slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    And….we’re back. We rolled in at midnight, after deciding over plates of fried seafood at Dale’s that we’d really be happier at home this weekend. Sandy was bored, the weather was rather hot and muggy, and I reached the point where I was thinking more about Sandy being unhappy than my pleasure. I was ready, too, though. Somewhere between wading in the lake yesterday morning, thinking that it was the most perfect place on earth for me, and last night, I was suddenly hit hard with a desire to come home and a feeling that I didn’t, in fact, belong there. I asked Sandy if he’d like to come home today, and he hardly let me finish the question before he said yes. Then he asked what day it was! I called the petsitter, and then we decided to move our departure up to 9 p.m. last night.

    If we had had some company, or if we had had the kayak we expected (which my sister took back home with her), we would have had more fun. But, the details are for another post.

    So here I am. I’ve got time to do laundry, do some gardening, and do some more artwork before I go back to work. It’s all good. I’m even considering making watermelon rind pickles. We bought a big watermelon down there that we have not cut yet.

    I’m not hitting the farmer’s market this morning though. I don’t feel like getting dressed yet. Still spoiled from the lake.

    The cats seem happy and Miss Peanut meowed at us from the time we drove up until we closed the front door for the last time. Sandy said that he’d never seen her so conversational. I guess that she does love us.

    It did sadden me as we entered the last leg of the journey that usually my ache of missing Squirt at the end of a week’s vacation is relieved when I get home, and this time it wouldn’t be. It was out of pure habit that my mind turned to Squirt, how he would wander out, sleepy and confused, me calling him, having to chase him for a few seconds, and then him purring and relaxing into my shoulder. He wasn’t the brightest cat, but he was the most loving cat I ever had.

    I really think that it is time for me to start putting a little money aside for a screened back porch. It will probably be several years before I can save enough money, but it would improve the quality of living here during the summer so much! I’m not sure how much more we’ll go to the lake, quite honestly. Sister Lisa was shook up badly about her encounter with the big alligator, and Sandy is not happy without the jet ski or company. I will probably go by myself or with friends who appreciate the wildlife and quiet, but I have to admit that the wildlife got a little too close for comfort this year. If I had a screened porch with a ceiling fan where I could work on my art overlooking the garden, that would be nearly as good. Except that I’d keep getting lured away by laundry and weeding and cooking, but that is where the lake art trips will continue to keep their attraction. I also will have to weigh the cost of gas from now on.

    I kept a journal at the lake – the art journal that I began in May. I had stopped writing in it for a week or so before the lake, and it was nice to sit on the porch and write first thing each morning. It’s hard to do that here – the cats are all over me from thirty minutes before I get up until I leave the house. I guess that I could set aside 15-20 minutes in the studio to journal before I walk to work.

    I guess that I feel a little sad today, like an era is over or something. But I still feel happier and more content than I felt last year at this time.

    I’ll upload photos and write about the trip later this weekend.

  • Ducks

    “I’m telling ya, Marge, this is the life. Away from the rat race, just the quiet lapping of the waves and an occasional human tossing us some bread crumbs.”

    “Du-u-u-u-de! Where ya been hiding? I’ve left you voice mails, sent you emails, you must’ve been away, right? Anyway, now that I’ve caught up with you, I invited the rest of the guys over. Par-t-t-t-ay! Right, right?”

  • First post ever from the lake

    Okay, I am NOT going to spend more than a few minutes here, but I’m able to pick up a wireless connection at Lake Waccamaw! I’m amazed! I only brought my laptop because I’d downloaded a bunch of podcasts and music I wanted to listen to, and I thought that I’d give this a shot. Wow. Too bad I didn’t bring my camera cable.

    Anyway, I have my cattails and bulrush soaking, but it will probably be tomorrow before they’re ready to work with. This is part of the reason why I haven’t been weaving hats – I have to plan ahead and I don’t have a good place at home to work with wet materials.

    I set up one of the other bedrooms as a studio – everything is laid out where I can see it and I go in there, pick out what I want to do, and take it outside or to the back screened porch, where I have a beautiful breezy view of the lake.

    I’ve been journaling this morning. I added some beads to the little book I made in D. Essig’s class at Art and Soul, and drew a couple of sketches in it.

    Now I’m going to read for a bit – Ahab’s Wife. Pretty good, so far. Maybe I’ll blog some more later.

    I love this place.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    We decided to make a leisurely exit for our vacation at Lake Waccamaw since it turns out that none of my relatives plan to be there this weekend as we were originally told. My brother-in-law’s father is dying and I don’t know why my cousin and his wife cancelled. It bothered me a little at first, but then I looked at the silver lining. This really means complete freedom for a few days.

    I found a new petsitter who I get very good vibes from. He looks like a football player and he and his wife have been doing this full time for 12 years. Guido and Miss Jazz liked him a lot. It’s a shame that I have to pay for a petsitter but the person who was doing it for the last two years – well, we got what we paid for, and worse. I mean, I should not have to come home and clean up after a housesitter.

    Anyway, if anyone should happen to walk in on THIS guy, I’m guessing that it will make them turn tail and run.

    I’m packed, and I’m taking nearly the whole studio with me – HA! I have such a hard time with packing lightly. I don’t want to have to go to the laundromat, though. It was hard to pick out projects that I’d like to work on. I took the labyrinth tapestry off the loom yesterday and I’ll do some stitching on it and hem it while I’m there. I’ll probably warp up the tapestry cover for my Feral Family book and begin it.

    My main focus will be hats – it’s a great place to make hats. I need at least 24 hours to soak the bulrush and cattails. The cattails are the ones I collected from our family farm last year. This year I will be keeping the leftovers to make paper with, so all of it will be used. I find that so exciting. There’s something about reducing waste and reusing everything I can that gives me a tingle. Hey, maybe I’ll use some of the short pieces to weave book covers. Anyway, because it takes a while to soak the materials, having several days down there is essential so that I’ll have the time to weave them up and not waste them. The back porch is screened with a cement floor, so I can have a view of the lake, sit comfortably away from bugs (in case there is not a breeze), and work with wet materials. Next year, I’ll make paper too!

    I’m taking my art journal, and some acrylic paints and pens, and my inkle loom, and a bag of wool yarns and pieces of cardboard for small fun off-the-cuff tapestries. And LOADS of books.

    Before I leave, I’ll pick up my paper from Susanne. She says that it is beautiful. I went through my stash of weaving books and picked out about ten that I either have duplicates of or I don’t need anymore. She has a HUGE old 8 harness loom that her husband bought at an auction and she’s interested in learning more about weaving and spinning. It’s nice to have something to give her that she needs, after what she’s done for me.

    And ZhaK – she had such a rough time over the past few weeks. Her oldest son, Chris, had surgery for a ruptured appendix. She is, hands down, the best mother I’ve ever met, and yet the doctors made her feel guilty for not bringing him in earlier. She is still on the mend from recent sinus surgery and Chris is just an amazing young man – full of love and strength. Her experience with the medical practice that we have shared confirms my decision to never, ever go back to those arrogant fools. I had hoped that she (or she and her sons) might join us next weekend at the lake, and it still might happen, but I’m not expecting it.

    We do have a cell phone now, something that makes my heart sink a bit. You just don’t know how much I hate cell phones – phones in general, but especially cell phones. It seemed to be needed, so there it is. My mother is happy. Believe me, it will be off when I am at home, and I’m not carrying it around with me around town. I used to say that I didn’t understand why people wanted to talk on the phone in the car, because I got in the car to get away from the phone. I’m very vocal about my hatred for cell phones, and now I have one. Sheesh.

    Well, I’m down to the bottom of my cup. It’s time to go to Deep Roots and stock up on (reasonably) healthy snacks and drinks for the coming week and then to the vet to drop off a form for the petsitter, then to Susanne’s. I hope by that time Mr. Sandino will be awake and ready to go.

  • What I wouldn’t give up

    Sitting here, drinking my coffee, killing a little bit of time before the stores I need to go to open this morning. I had to take the morning off to run these errands because I killed the battery in my car AGAIN. I don’t even know why I turned the headlights on, because I didn’t drive it after dark. Tch. So, I need to use the Honda before Sandy takes it to work this afternoon.

    The only reason that these things can’t wait until this weekend is that we’re leaving early Saturday morning for Lake Waccamaw, where we’ll be until the following Sunday. And I’ve decided that now that Verizon offers a pay as you go cell phone, it’s time to do the cell phone thing. The lake house doesn’t have a phone, a feature that I like quite a bit, but there have been times when we have needed one, and it’s hard to find a pay phone these days. Plus we need some kind of way for the pet sitter and my family to reach us in case of emergency. I’m not giving out the number to anyone else (except friends that I expect to visit us at the lake) and it will be turned off except for long trips and the lake house.

    Oof. Cell phone. Ugh.

    Also have to stock up on cat food and some local/organic food supplies from Deep Roots Market. I did sign up for their Eat Local America challenge, which I have to say that I haven’t thought about much. When I’m at home I eat local most of the time anyway, and this week I’ve pretty much been living on green beans and potatoes and peanut butter. The peanut butter ain’t local, but what can I say. I cannot live without peanut butter.

    All this reminds me of the meme that Robbyn tagged me with: What wouldn’t you give up to save Mother Earth? I’ve seen several bloggers do this one, and my answers won’t be much different. At one time, a cell phone would not have been on this list.

    Time – I need a lot of downtime for myself to read and do artwork and garden and just relax. It is very tempting to throw myself passionately into every cause that I feel is important, but I’ve learned the hard way that doing too much backfires and shuts me down.

    Computer – I love my laptop and the Internet and my life has been greatly enriched by all the people that I’ve come to know through blogging.

    Air Conditioning – We lived without it for fifteen years, and we still do when the heat is not oppressive. But as I got older I found that I have much less tolerance for heat, and a good night’s sleep is essential for my mental and physical health.

    Medication – Birth control and anti-depressants have made my life so much better that I can’t even begin to explain it. Natural remedies did NOT work.

    Books – I love books and I always have. It surprises me that I didn’t seek to become a librarian. And the library’s great, but I love to own books, take my time with them, go back to the best ones again. I managed a book store and worked with wholesale and retail books for a total of nine years. I still miss it and dream about it. I seldom buy a new book unless I want to support the author – and I hit the free shelves at Ed McKays with alarming frequency. Every now and then I turn in several boxes and get credit to buy more!

    One car – right now we own two, but we could get by with one. I grew up way out in the country where public transportation is non-existent. I could manage in Greensboro without a car if we had to, but I am attached to the freedom that owning a car gives me, even though it has a lot of other baggage.

    Okay, there are others, but it’s time for the stores to open. Gotta go spend some money – not one of my favorite things to do. I’m not tagging anyone at this time – if you want to play, go ahead! It’s a good prompt, I think.

  • Sunday sweep

    There was no Saturday morning coffee pot post Part II because I awoke Saturday morning to a power outage, which is unusual at my house. Even during the ice storms that knock out most people for at least a day, we tend to be lucky in that respect, even though we are probably better equipped to handle it than most people, due to our free-standing woodstove.

    By the time the power was back on, I was focused on the day ahead. I had wakened during the night with some kind of stomach ailment, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make my papermaking date with Susanne at 10:30. But by that time, I was pretty much over it, and I made paper from 10:30-2. Then I came home and caught up on the sleep I missed Friday night.

    I made a nice dinner with pork chops from Bradd’s farm, which works in a team with Goat Lady Dairy. They feed their pastured pigs with the leftover whey from the dairy. I marinated them and cooked them in a cast iron pan, then topped them with an organic sweet BBQ sauce. To my sauce, I added this hellishly hot Mexican stuff with smoked poblanos that Deb brought by the other night. It was a good combination. The side dish was “green” beans, garlic, fresh dill, and new potatoes from the Back Forty. I was bad with the dessert though, and reverted to a recipe that I haven’t made in a long, long time. I made what my family refers to as Blueberry Dump Cake. It’s one of the easiest desserts that I know of – fresh or frozen fruit on the bottom, a box of yellow cake mix, chopped pecans, and lots of butter dotted on top, then bake for 30 minutes. Best with vanilla ice cream, which we didn’t have. I looked at the ingredients in the cake mix, and it made my hair stand on end after all this time of eating organic and whole foods. Oh well, I can’t be good all the time.

    About the papermaking – it fit me like a glove. I caught onto it quickly, and I pulled about 60 thin sheets of 9×12 paper! I’ll have enough to play with for a while, and will save some for Daniel Essig’s bookmaking class in October. I’m looking forward to setting up my own operation here, but it is something better done outside. I could probably do it on the front porch with a fan on me, but it would freak out poor Miss Peanut, who really has a hard enough time with life. Miss Peanut is the reason that I keep putting off painting the front porch railings and pillars, which need it badly. Our lives revolve around these cats. Anyway, Susanne says that she’ll be glad to put pulp in her beater for me (prepares it for the actual making of the sheets).

    I won’t have time to get it together before I go, but I’d love to make paper at the lake house where there is a screened porch with a cement floor.

    Thank God we finally got a little rain last night. Not enough, but it brought down the heat. I’ll try to do some weeding today and put down the cardboard I collected over the past two weeks.

    Now I have to update the Sierra Club web site. This is a task that I’m officially resigning from as of August 31, and they (the Piedmont Plateau group) need someone to step up and volunteer. If you’re interested, leave me a comment. My only reason is that I’m trying to spend less time on the computer and more time on art and gardening and life.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post on Friday night

    I figure that I’ll get started on my Saturday morning coffee pot post early, except without the coffee. Substitute: Yuengling. I’ll be flitting about in the morning, ditzy with joy to finally be going over to Susanne’s for a day of papermaking, picking up my chicken at the market, trying not to have a panic attack, yet tanking up on caffeine.

    I just spent a couple of hours trying to, yet again, reorganize my studio. There’s only so much I can do but I did put a lot in the recycling bag. I finished off the last fabulously ugly scarf last weekend, and it is really fabulous. I’ll try to remember to post a photo soon. The important thing is that it allowed me to fold up my Baby Wolf loom, park my butt in the middle of the floor, and spread all my collected junk around me in an attempt to figure out some kind of storage system. I don’t think that I’m going to be happy until I get some shelving up around the top of the walls for my yarn storage. Then I can use that space for a table for papermaking and supplies.

    I have some terrific wood that I can recycle for shelves, and I think that I’ll hit up my carpenter neighbor a few doors down to cut it up for me. At one time it was a table at a bookstore that I used to manage. When it went out of business I bought it for the price we paid for it – $75. It is sealed wood and not practical as a work table for me anymore (at the time I rented a huge basement space as a studio for a song, which was great until it flooded). The top of the table has about a two-inch lip around it, and it had a big flat area at the bottom too. I took it apart years ago and have been lugging it around with me. I think that it’s time to reclaim the wood in this sucker and attach it to the walls.

    Anyway, I haven’t been journaling much this week and I’m not kicking myself. I’m not kicking myself. Really, I am not kicking myself. Because that would be wrong. To kick myself. For making art a “should.”

    Sigh.

    I have been weaving a lot on the labyrinth tapestry and that should be finished very soon. Then I can start on the “feral family” tapestry.

    Another “should” that I really should do – go out and pick beans. We have an orange air quality alert today, which means it’s unhealthy for sensitive people, and just walking to work and back made my throat hurt and gave me a headache. It’s the heat plus smoke drifting in from the wildfires in eastern N.C. 200-300 miles away. I can’t imagine how bad it must be east of here. Lord. I’d better do it now before the sun goes down.

  • Levering Orchard cherry picking finale

    Oh puh-leeze. It only got up to 99 in zip code 27401. What was all that fuss about?

    Hey, the cherry picking turned out to be pleasant, but I think that we did good in limiting the amount of time we spent there this afternoon. For one thing, Sandy and I picked $72 worth of cherries in about an hour. There were so many you could pick them by the handful. I only seriously climbed a ladder once, because most of the sweet cherries weren’t really fully ripe – ripe enough to eat and be tasty with a zing, ripe enough to make a good pie, but not black and sweet as I would prefer. I climbed a ladder when I found a side of a big tree where the cherries were darker and sweeter.

    There were 7 adults and a passel of chirren and we had a mildly breezy little picnic in the cherry orchard atop the Cherry Orchard stage, where they present plays during August. Frank Levering stopped by and talked with us.

    If you decided to go cherry picking next Sunday instead, you’re in luck, I think. It looks like they expect the heat wave to break, but even so, it wasn’t that bad. The orchard is about two miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway. The cherries will be riper and sweeter, and Frank says that he’ll be happy to speak to that group of people too. And, of course, you can go on your own. It’s a very pretty place and you’d enjoy it for the scenery if nothing else. Make sure you get there early enough to finish your picking and pay up by 5 p.m.

    Now I have about 20 pounds of cherries to process. Sandy is taking about 10 pounds to work to give away. I already arranged to take off work tomorrow morning, so I’ll spend it listening to podcasts and pitting cherries. I think that I’ll freeze them and can some of the frozen ones later, perhaps in a Slow Food workshop if we get that together.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    This will be a short one, since I need to get to the market and it’s already 84 degrees at 8:45 am.

    First off, if you would like to go cherry picking with a group at the Levering Orchard on June 15, someone has volunteered to organize it. Leave me a comment saying so and I’ll send you her email address. If you’re on the Slow Food Piedmont Triad email list, you’ll get the information in about five minutes. You can join it by emailing info at slowfoodpiedmont dot org.

    So much for my whining about people not stepping up. I blame hormones. It’s convenient that way.

    I am feeling the need to shave my legs. Phooey. I hate it when my cultural upbringing pressures me internally to do crap I don’t really want to do. But I do like them better smooth. I went for two years without shaving my legs once and they did not look pretty and downy like some of my friends’ unshaven legs do. I finally gave in to societal expectations and started shaving again. But only occasionally, and only in summer. My husband could not care less if I shaved or not. And he doesn’t like make-up, and loves it if I decide to change my hair in any way. I love my husband.

    So, if I’m going to wear shorts in public this weekend, it’s time. I gotta go.

    The heat index should be over 100 today, maybe even the actual temperature, and there have been air quality alerts, so it will be an excuse to stay indoors and work on my labyrinth tapestry. I received two great books in the mail yesterday and a luscious indie magazine, Art and Life. I’ll probably blog a lot out of boredom. Talk to ya later.

  • Sunday sweep

    Hot. hot… hot hot hot. HOT. And humid. When it gets this hot here, it ain’t like out West. Here you suffer before you DIE of MISERY.

    When I was 13, I went out to southern California and spent a week with my aunt in July. It was just as hot as here, but it felt good. I noticed the air pollution, but at the time I lived way out in the country so that made a big difference. Then we stopped in New Orleans on the way back to visit my brother, who was in the Coast Guard at the time. Good GOD. I sweat in places that I didn’t know had sweat glands. Since then I’ve been in New York City during a heat wave. That sure wasn’t a picnic either.

    Okay, I’ll stop whining about the heat. I’ll enjoy the AC before I have to go outside this afternoon for hours. It might end up being just lovely in the cherry orchard, and we have Gatorade and lemonade and the forbidden bottled water and lots of bandanas to soak in the ice water of our coolers to mop our weary brows and necks.

    Heck, for all I know, whining about stuff may actually be helping. Yesterday, I received an email from a woman who is starting a truffle farm in Trinity. She and her husband have converted a barn into an art studio and a gathering place big enough for a potluck – it has a kitchen. We may be able to use it for a canning/preserving workshop/party. She has offered to host a vegetarian potluck and is open to many other ideas. They also are converting another building into a recording studio and dance hall. But her intention for the barn is to host workshops in sustainable living topics and art workshops and retreats. So I’m going to discuss that with her soon.

    The other thing in the works that is related is that I volunteered to do a two-part program for the Greensboro Weavers’ Guild in weaving tapestry boxes a la Sarah Swett’s instructions. So maybe I can develop a class or weekend workshop in tapestry weaving. The thing about tapestry weaving is that it is so slow, but if we weave on cardboard or pin looms just to get the process down, it might be doable. It’s one of those things that looks hard but is so easy.

    Tuesday night, Anne Marie and I are speaking and leading a discussion about eating local as a kickoff to Deep Roots Market’s Eat Local America challenge. 8 p.m. Deep Roots is doing a group challenge that asks for 80% local from June 15 to July 15. Funny thing is, I’m not sure that I can do it since I’ll be away for much of that time, but I’ll give it a shot. I usually take a lot of food with me on vacation anyway.

    Oy. The high today is predicted to be 102. In Ararat, Virginia, 95. Let’s hope that forecast is actually for nearby Mayberry Mount Airy, which would be hotter. Maybe there will be a storm. Weird to be hoping for rainy weather for an event.