slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • That’s all I need.

    My point with the last post, and I do have one, was that I’ve been pretty needy lately. I’ve been ::gasp:: Internet shopping for craft supplies, and that monologue kept coming into my head until I realized that it was a warning from my inner watcher, who is very frugal and also gets mad if I seem to be running late.

    I managed to stop for a few days. Thank God I still have enough for a down payment on the new car. I think I have it under control now.

    Still, I have to buy a few more supplies for Art and Soul. I think that I’ll take a limited amount of cash to a local store, maybe Addam’s on Tate St. That should do it.

    Tonight I RSVPed to go to an Obama watch party at the Green Burro downtown. Now I’m waffling because a) it’s crappy weather, tornado watches and all that, b) I don’t know anybody else who is going and c) it will probably all be college students, which will make me feel old. They’ll probably ma’am me. If any of “my” students are there, they will probably call me “Miss Laurie.”

    On the other hand, after 28 years of watching apathetic young people waste their power, it is so inspiring to see them finally revved up. It gives me hope. My first election was Reagan/Carter. What a shock that was. And the 12 28 years of greed that followed.

    I just hope that Obama will continue to try to stay calm and positive. I know that it’s tough, because you have to defend yourself. I like the way that he has, so far. In fact, I believe that it was his “That was the point” reply that won me over. Just tell it like it is, and move on, people. We all screw up, and if you can’t come clean about it, I wonder what else you’re hiding.

    Then again, if he’s done anything stupid in the past few days, I don’t know about it because I start taking a news vacation once the politics start getting nasty.

    …

    I got ready to go, and it sounded like a hurricane outside, so I changed into my jammies and kicked back. This ain’t the post office.

    Maybe I’ll follow this on CNN.com and make occasional smart ass comments here. But I honestly don’t know if I can handle the repetitive stupidity. And the sliminess. I feel dirty already.

    Wait, breaking news! CNN is calling Texas for Ron Paul!

    Nah, just messing with you.

    …

    Maybe I’ll just turn down the volume when Hil speaks, like I do when Dubya does. That might help.

    Why, did you know that this is a MUST WIN for her? Betcha didn’t know that. It’s good that I’m here to inform you.

    …

    And I didn’t think that North Carolina got any respect – here’s a headline from CNN: “Heavy turnout reported; Rhode Island also voting.” When I’m all pissed off voting in the N.C. primary in early MAY, I’ll remember that Rhode Island also votes.

    …

    It must be nice to live in Rhode Island. But I really want to live in Vermont. Especially if it secedes. And besides, somebody said that it “could turn out to be an important state.” Wow. Important state. I’m pouting.

    …

    One ringy-dingy. Two ringy-dingy. Obama should get Lily Tomlin to do a response to the 3 a.m. commercial. Now THAT would be cool.

    …

    Primary-caucus combos. Superdelegates. Primaries in May. Why am I a Democrat?

    …

    Wow. There are wine Democrats and beer Democrats. I never knew. What if you don’t drink? No wonder my mother has been stolen by the dark side.

    …

    What if you drink cheap wine and think it’s good? What if you take a bottle of Reunite to a nice dinner party? Where does that leave those people? Maybe they’re the ones voting for Nader.

    …

    Hey, what about the iced tea Democrats?

    …

    YAWN……oh well, I think that I’ll shower and read a book. In that order.

    …

    projection…1%…1191…blah…blah..zzzzz…hey, lightning! Since I live half a block from the train tracks, how will I know when a tornado is coming? No one has ever told me.

    [wandering off]

  • The greatest monologue of all time

    I don’t need anything except this. And that’s it and that’s the only thing I need, is this. I don’t need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that’s all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that’s all I need. And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp. The ashtray, this paddle game and the remote control and the lamp and that’s all I need. And that’s all I need too. I don’t need one other thing, not one – I need this. The paddle game, and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches, for sure. And this. And that’s all I need. The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, this magazine and the chair.

    And I don’t need one other thing, except my dog.

    [dog barks]

    I don’t need my dog.

    ~Navin R. Johnson, “The Jerk,” 1979.

    Update, thanks to Roch!

  • Claytonia

    Also known as "miner’s lettuce," claytonia is a great salad green for the winter garden. It is a favorite of Eliot Coleman’s. Since it is really a weed, it volunteers easily. This patch is from the claytonia I planted last winter that I let go to seed. It tastes a lot like chickweed, which is also abundant this time of year. I like the taste a lot, a little succulent with a tiny bite. Tiny leaves, too, which is why I let it go to seed last year. I kept waiting for it to get bigger.

    This is a wonderful niche plant. Since it only likes cold weather, I planted it under the big maple tree at the corner of the Back Forty. It gets sun in the winter.

  • Sunday sweep

    Yesterday was an excellent day. For one thing, I think that I’ve found the car that I want to buy – a Honda Fit. It was rated as a best green buy by the Sierra Club in the class of wagons. I test drove one, and although it felt really weird because it was an automatic, I think that I got a feel for it. If we buy this model, we’ll order a manual transmission. I especially liked the way the back seats folded down for lots of storage space. And the price is very reasonable.

    Sandy says that he’ll get the Rodeo emptied and clean this week in time for us to possibly make the arrangements to trade it in and order the Fit by next weekend. We’ll keep the 92 Tercel, even though we have a feeling that it is on its last legs. I seldom drive during the week since I walk to work, but I’d like to have a second car because I’m the independent sort, and it makes me feel better that I can drive myself to the dentist when Sandy is at work or go visit my mother (or to an art retreat!) for a few days without leaving Sandy carless. If we drive it occasionally, I think that we can get more miles out of it. It just passed inspection. It does feel good to know that if we absolutely had to, we could get by with one car between us.

    Anyway, it is good to finally get that goal in motion. Now Sandy is fixated on making the house prettier, while I keep looking at the growing cracks in the plaster with alarm. We often have different priorities, but we’ve managed to stay married for twenty years, and it looks like it’s gonna stick. We may end up having to get a home equity loan to repair the foundation, and that’s all there is to it. I’ll probably have to be the one to arrange it. Just as I am paying off the last big house repair, which was meant to fix but didn’t fix the most pressing problem! But the walls will be painted and the floors redone, by golly. It’ll be purdy. Sandy’s new goal is to replace the damaged linoleum in the laundry room. We’re going to go with a wood laminate to match the rest of the house, but will stand up to the reality of the litter box in there.

    Our friend is supposed to come by soon and help us replace the windows in the bedroom. Once the windows are replaced with wooden energy efficient ones and painted, the room will be finished.

    Somewhere in there, I managed to remember to go to Leon’s Beauty School and got a great hair cut and my eyebrows waxed. All for 15 bucks.

    We went to Fishbones, one of my very, very favorite restaurant/bars, to eat dinner. I drank a couple of Smithwick’s and ate shrimp and veggie spring rolls with a sweet chili and curried peanut sauce. I have never had a meal at Fishbones that wasn’t fabulous, and the prices are very cheap for the value. It is smokefree, has a great atmosphere, and a little patio. Problem is, it is small, and it is so fabulous that it is often crowded. The size is part of its charm, though.

    I tried really hard yesterday to think about things other than weaving and art in general. It’s become an obsession. I looked at Daniel Essig’s web site the other day, and I’m so glad that I changed to his class. For one thing, he does work with found objects, and for another, he lives in Asheville and teaches weekend workshops at Asheville Bookworks, very doable if I want to pursue the book making art with him further.

    But I did begin warping up another tapestry box loom late last night. I’ll do a little garden work today, and if the wind dies down, maybe I can finally get started on getting these fleeces that Beverly sent me outside and skirted (the initial cleaning).

    All I really want to do is weave.

  • Labyrinth tapestry beginning

    First there was the photo, taken at Healing Ground in Oak Ridge, North Carolina.

    Then there was the idea and the cartoon…

    Then there was a long period of dithering because I couldn’t decide between two approaches. One was to make the “path” blue, the maze white, and sew on buttons or smooth worn pieces of shell.

    The other was to use all these little samples of handspun, natural or naturally dyed wool that were given to me along with the used loom I bought eight years ago, and make it more realistic.

    I decided to start with the more traditional tapestry, and if I’m hungry for more, weave the other one.

  • Slowly She Turned turns three!

    I just wrote this long random post, looked back into the archives to see when I planted my tomatoes last year, and realized that it was my blogiversary. How about that! I won’t try to do a retrospective. I’m looking toward the future right now.

    Last night I looked at the found object jewelry/sculpture class that I signed up for at Art and Soul, and I changed my mind. It looked totally fascinating, BUT I registered for it when I still thought that I was going to be making paper and books in Italy, and when I hoped that one of the three collage/paper/multimedia workshops I signed up for in Greensboro would make. None of this things panned out, and I realized, damn, I still want to take a class in multimedia techniques and bookmaking, and I’m having a hard time getting excited about making jewelry again right now. So I changed my classes. In that two-day class’s place I’ll take two one-day classes – one in book making, and one in fabric collage techniques. I figure that I’ll learn a lot of new things in the first two classes (the first is carving stamps) and the third will be more familiar and relaxing, and I can use all three classes in my plans to make books and art journals and whatever. I need some focus and putting some limits on my direction will help me. Flying out in all directions is great for some people, but it overwhelms me.

    I just wish that there were some book art classes nearby. But it’s kind of nice not to be tied down to a regular time every week. Other than work.

    I received an interesting phone call today. Looks like a reporter for the News and Record is going to interview me again – a different reporter who wants to focus on somebody who is on a journey of “going green.” The other article, almost two years ago, focused on the Eat Local Challenge and being a locavore. It didn’t directly address the ecological aspects of what I’m trying to do. So this one will probably focus more on the sustainable lifestyle changes that we have made and since it will be in June instead of next week, thank God, I’ll have the garden going and we can talk about composting, rain barrels, organic methods, recycling cardboard and newspaper as mulch, earthworms and beneficial insects and such. I will try to get in there my efforts to reuse before recycling or buying, and to consider the impact and sources of the stuff that we do buy. I think that it will be a much more interesting article, at least for me! Maybe by that time we’ll have a new fuel-efficient car.

    The interview was originally going to be tomorrow, and this house is a wreck, as usual, and one night would not have been enough for me to make it acceptable for company. The thought of what might have been did shame me into cleaning the toilet and washing the dishes. I had to spend some time in the Back Forty putting plastic sheeting over the row tunnels. It’s very windy and the lows are supposed to be in the low 20s tonight. Those little seedlings may have been okay, but why take a chance?

    I’ve decided to wait until March 8 to plant my tomatoes. That will be the day after the new moon. My tomato seedlings always get way too big before it’s warm enough to plant them outside. I’m trying to stop making the same mistakes over and over. Last year I planted them (inside) on Feb. 8. Sometimes restraint is needed in gardening.

  • “Take a Number”


    cotton yarn, cardboard, brown paper, shipping label, ink

    I jammed up my printer playing with this brown paper and I think that I killed it! But I do like the effect it made on the words. The “prettier” side is actually the back of the card. It is supposed to have my contact information on it and I have to figure that out. I have a blue gel pen at work that might do the trick.

    This is my first artist trading card. There are only two rules for ATCs – they must be 2.5 x 3.5 inches (baseball card size) and they must be traded or given away, never sold.

    This was a lot of fun and I think that I’ll keep it up. Hopefully I’ll have plenty to trade when I go to Art & Soul in early May.

  • S. C. Cotton Museum

    My mother visited the South Carolina Cotton Museum in Bishopsville, SC today, and discovered something interesting. It’s located in the livery stable that my grandfather operated back at the turn of the twentieth century.

    I have rather odd ancestry – odd because of a line of youngest children born to older parents. My great-grandfather, William Harris Parham, fought in the Civil War. His wife’s grandfather, Tristram Thomas (my g-g-g-grandfather), fought with Francis Marion in the American Revolution – “the Swamp Fox.” So when people talk about their grandparents or great-grandparents being alive, I really envy them.

  • A conversation in the car

    Me: “Don’t you think that smashed hubcap would make a great base for some found art?’

    Him: “I think that if this light changes and you’re not in the car, you’ll be on your own.”

    He reaches over and locks my door. “Do you have your seat belt on?”

    I have to do the same thing to him on a regular basis, with other stuff.

    It’s called marriage.

  • Take it further challenge, February

    The Take It Further Challenge for February had two options: a color combination and/or a concept prompt of “What are you old enough to remember?”

    I wanted to do both, but blanked out on how to do it until yesterday. My concept had more to do with technology – the phone system, mimeographs instead of copiers, etc. I thought about collage and I might still work with this idea, since I have a great secretary’s manual from the 1930s to work with. (By the way, I’m a secretary, and I’m the daughter of a secretary.) But I ached to do some more with tapestry, so I began by pulling out yarns that were a close match to the color challenge.

    I couldn’t find the shade of brown, and it irked me because I felt that it was so familiar that I must have it somewhere. I stopped and took a few moments to straighten up my studio, and there it was – my cardboard box that I used as a loom for the tapestry bag. I decided to incorporate a small cardboard loom into my project for the brown color, and I cut the box into small pieces. One piece had the UPS shipping sticker on it, and I thought, I remember when there wasn’t a bar code or number on every single thing that was sold or shipped, and you didn’t have a different password or ID number for every different purpose, and the technology that is supposed to make our lives more efficient has complicated our lives in many ways.

    Then I realized that this was the piece that I would use for my loom.

    The bar code is meant to look like the weft on that side, but I am so tempted to weave the whole thing. I’ll upload the finished object when it’s done.

    (Later that evening…)

    I wove a frame around the bar code. I’ll finish this tomorrow night. The weaving is done. And it was fun.