slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Groundhog Day

    I just love Groundhog Day. It is at the top of my favorite movie list. Bill Murray rocks.

    On this Groundhog Day, I went to see a new friend of mine who is going to Duke to be certified as an Integrative Health Coach. She is practicing on Sandy and me (separately) and I hope that working with her will both help her and help me get on and stay on track with exercising and losing weight. The main goal is to heal the tendinitis in my hip, and everything is interrelated, as so much of life is.

    Sandy bought me a MP3 player this weekend so that I can listen to audiobooks and podcasts when I walk. Walking is pretty much all the aerobic exercise open to me, as far as what I can handle physically and financially. I could swim, but I hate swimming in chlorine.

    I’m going to buy a pedometer and some new walking shoes, and my initial goal is to walk an additional thirty minutes a day, five days a week. Plus remember to stretch and take ibuprofen and vitamins and fish oil twice a day, and to drink lots of water.

  • Market report

    It’s been a while since I posted a list of what I bought at the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market, my favorite place to shop. I’ve been trying to pay off credit cards so I’ve been living out of the freezer a good bit. Plus it’s the first Saturday morning in a while that I’ve felt good. Not quite sure what that pattern is all about, but I won’t voice my suspicions here.

    At the end of January, there are a few empty tables. But you’d be surprised at how much is still available from local farmers. And you don’t have to fight the crowd.

    Hamburger and stew beef: Rocking F Farm
    Milk: Homeland Creamery
    Eggs: Moore’s
    Soap: Mimi’s Soap
    Bibb lettuce: Flora Ridge Hydroponic Farm

    I would have liked to have bought more but I’m still on a tight budget, and I still have plenty that is canned and in the freezer, fortunately! There was plenty of variety there, especially meats and prepared foods.

  • Friday notes

    This is a weekend planning post. If I accomplish half of what I plan on a Friday night, I am generally doing well.

    First, at some point I plan to go over to Susanne’s and hang out. Finish the box looms for my tapestry workshop on Wednesday night while I’m there. What she’s doing (printing a book) and what I’m doing (marking and cutting boxes) is repetitive, so we figure that we’ll enjoy it more if we do it together.

    I need to do some drawings, really. I don’t know why I’m so reluctant to begin drawing. Once I begin, I get so into it that I lose all track of time. Maybe that’s what scares me away from it.

    I’m going to cut a piece of wood and make a benchhook. We were going to do this in class, but it’s so easy that even a screw-up like me should be able to do it with a hacksaw and a hammer. Because I am seriously ready to start doing this, maybe even this weekend on my own.

    Related: I need to buy some wood for the cuts; I’m thinking poplar.

    Groceries. Major groceries. I got paid for the first time in six weeks. It shouldn’t matter, because it all comes out the same in the end, but for some reason January is hard to get through financially. It is a mental condition more than a physical problem. After this, the bills.

    Pleasantries: it would be nice to go out for brunch. Yessssss. And I’d like to start some kale and broccoli and lettuce seeds inside.

    Sandy and I have to look over the refinancing paperwork carefully and maybe make some calls next week. After all this partially self-inflicted fubar communication, they sent us a package with the wrong amount for the loan. Gah. Oh well, they can’t close for a month or more anyway, and we’re STILL arguing about it, even though we pretty much agree. Somebody just shoot me. Geez.

    As you can probably tell, it has not been a lovely week. It has been stressful but I have enjoyed being really busy at work as long as I was dealing with calm logical people. And it makes me appreciate the weekend so much more.

    Oh crap, there’s the mouse (I hope, because any alternative I can think of would scare me) scratching around in the closet again. Lucy is on the job standing guard, but I have no clue if she would know what to do with a mouse since we haven’t had mice since we took her in. I know for a fact that Guido and Miss Jazz are useless. Squirt probably would’ve been a great mouser – I know that Mama Kitty had to teach him because he was a feral kitten outside for the first eight weeks of his life, and she was a mighty huntress. Squirt stalked and caught and presented me with the plastic milk rings from milk jugs in his later years, just as if they were little varmints.

    I hate mousetraps. I think that I’ll just tell them to go away.

  • Potential Spannocchia woodcuts

    I know that I probably annoyed the hell out of my fellow travelers by constantly snapping pictures while we were in Tuscany. But everywhere I looked I could see the potential for art, and I couldn’t stop long enough to do any. I’m glad that I did it now, because I spent a nice couple of hours looking through my photos and I found three that I think that I could make interesting woodcuts from. I was looking for strong lines and shapes and textures for my beginning cuts, which will be black and white.

    Then again,

    I’m starting to think about this photo again.

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    It is important which coffee mug I choose to begin my day.

    Yesterday was such a waste. I’ve been fighting off something for a while, don’t know what, maybe “just” congested sinuses. I know that my blood test showed low iron in December. Anyway, I went to bed early Friday night, got up with a wicked headache on Saturday morning, fed the critters, drank some coffee, and went back to sleep listening to Hearts of Space until nearly noon. I watched episodes of the first season of House on DVD. Late that afternoon, Sandy and I went to Fishbones where I had a fish burrito. I love their fish burritos. I love all their food. Then I went to sleep at my normal time last night.

    Exciting life, eh?

    Today I plan to do a bit of catch-up. I did laundry on Friday night, so I don’t have that in the way. I feel enthusiastic about my woodcut class and am chomping at the bit to get started. I took a large piece of polyurethaned veneered plywood from a table I took apart to a neighbor friend who cut it into 12 x 18 pieces for me. One piece, along with two pieces of a wood strip that I scavenged from the trash, will become a bench hook, a kind of brace that props against a table. This will hold my wood block firmly in place while I carve it.

    Another piece will become a register for block printing – basically, a platform with wooden edges to hold the block in one place during the printing process. You lay the paper on top of the inked relief cut and rub the back of the paper against the block. Simple stuff. So glad I decided to do this.

    But, what I really need to do is to go through my drawings and paintings and photographs and come up with some ideas of what to do in this class! Well, actually, coming up with the ideas is not the problem…narrowing them down is the problem. Luckily he is going to meet with us individually and guide us in a direction.

    I know that I want to work with images of my cats, but not for this class. I try to pretend that I don’t care about other people’s perceptions, but this man doesn’t know me and I don’t want the first impression of me to be the middle-aged cutesy cat lady. I like to work with themes of place, so perhaps I’ll go to my photos of Spannocchia or Lake Waccamaw.

    Or food. I like food. Did you know that?

    Susanne wants me to come over and give her some advice on converting her back yard to no-till vegetable garden beds. I love any excuse to go over there and soak in the art vibes.

    Okay, the second pot of coffee is on. An article in the NYT said that people who drink 3-5 cups of coffee a day had a lower risk for dementia. Good enough for me! Finally, a vice that I can feel good about.

    Now, about Hearts of Space. I decided to subscribe to it, and I am so glad that I did. In the end, the quality of the programming and the large amount of music in the archives did it for me. They just kicked off a beta version where they have some samples that you can listen to any time, but today is Sunday, which means you can listen to their weekly radio show for free by signing up.

    This leads me to a related subject: voluntary simplicity. I thought hard about subscribing, because on the surface, it seemed expensive. When I weighed the cost versus the benefit, I saw that it was worth it for me. Different people have different views of voluntary simplicity. I believe that it is not just about saving money. It is about using your money wisely to support the things that you value. I decided that I wanted to support this programming because it provides a service that enriches my life. There are times when I listen to this music that my whole inner being feels like it is expanding. It may not be that way for some people. But for me, anything that makes me feel that way that is healthy and legal has got my vote for my hard-earned dollars.

    Anyway, I’m pretty happy other than the fact that the refinancing people are not getting back to us. But it will happen. I’m moving ahead.

  • Join Michael Pollan’s Army!

    Received the following email, as well as a disturbing one yesterday that rumoured conservative Democrats were backing pro-industrial anti-sustainable people for deputy secretary of ag, so your input is VERY VERY important! Tom Vilsack was a huge disappointment, but hopefully he would be balanced and influenced by sustainable advocates.

    At least we can say we tried to make change!

    Fellow Citizens,
    Join Michael Pollan’s Army! – Invite your Friends

    Now that the inauguration is behind us, it’s time to get serious about change. President Obama has indicated that he will not be able to do it alone, that’s why it’s important to grow our movement.

    Right now, if you’ve already signed the petition at Food Democracy Now! it’s more important than ever to get our allies to sign as well.

    Already you have become a part of sustainable history. We just got the news that two of our Sustainable Dozen are under serious consideration for Deputy Secretary. In order to put Chuck Hassebrook or Karen Ross in a position to be able to implement sustainable change at the USDA you need to act now!

    Invite all your friends to become a part of Michael Pollan’s Army! If we each get two or three friends to sign the petition we will reach the critical mass needed to create serious reform at the USDA.

    Right now President Obama needs your help to Show Him the Movement! so he will be able to support family farmers going forward.

    If you want to see this grassroots effort continue, please donate as little as $10 or $25 to make sustainable change possible.

    Go ask your friends to join Michael Pollan’s Army and give President Obama the reinforcement he needs.

    Grow the movement. Act Now.
    Be the Change!

    Best,
    David Murphy
    Director, Food Democracy Now!

  • Today was wonderful

    I got to sleep late.

    I went to my first class, with a laid-back faculty member who seems kind and thoughtful.

    And we HAVE A NEW PRESIDENT!

    I’m old enough to have gone to a segregated school and remember bathrooms and entrances to stores “for colored only.” I remember being a prejudiced little thing when I entered the fourth grade and when I exited my two best friends were black and Lumbee Indian. We had a black maid once a week who was my babysitter. She refused to sit at the table with us at meals and actually peed outside because that was her generation’s rules. When I was so rude and disrespectful that I should have been backhanded, she made jokes about it. My best friend’s mother let me into her house very reluctantly, but when she came to my house we had to play on the porch.

    So when younger people around me acted like it was no big deal, I knew that it was. It is. And it still will be for some time to come.

  • New books from Slow Turn Studio

    You can breathe now. I’m finally posting some photos of my new books!

    Not as many as I’d like. The photography gods are still mad at me. But I got a few that were almost in focus.

    The first two are of the Brasstown book with wooden covers that I made at John C. Campbell Folk School in October. The mica window encloses lichen and pebbles from John C. Campbell Folk School. The bone clasp was soaked in black walnut “juice” to tint it.

    Here’s the one I’m excited about. The cover is one of the tapestry ATCs I wove last spring. I’ve become entranced with the illustrations of Ernst Haeckel, a German artist and evolutionist who lived in the late 19th to early 20th century, so I cut out some of his work from 1899 and pasted it into the book. Paper is my handmade artichoke paper, natural and painted with acrylic washes. Coptic stitch.

    This next one is the Sherri Book, named for Sherri McDonald who gave me the handmade paper! The cover is painted artichoke paper, and the buttons were made by a local artist, Molly Lithgo. Spine covers are from a map of the Pacific Northwest, where Sherri is from. This little book is about 2.5 inches square.

    Okay, one more. I made the paper for this simple book from recycled paper and included sunflower petals in the cover. Added a button and bead for the closure. The binding is Coptic, and the painted spine covers are my artichoke paper.

  • I’m a gummint employee, so today is a holiday for me. I’m back under the covers with a cup of coffee, a book (The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood) and my Mac. The only thing I ever use this Mac for is occasional Internet and iTunes, simply because the battery is good and it’s more portable.

    Sounds like there might possibly be more people than I can handle at my tapestry workshop for the guild! Hope not! We’ll manage. I’ve been making the box looms as the RSVPs have come in. It’s not hard, just a little tedious and since I have a healing blister on my scissors finger not especially pleasant. It would have been fine by now had I not put some antibiotic cream and a band-aid on it for 3 days. Then it swelled up and developed a rash. I’m allergic to so many odd things.

    Anyway, I worked on finishing up some of my little books yesterday, and I hope to get some photos up later today. I don’t seem to have a talent for taking good photos of my work, and I know for sure that I don’t have the knowledge, so I have to rely on luck.

    I’m thinking about subscribing to the Hearts of Space site – I have been a fan of Windham Hill music since the 80s and the ambient music is perfect background for doing art, reading, or sleeping. I listen to it free every Sunday night, and they may have hooked me, since I look forward to it so much. The free ambient radio on iTunes is usually pretty much crap.

    Facebook turns out to be a lot of fun – I resisted it for a long time, as I do anything that is very popular, since, you know, I’m too cool for popular. Guess that showed me.

  • Nothing special to say here

    I have been sucked into the Facebook vortex, and felt guilty about neglecting my blog, so I’m making amends.

    Sandy and I are also in a refinancing vortex, with some tense disagreement and shopping around after I’d already locked in, so things are not so good around here. We’re not getting the extra money as we had arranged, but I’m looking into replacing my home equity line of credit in case we need an emergency repair. Second bathroom is probably out (sorry, ZhaK!)

    Weird happenings on the street. NDN is definitely worse, and the other NDN suddenly sold her house. Hope that it won’t be an absentee landlord. This is the house that we owned as partners with her at one time. I don’t know how much money she put into it, but from the price I heard she sold it for, she made a tidy sum of money. I’m glad that she is moving because by the end of selling our half back to her things got ugly between us.

    Anyway, work is getting busy for me and I’m mainly vegging out at night. I’m teaching a workshop to the Greensboro Weavers Guild on the tapestry box and Ginny will be there! Yay! There is a three-day weekend ahead and my woodcut class begins Tuesday night.

    I wonder if I can live on soup until it gets warm again. It’s fortunate that I love soup.

    The Slow Food potluck at Handance Farm was wonderful. Great food, great people, great location. I’ve been pretty good at holding my ground at “still a board member but just advising now.” It’ll take a while for everyone to make the adjustment. I’m worried about the web site though.

    Reading Swiss Family Robinson, a book that I would have totally gone wild over as a child, yet no one ever pointed me toward it.

    Five more days until Obama takes office! WOO-HOO! Has Bush gone yet? God, will someone light a fire under his ass? I guess that he’s done all the damage that he can now, am I right? Now we’ll have to spend some valuable time reversing the late regulations he put through. It’s just amazing what one administration can do to wreck the world. Listening to the news is almost more than I can bear these days.