media.
Saturday morning coffee pot post

January 21, 2023

This week I took a free online class with Gwen Hedley through textileartist.org – actually, I’m still taking it because I got started late. It’s a short class, designed to get you going with some simple instructions. I decided to do it precisely because it provides a creative jumping off point and I’m following the instructions as exactly as possible to give myself the limitations I need to get out of this creative rut. I bought Gwen’s book “Drawn to Stitch” years ago and her work is representative of the direction in which I’d like to go. So I have stitching on this project to look forward to during the next week.

First was mark making with acrylic paints on fabric. We were to use three colors – a light color for the base fabric, and medium and dark colors for the paint. One piece was supposed to cover much of the fabric and the other was to be more lightly marked with lots of negative space showing. Each piece was supposed to have more of the dark color on one side and more of the medium color on the other. Then we cut it up and put it back together in ways that we could find links between the pieces to embellish with stitching and applique.

I found that I liked the back sides of the fabric where the paint bled through as much as the front sides. It almost gave me too many choices and I started seeing the wisdom of her advice to keep it small. My pull was to make a larger piece and I was considering making a box shape – I still might do something like this but not now.

Here’s where I have ended up. Now the embellishment will begin.

I realized this week that I have spent nearly every other weekend away from home for over three months. We were at the lake in late September when the remnants of Hurricane Ian came through, and then I traveled for pleasant events, such as Leslie’s class and the weaving retreat and our train trip to Charlotte, and the last six weeks I have been to Lake Waccamaw four times. It is time for me to stay in Greensboro for a while, even though I love being at the lake and I was happy to spend time with Lisa and Tim. That’s been a lot of driving.

I have been so sick this week with sinus pain. Feeling much better today because I finally started taking Allegra D again. I did not want to take it because antihistamines trigger my restless leg syndrome, but finally the headaches got to be too much. I’ve also been using a neti pot several times a day. The other night I neti-ed at 3:30 in the morning! This all rapidly got worse after we stayed in that hotel room in Asheville that was saturated in fragrance. Hotels should realize that upon smelling that level of perfume, people wonder what they are trying to cover up. Anyway, I hope that I’m on the road to healing now. This afternoon I have a massage scheduled and that should help my aching neck and shoulder, which is a chronic problem.

Now I need to get hold of my growing desire not to leave the house. It’s funny how I can travel to other places with little problem but once I get in my house or office or the lake house, I do NOT want to leave for any reason. I need to get out and take walks.

My sister seems to be on her way to healing, although of course, the grief is very, very hard. Her shingles cleared up and she has gotten down to the business of learning to live alone. She just found her husband’s journal, last instructions, and three new poems on his phone yesterday. I’d love to make a book with Tim’s poetry.

This coming week Sandy is having surgery to remove half of his thyroid gland. He is quite nervous about it but seems to be more concerned about the bill than anything. My guess is that Medicare should take care of most of it. If he wasn’t on Medicare, then I would be very concerned. I watched my mother go through thyroid surgery and I feel as good as possible about this surgeon after we met with him. It’s not the worst cancer, if that ends up what it is. They couldn’t tell from the biopsy, so into his neck they will go. I worry about him going under anesthesia more than anything, but there is no good worrying about it since worry won’t change what has to be done.
Saturday morning coffee pot post at noon

January 14, 2023

^^^My yin yang feline nephew and niece

I’m down at the lake again for the three day weekend. My sister got the gift of shingles for her birthday, which is Monday. She is doing fairly well, though, because she went to the doctor and got meds for it at an early stage. It’s chilly, so we’ve pretty much been hanging out birdwatching in the sun room facing the lake. She cooked soup before I got here, and I cooked chicken tetrazini last night. We watched an 1981 movie last night, The Four Seasons, which I had forgotten about. It was a good movie to watch 40+ years later, after you’ve been married for decades and have seen your friends get divorces or drift away as your lives change, basically relating to the middle aged issues that I was too young to understand at the time.

I haven’t even been over to the house where I usually stay. At this time of year we keep the water cut off and the heat barely on over there. My sister’s house is lovely, warm, and comfortable. I’m happy here, even with our missing Tim. I worried over Lisa getting sick, but I was going to come here anyway because sometimes when you’re grieving, you just need someone to sit with you and listen and not try to fix anything. She is finally getting some sleep and that will help her more than anything.

The skies are almost always interesting here and that’s why I take so many photos. Maybe one day I’ll make an artist book of just my Lake Waccamaw water/sky photos.

This morning was interesting. The next door neighbor’s daughter got married on the dock in the photo above. We watched from the porch. It is windy and in the low 40s and we could see how cold everyone was!

I went to the local grocery store where an old man with a gold cross around his neck tried to engage me in a political conversation over the price of food and how the people in Washington did not care how it affected seniors. I told him that I knew exactly what he meant and moved on. Then the handsome young man at the checkout flirted with me. I’ve reached the point in my life that I appreciate this, if it is done right, and it was.

Sandy got the cardiologist approval for his thyroid surgery so I guess we’ll schedule that soon.

I registered for a book arts workshop near Volterra, Italy in September 2024, so I have that to look forward to and save money for. I should be retired by then. It is four classes led by four teachers doing one book project. A different teacher leads you every day. One of them is Laurie Doctor, who I’ve been aching to take a class from for a long time. I’m not super interested in calligraphy, but I love her work and her writing and her palette of colors. She is so inspirational.

Still musing over a trip to Scotland in May/June. I’m not sure about it just yet. There’s too much sickness going around and it’s making me nervous about planning five months out.
Looking ahead in 2023

January 8, 2023

I’ve been writing this post in my head for so long, and of course when I sit down to actually write it on the computer, my mind goes blank. I’m giving myself a whole lot of slack lately, because it’s been rough. As far as this blog goes, I keep thinking that once I get my mojo back I will develop it more into my art website and archive the blog and then blog on Substack. Or archive this WordPress blog and move to Substack entirely. I played around with it yesterday and this morning some. I need to learn more about it before I make that decision.

It is always good to write up the year’s summary because I always find that I did a lot more than I thought. Or maybe it seems like it because that’s pretty much the times that I write. Here’s what I find interesting about getting those tapestries finished and ready for display and delivered – the weight of that procrastination was much, much heavier than I thought. I really want to move back to doing book arts and collage more, but I always had that damn unfinished tapestry hanging over my head. I felt like I had to work on it before I could let myself work on other projects, and what happened was that most of the time, I ended up doing nothing. Don’t get me wrong. I am pleased and proud of that tapestry. I am NOT happy that it took me almost eight years to weave and finish it. A lot of that was due to physical issues, but I could have lightened my load by getting it done more quickly when I was able.

My hope is that now that elephant in the room has been released to the jungle, I can play in the studio, maybe do some of these online classes that I bought, and banish the word “SHOULD” from my artist brain this year.

If I can get enough of a body of work together this year and highlight it on this website, maybe I can get some artist residencies after I retire in June 2024. Then I could travel AND do place-based art.

Of course, I have travel on my mind too. I’m not so sure that I’ll attend Focus on Book Arts if they have it this year. Last year I was surprised by the big increase in cost. Part of the reason I could fly to Oregon for this event was that it was always very reasonably priced. Then when they canceled it, it seemed to me that they could have sent an email saying that they needed everyone to register or it would be canceled for low enrollment BEFORE they canceled it. I don’t know what was going on behind the scenes and I know it is a volunteer run event, so I’m not mad, but I am disappointed. I am able to travel because I search out deals way ahead of time. You pretty much have to book airfare several months ahead to get a good price. If I can’t trust that they’ll have the event more than two months ahead of time, that’s a budget problem for me. Refundable fares are more expensive, and I usually go with travel insurance instead. I was also annoyed because I chose FOBA when I could have driven to Convergence which was held at the same time. However, I enjoyed Portland and lucked into getting an art class while I was there, so it turned out okay.

This experience makes me rethink the travel insurance for future trips – maybe I should spend the money on refundable airfare instead. It won’t help with getting my money back for events if something happens to make us cancel our trip on our end though.

Anyway, we are talking about going to Scotland in late May/early June this year. Sandy obviously can’t do much walking, so as long as we can take trains around the countryside, that may be our best bet for sightseeing. Scotland has gorgeous scenery and lots of trains. Then later I want to do a “girls’ trip” with my sister and a friend, and go to Scotland as well as England. Maybe Cornwall or Wales. Maybe somewhere else in Europe. My sister wants to do a river cruise, and that sounds very appealing.

I’ve been saving up my miles with United Airlines, and Sandy and I should be able to buy tickets that are very inexpensive with these miles. Then we’ll be just looking at accommodations and food and land transportation. I’ve told Sandy that he will need to pitch in more money for this trip if we go. As far as airlines go, I’ve had the best experience with United. When we got caught up in that shitstorm of canceled flights just before Memorial Day, they were very helpful and kind. It was Aer Lingus that was the problem because they shut down their customer service counter before the luggage was accounted for, and didn’t even have a sign on their office door in Boston Logan Airport!

I always have to keep in mind that Sandy is not in good health. He can totally fool you into thinking otherwise, which is great – he is not a whiner or complainer – but it is not great that he is often in denial about it. He has multiple issues that are being managed but they are not curable. Everything that I plan has to take that into account – that I might end up being a caretaker instead. Of course, I would really rather not think about it either, but that’s the way it is.

Now I’m going to copy and paste this post into Substack in case WordPress decides to eat it for Sunday dinner. It’s already given me a warning message that I am not allowed to edit this type of post. WHUT YOU MEAN, WORDPRESS? Gah.
Saturday Morning Coffee Pot Post

January 7, 2023

Oh my god, I can’t believe that WordPress just ate my entire post without saving it. I really have to reconsider using this platform. I’m paying for it and it can be such a pain. Maybe I will have to start writing it separately and pasting it in.

Anyway, hmmm. I was writing about the past week, which started in Lake Waccamaw at my sister’s house, traveled to Greensboro then Asheville mid-week, then back to Greensboro. I spent the last several days of 2022 finishing up my tapestries for display at the Tapestry Weavers South exhibition at the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Asheville. It’s called “Follow The Thread” and will be there from January 14 to May 3. After that, the show goes to Elkin to the Yadkin Valley Fiber Center as part of the Tapestry Weavers South retreat.

This is a photo from just after cutting it off the loom. Originally I had planned to mount “Cathedral on a frame. So I planned ahead to hem it on all sides, and I did that. Since I waited too long to get someone to construct a canvas frame the exact size, I sewed the longer slits and backed it with fabric and a sleeve in which I inserted a wooden slat with a hanging wire attached. The way I did it means that I can go back to my idea of either mounting it on a canvas or frame, or hang it from a limb or piece of driftwood from the bald cypress tree it honors.

^^^ “Cathedral” today

I forgot to bring the fabric to wrap the foam core boards that I wanted to mount “Mr. Blue Sky” on, so my sister came to the rescue with this perfect paper. The top board is wrapped with red, but you’d only see it if you looked at it very closely, which I’m diggin’. It’s like a little secret. Originally I was going to attach a blue jay feather to it, but it looked better without it. Now I’m thinking that when I get it back, I’ll attach a bottom fringe with beads and feathers.

The other one was blessedly ready for display – this was the “rain on the lake” tapestry that took a direction of its own. I renamed it “A Place You’ve Never Been” from a friend’s suggestion. It was woven with naturally dyed silk.

Now I’m going to wrap up this post and hopefully save it before I lose it again.
Yearly Wrap-Up, 2022

December 31, 2022

I’m post-dating this blog to December 31, 2022, but I’m writing it on January 8, 2023. I had some heavy grief at the end of 2022 and ongoing…so I wasn’t up for writing much then. So I’m going to try to focus this morning on the past year.

Looking over the 2022 blog posts today, I realize that the majority of the year was quite boring until May-July. Beginning in January, I was working on finishing “Cathedral” and doing some collage work. I was fretting over work more than usual and obsessing over planning our trip to Portugal.

In March, we were beginning to venture out to eat and drink, but we were mostly avoiding indoor places. The yard guy planted my asparagus bed in the womb garden in the Back Forty. I still had hopes at that time that he would be reliable help, but I ended up letting him go later when he raised his prices and then started not showing up. Sandy got some bad “news” about his heart. I took Leighanna Light’s Vintage Metal Deck class again, this time on Zoom, and enjoyed that a lot!

We were celebrating in April because Tim had a great scan and it appears that the chemo had worked wonders on his cancer. We spent our usual Easter weekend in Lake Waccamaw and I was concentrated on our upcoming trip to Portugal as well as going to Focus on Book Arts in Oregon in July.

In May we made an epic journey to Portugal, in which we learned just how disabled Sandy has become. In hindsight, it was a lovely trip even though we had to make some changes on the way. I could see myself living in Tomar or Tavira if we ever made the leap. However, we have a lot more of that country to explore in the future. We made new friends there so possibly we will visit them in Braga and travel around northern and central Portugal.

I was dismayed during this time when I was informed that Focus on Book Arts had been canceled. I had bought non-refundable plane tickets thinking that our travel insurance would make that a safe bet, but it didn’t cover event cancellation. In June, I used the money refunded from FOBA to go to Pocosin Arts School of Fine Craft and take a week-long wooden book class from Dan Essig. This was another retake for me, but I don’t work with tools enough that I needed the refresher, and I always learn something new from Dan. I am still reworking this book.

I needed that workshop to recover from the news that Tim’s cancer was back and that Sandy didn’t want to move to Portugal anymore. Back to therapy!!!

In July, Susan and I decided to go to Portland anyway. We had a great time and got to cuddle with a Boston terrier puppy on the plane from Chicago to Portland. We ate well, went to the Japanese Gardens and Powell’s, and took a paste paper art class from Jill Berry at her home.

I also made some great leaf printed papers with Susanne in July!

In August we went back to the lake with some friends and we played with cyanotype printing. I asked our friends to make pages for me for a book I’d like to make about the lake one day.

In September, I cut “Cathedral” off the loom, we rescued a baby squirrel when its nest fell down our chimney, and went back to Lake Waccamaw where we got to see a much diminished Hurricane Ian up close. It was still scary enough that I can’t imagine what it must have been like in Florida. I rescued a little yellow slider turtle.

October brought two lovely weekend trips: first, the Tapestry Weavers South retreat in Elkin where we had a relaxed time in Leslie Fesperman’s new space for the Yadkin Valley Fiber Center and dyed yarns and cloth in indigo.

Then, I took another book workshop with Leslie Marsh. A couple of friends I’ve made from her other workshops and I stayed at the Breezeway Motel on the soundside and saw some gorgeous sunsets.

Sandy turned 70 in November so of course we had to celebrate that! On his actual birthday we had dinner with friends and the restaurant’s owner offered him a shot, but he had to take it straight from the bottle. My husband is a bad-ass, y’all.

Then on the weekend, we decided to take Amtrak to Charlotte, stay in an uptown hotel and go to the Mint Museum and Bechter Museum. We left early to go back to Greensboro, and the train hit a tree trunk that had been put on the tracks and our car decoupled from the rest of the train! Sandy was about to open this door between the cars when he changed his mind about two seconds before it happened.

Thanksgiving at Lake Waccamaw began well, then Tim got really sick again. We did have a good time for a couple of days…watched football, had drinks around the firepit.

December was a swift downhill slope for Tim when he stopped being able to eat at all. He died on Christmas morning.

This is a photo from about ten years ago when Tim was playing pirate ship with his grandson on the hammock. I love this photo because it captures the moment when Tim just said something outrageous to Jake and has that wry smile waiting for Jake to respond to it.

We are devastated – a world without Tim is a much emptier place. He was loved by so many people.
At Lake Waccamaw for the New Year

December 30, 2022

I don’t think that I have been here before for New Year’s Eve. I expect a lot of fireworks and gunshots. That won’t be much different than Greensboro has been in the past few years though.

My priorities are to spend time with my sister, get the tapestries finished and ready for display, and do my end of the year post. The post may have to come later. We’ll see. For now I’ll be short and sweet.