slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

recent posts

about

About Me

  • Nuts. I hoped that the printer/scanner would work after unplugging it and hooking it up to a different computer. But no. Do you remember that Kids in the Hall episode when the car won’t crank and they try “everything,” kicking the tires, painting the car…we used to do that to our lawnmower as a joke until we finally just got rid of the lawn and the mower. Seemed easier.

    So I’m going to my mother’s house tomorrow where a treasure trove of old photos and documents await me but I don’t have a working scanner. I guess my next scanning session will have to wait for next time. When I hope to have a new Epson printer/scanner.

    The good news is, other than that I’ll be driving my new purple Honda Fit for the Very First Time, all by my little lonesome, with James Brown and Lyle Lovett and his Large Band and old kick-ass k d lang turned wide open, is that I talked to my sister tonight who is flat out thrilled that I’m going down there and who might join me tomorrow night. I’ll have all day for some quality time with Mama (plus she says she has a list of things for me to do – ulp) then I’ll get to see my sister too!

    Predictably, my mother was horrified when I told her that I had bought a purple car, but I was ready for it and said “Why can’t I have a fun car? I’m an artist!” She didn’t like it but she couldn’t argue with that. My mother has spent her life terrified that I am about to embarrass her, but I think that I’ve only done it a few times, really. I think that I should do it some more. Be good for both of us.

    Anyway, I think that she mostly wants me to put in a garden for her, which I’ll be glad to do as long as I can dodge the fire ants.

    Tonight I’m going to watch a movie that Sandy rented with Daniel Craig in it. He asked, “Do you know who Daniel Craig is?” Duh, yes. “You know he looks kind of rugged, played the last James Bond? Do you like him?” Ummmmm. My husband does not know my inner thoughts at all, apparently. So I get some eye candy tonight. Plus a new friend of mine has a killer photo of Johnny on her flickr site and it is now wallpaper on the laptop, thank you dear friend.

    Yes, I’m working on the labyrinth tapestry, the new tapestry box, and some small cardboard weavings destined to be either artist trading cards or pins. I’m not too busy drooling over manly hunks to get some artwork done.

    Oh, and I’ll mail out the seeds to everyone who sent me their address in the morning. It was fun so maybe I’ll do some more giveaways.

  • PURPLE

    Dang, I can’t believe that I just got flamed off a list called “Art and Soul.” Must be those hot unresolved artistic passions. I admit that I don’t have much patience for rudeness, which is why I don’t stay long on many lists or blogs with frequent troll visits.

    It still won’t stop me from going: I have a PURPLE car! PURPLE! PURPLE! PURPLE!

    Isn’t that the funniest word ever?

    [dancing in a circle, waving hands over head]

    PURPLE! PURPLE! PURPLE!

  • But I can’t afford a latte

    I just got this in my daily email plea for money from Obama:

    When we won Iowa, the Clinton campaign said it’s not the number of states you win, it’s “a contest for delegates.”

    When we won a significant lead in delegates, they said it’s really about which states you win.

    When we won South Carolina, they discounted the votes of African-Americans.

    When we won predominantly white, rural states like Idaho, Utah, and Nebraska, they said those didn’t count because they won’t be competitive in the general election.

    When we won in Washington State, Wisconsin, and Missouri — general election battlegrounds where polls show Barack is a stronger candidate against John McCain — the Clinton campaign attacked those voters as “latte-sipping” elitists.

    And now that we’ve won more than twice as many states, the Clinton spin is that only certain states really count.

    True, true, but…
    wuh-wait a minute. I’ve got to drink latte now? Sheesh, I just bought all these boxes of wine!

    I miss my beer. I don’t know how to order a latte.

  • I hate shopping.

    I hate shopping. I really do. Uh, unless it is for books or art supplies. Or food at the farmer’s market. Or pottery.

    Okay, let me rephrase that. I hate shopping for clothes and shoes. I really do. Today was awful – we stopped by Sears during lunch and I tried on bras. I didn’t buy one because the only ones I liked in my size were too expensive. I’ll wait for these to go on sale. But at least I got through the horror of figuring out my new size. My bras are totally worn out because I so desperately did not want to go up a size. Shopping for bras, underwear, and bathing suits is my idea of hell. My bathing suit is at least ten years old and so worn out I fall out of it every time I bend over, so I wear a T-shirt over it rather than go shopping for a new one. I have a closet full of jeans that are getting too tight and too raggedy, but I’m on the cusp of 18 land and I hoped to never go there again.

    Now that we’re done shopping for a car, I’m really excited about getting the Honda tomorrow. I’ve been plotting to do this for so long, and I’ve always either chosen other things first, or some worrisome distraction has interfered. This will be the first new car either of us has had since we bought the Tercel in 1992. The coolest thing about this car is all the different ways you can fold the seats flat to give you just the right amount of cargo space. You can split it right down the middle to haul something long. The photo in the booklet showed someone with a surfboard entirely flat in the car. If we ever get back to doing 18th century reenactments, that will come in handy for the tent poles.

    Last night I had a couple of errands I had to run: prescriptions and cat food. Was it my fault that my route took me by Ed McKays again? And that they still had a few grand old textbooks and encyclopedias? I bought The Artist’s Way, just because I feel guilty taking all that free stuff without buying something. It’s a book that I’ve meant to take a look at for a long time anyway.

    I know that I still haven’t written about the Artist Trading Card project. I will. Let’s just say right now that I’m brimming with ideas and I’m preparing the first layers. Then I need to either learn how to use my camera better for close shots or buy a new printer/scanner, since I think that I totally killed it trying to get a paper jam out. Why won’t it at least let me scan or copy, is what I want to know. If it comes to more shopping, I think that I might buy an Epson this time.

    Gah….shopping, shopping, shopping. I just want to stay in the happy room and weave and read and watch my seedlings grow and play on my laptop!

  • Tomato seed starting

    Okay, things are getting a little dead around there, so let’s liven it up. First of all, near the bottom of the sidebar are some good tunes for you to listen to while you’re reading.

    I planted tomato and artichoke seeds this afternoon. The artichokes are “Violetto” from Pinetree from last year. Since I have iffy luck with artichokes I planted more than needed: 8. That’s an organic gardening tip I learned from an organic farmer – plant twice what you need! Ha!

    Sometimes that doesn’t work out. But why not if you have a zillion packets of lots of different seeds and a small space?

    Here is a list of the tomato seeds I started in the happy room today, two seeds to a hole in the tray:

    Amish Paste, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, 2008, 8
    Cherokee Purple, Appalachian Seeds, 2008, 6
    Green Zebra, saved seeds from la Stewie, 2007, 6
    Mortgage Lifter, Estler’s variety, Appalachian Seeds, 2008, 6
    Principe Borghese, Appalachian Seeds, 2008, 4
    Roma VF, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, 2008, 16
    San Marzano, Liberty Garden, 2007, 4
    Yellow Pear, Seeds of Change, 2005
    Heirloom Mix, Fedco Seeds, 2007, 16

    So, as you can see, I will be scrambling to find spots for the tomatoes again this year.

    And the second thing to liven you up is this: I’m giving seeds away. If you would like to try out any of the above (sorry, no more artichokes), PLUS these:

    Brandywine, Fedco, 2006
    Pineapple, Fedco, 2007
    Mortgage Lifters, Radiator Charlie’s variety, 2008
    Hungarian Hot Wax peppers (I think), saved by me, 2007

    Leave a comment on this post up until Thursday, March 13. Tell me what ones you’d like. Don’t be shy. I’ll give them away until Friday or until I run out, and divide them up according to how many people want them. It may just be 5-10 seeds each. We’ll see how it goes. If you leave your correct email in the comment form, I’ll contact you through email for your address.

    Whee!

  • whatever

    Well, let’s see. What’s left to say. I’m really just killing time because I’m half asleep and don’t want to face the world yet.

    We didn’t take the TV. That sucker was HUGE. We hauled it to someone else’s house who wanted it. I’m glad that Sandy didn’t insist upon keeping it. That may have been the last huge load we’ll ever haul in the Rodeo – hooray! I am so looking forward to being SUV-less. Now if we could only become jetski-less.

    Seriously, I could probably live in the happy room with the bathroom and the kitchen and be perfectly content.

    Tonight I’ll go to the Slow Food board meeting – with what’s left of our board – at Anne-Marie’s house. A-M is a great leader – she is firm but flexible when needed, has a great sense of humor, and doesn’t get intimidated or overwhelmed, which is proving to be the most valuable asset. We’ve talked on the phone nearly every day this week, and she makes me laugh. We are so much alike.

    One of the perks of being heavily involved in Slow Food is that I have the opportunity sometimes to meet some awesome people, like Carlo Petrini last year, and I could have met Alice Waters in Charlotte last fall if I had not been in the abyss. Now, a plan to bring Michael Pollan, my absolute top-of-the-list hero, to Greensboro is in motion. I don’t know if it will happen, but if it does, I’m going to be part of it. Considering that I nearly died of teeny bopper glee when he answered an email once, I might have to stock up on smelling salts.

    Anyway, I have to figure out what to take to dinner tonight, since it is a potluck. I bought some fennel at Harris Teeter last night, so I’m considering braised fennel and leeks from my garden. Or I could take some veggies out of my freezer and do all homegrown. I really have not felt like cooking lately. I don’t seem to be able to do more than two creative things (at a sustained rate) at once. Right now it is 90% art and 10% gardening, leaving 0% for cooking.

    I’m coming to grips this morning with the fact that I just committed all my savings to buying a car. Eek. It’s a good thing that I can’t touch my retirement.

    Immediately after I clicked “Publish,” the phone rang and the meeting has been cancelled. So I get a chance to desert the kitchen again today. I’ll try to cook a good dinner anyway. The weekend is the only time I get to do it for the two of us.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    Eww, the cream is a bit off. Until I pick up my milk I guess I’ll have to drink it black. My raw milk source is getting nervous again because a lot of new people have been approaching them about it. Goes to show you that farmers could sell this product if our state government would stop treating it like a pestilence. Anyway, this is the time when I write whatever comes into my mind until the coffee pot is empty.

    First, here’s the latest progress on the tapestry:

    I’m still not happy with the base to the birdbath, but I think that I can fix it with stitchery once I finish the weaving. I’m much happier with it this morning than I was last night. Sometimes when you work on something so intensely and up close, you need a little time and space to see it clearly.

    Oh, I have so many arty things to say I hardly know how to begin. I have been SO inspired this week. Every night I’ve been playing in the quiet room/winter studio/cat-free room/second bedroom. I can’t decide what to call it. The other room, I guess! I’ve slept in here a couple of nights when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep or I wanted to give Sandy a solid eight hours of sleep and not disturb him getting up in the morning. I am so HAPPY in this room. Maybe I should call it the happy room. Squirt was very happy in here. Guido is always clamoring to get in here. Maybe it is over some wonderful radiating spot of content deep inside the earth.

    Some people have a lot of snarky things to say about Internet communities and friendships, and I’ll admit that I used to be one of those people. But I have blossomed in the last few years, in part because of the inspiration and support I have found through my readers, other bloggers, and now I’m exploring some discussion groups. The social networking sites have never satisfied me, but I’m trying out mycraftivity.com after being invited by Ricë (who writes like I think). So far I like it, and if you decide to join, please add me as a friend so that I can find you. This site was set up by a very good publisher of art/craft books. A very smart commercial venture, in my opinion.

    Another site I’ve been thinking about, but not so sure about, is homegrownmarket.com. I went there through the site of What Would Jesus Buy?, a movie that I fully intend to see since I am a big fan of Reverend Billy. It appealed to me at first because Etsy seems to be way too big, this site seems to be much less complicated, and a big factor for me was that they have “fiber art” as a category, which Etsy refuses to add despite the common sense of it and much begging from fiber artists, including me. This pisses me off royally. They don’t have a category for weaving AT ALL. But the fiber art category at Homegrown Market is full of knitting and crocheting patterns, and the jewelry, which is what I’d be mainly hawking, doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe it is the design of the site, or the quality of the photography, or the talent of the artists. It seems a bit cheesy. There’s no risk at all, though, except giving up your Paypal info, I guess. They take a commission of 15% when you make a sale, and that’s it. You include shipping in your price, so there’s one less thing to figure out. But Etsy is cheaper if you do make sales, and it has wonderful tutorials and articles. With thousands and thousands of Etsians out there, I don’t know how they get noticed other than on their own web sites. So I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try both.

    I have worked on artist trading cards this week, but my coffee is nearly finished so that will have to wait until later. We have car shopping to do today, since we’re not totally satisfied with the first dealership we went to last weekend now that our salesman is out with the flu. Sandy got the Rodeo detailed and it looked as spiffy as it’s going to get. I think that we’ll go out of town to a couple of Honda dealerships and see if we can find a better deal. If not, I’m satisfied with the quote that Carmax gave Sandy to buy the Rodeo. We are getting rid of that sucker, woo hoo!

    Time to go to the farmer’s market. What a dismal day. I’d so much rather be here in the happy room.

  • I’m having a Fit

    A 2008 Honda Fit Sport. “Blackberry pearl” color. Nice stereo with MP3 plug-in. Cruise control. I’m financing $10K on it. Will probably pick up Monday or Tuesday from Burlington Honda. We will trade in the SUV, and we’ll probably drive this Fit until it dies, just like the 1992 Tercel! Savings = gone. I’ll try to get it paid off in two years. In the meantime, I’ll have to be more frugal than usual.

    Update: I knew that the Sierra Club rated it highly in the most recent edition of Sierra, but I didn’t realize that it tied for the number 10 spot under the Green Ratings.

    While we were in Burlington (really nice folks in Burlington, by the way), we found a Mongolian barbecue place, Crazy Fire, that we liked a lot. Why doesn’t Greensboro have a Mongolian barbecue? Or does it and I didn’t get the memo? Greensboro is growing so fast.

    I picked up a copy of “Artful Blogging” at Books-A-Million. Then we came back to Greensboro to Ed McKays, where I nearly swooned at the selection of free old books. I forced myself to choose only six, okay, seven, no, eight. That was about a third of the booty that I felt like I’d die if I didn’t take it with me. I picked up an old book of quotations, a thesaurus, a compilation of three novels by Pearl Buck, The Hobbit, a novel by Rafael Sabatini, a 1930s cookbook, and one volume of the Book of Knowledge from the 50s that snuck in there by mistake. Damn, I meant to get the 19th century dictionary instead. But I’m good. I am NOT going back tonight. Really.

    Now Sandy’s gone to a friend’s house to pick up a huge TV for free. I’m not thrilled about it, because I don’t watch TV anymore. But I guess that it will be nice to watch movies on.

    Wow. What a day.

  • Back Forty update and seed starting

    I know that there is little point in dreading the weather, but tomorrow is supposed to be very windy and rainy. I have visions of chasing my greenhouse across the yard in the cold rain. I went out and stomped the stakes down as best I could, and that’s all I can do, I guess.

    Lettuce and carrots have germinated in the greenhouse, and I have more volunteer leeks, so it looks like I won’t have to start any inside this year. Since my leeks prematurely went to seed in that freak show of weather last spring, I have leeks EVERYwhere. I like that, so there’s no problem. I can actually tell the difference between a baby leek and a wild onion now, but please don’t ask me to tell you. You just gotta be there.

    All the seeds I planted in early February are coming up, but there’s no sign of asparagus shoots. Half of the artichokes have reemerged and I’m quite happy with that. I halfway expected for them all to be dead. The Tuscan kale that I planted last spring is going to seed now. I guess that I should plant some more in the winter garden bed under the tree, since it liked it there.

    Inside, my peppers are FINALLY coming up. I didn’t put the heating pad under them like I said that I was going to, at first. I put them in front of a heating vent and figured that would do it. But it didn’t, and the heating pad went under them a week ago. Now most of them are coming up except the Paprika Pimiento and Red Marconi peppers and the Rosa Bianca eggplants. The most vigorous seedlings are the ones I saved from the most delicious pepper I grew last year that I think was a Hungarian wax pepper. Yay! On Sunday, I plan to start tomato seeds, and maybe a few other plants as far as two bags of starting mix will take me.

    The Back Forty is ugly on the whole – there are white fabric covered rows and sheets of plastic and the god-awful greenhouse marring the view of the beautiful daffodils, lenten rose, and Nanking cherry bushes coming into bloom. The rhodedendron that was so beautiful last year is three-quarters dead. I trimmed away much of the dead branches and I’m saving some forked branches and twigs for art work.

    But soon, soon, it will be lovely again, and I’ll have about a 2-3 month window to enjoy it and get as much work done as possible before the mosquito guerrillas take over until the first frost.

  • Thrum da thrum thrum

    The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!

    Hopefully I’ll be able to get quotes from The Jerk out of my head soon. I’ve only seen it, oh, probably two dozen times.

    But it feels apt because I got my shipment from Joann’s today. It was a slam damn gorgeous day too, and I was caught up at work, and so I took a little vacation time and enjoyed the afternoon. Went out to my studio, let Mama Kitty inspect it for explosives, then threw open the door and worked in and out of the studio.

    I started a project that’s been on my mind ever since I received the book Artist Trading Card Workshop. I want to make my ATCs out of fiber and recycled materials when possible. The section that appealed to me most made nests of fibers on the card and melted them together with embossing powders and fusible webbing tape.

    So I have been weaving tapestries from thrums and discarded warps and dyeing mistakes, and now I have a way to re-use the thrums from the thrums. It feels like, I don’t know, like I just found the last piece to a jigsaw puzzle. Ahhhh. It drove me crazy to throw those thrums away. Usually I give them to the birds or toss them in the compost heap when there gets to be too many.

    Anyway, here’s what I came up with. Backgrounds for four sets of two cards each.

    I had no freakin idee whut I wuz doing. I just played. If you were around in September when I began to have my meltdown, you know that this was a major goal for me. I’m a planner. It’s my personality. Weavers generally have to be. I needed to learn how to play. Squirt had a lot to teach me about that in his last year. He became more playful than he ever had been in his middle age.

    I was so afraid that I had lost my mojo for good. Now I’m in the middle of four projects! Whee!