I cannot believe it is Wednesday. Wow. My sense of time is so out of whack.
I guess it is official now that I really do plan to go to Art and Soul in Harrisburg, PA this July because I bought plane tickets yesterday. Actually, I used miles. My Chase United card sent an email that they are raising my fee next year, so I decided to use up my points and cancel it. I don’t particularly feel safe to fly anywhere right now and had planned to drive, but realized that driving over eight hours one way in an almost 20 year old car probably wasn’t the safest or cheapest way to go.
Anyway, I had registered months ago for one of Seth Apter’s two day classes because I knew it would fill quickly (it did) and then added a couple more along the way: a copper book class with Thomas Ashman, and a two day encaustics for beginners class with Lisa Bebi. I’ve been curious about encaustics for a long time.
I booked a room at a cheaper hotel about five minutes away, but I wonder now if it would be cheaper to find a roommate and stay at the venue than to walk or get a Lyft. I just hate to subject anyone to my snoring, which is usually not too bad according to those who have heard it, but right now with my allergies I’ve been waking myself up!
So that’s on my mind, as well as two retreats I plan to attend at Wildacres in Little Switzerland in the fall. I’ll go to the Tapestry Weavers South retreat and exhibit opening in Elkin in early June, but that’s only a little over an hour’s drive away. I’ll talk about those later.
Anticipation of these events makes me happy.
I spent some time in the studio yesterday and re-watched Tara Axford’s online class in Collage Maker’s Summit and made two collages from only discarded cardboard. I like the dimensional quality and the simplicity of these, and will do the rest of the lesson. Not sure if I will paint these or not.
What I really feel good about, though, is that I worked some more on this collage which I call “aneuch,” because it actually WASN’T “enough,” but I couldn’t figure it out. What did it need? Sometimes it is good to spend time away from a piece.
“aneuch” before“aneuch” after
It was too clean and orderly before. I’m more of a grungy type. By the way, that wood scrap is a piece of the studio roof I found in the yard.
The window AC unit has already arrived and man, is it heavy! Sandy and I will wrestle it into that window somehow but I’m glad it is for a ground floor window. I figure that it will be good to have a back-up if our house central AC unit goes out again, because we had two very expensive repairs to it two years apart. Of course the second one came just after the warranty expired on the first repair. We could move this window unit to the house if necessary. It is refurbished but it looks brand new.
We lived without air conditioning for years until I hit peri-menopause and that was the end of that. I can’t stand the humid heat. But I do use our ceiling fans and other methods of cooling our space when I can. This is one reason I’d have to be desperate to move south of here.
Okay, hopefully my mood will stay stable enough to keep doing art and posting. Cheers.
No April Fool’s today. Nothing could shock me. I would believe anything.
I can’t seem to deal with updating this website. I don’t want to make anything for sale. I haven’t been doing my stitch meditations for the past week. I don’t feel like starting seeds or planting anything. I don’t care about cooking any more. I have been doing a few other things though, so I’m not a total wipeout.
The weather temps are beginning to result in blocks of warm colors for the high temperature column in the tapestry diary. Pretty soon the blues in the low temp column will be set aside. Greens are coming in more often for spring, and yellow, appropriately for today, considering the record high pollen count in our already pollen-ous city. I’ve learned that the Weather Underground history is often wrong, so I rely more on my observations for the center column. I am playing chicken with that light gray and gold yarn, although I have yarns in about the same shades to replace them, I’d hoped to use the same ones throughout April.
Mostly I’ve been working in or on the back studio building. A handy friend of ours came over and fixed the doorknob and the cracked door frame for us, as well as a door knob inside our house. The best thing was that he fixed the thermostat in our fridge that we had spent hours on! That’s a big relief. Now we don’t have to keep a constant vigil over it, and I didn’t lose too much food because I have a working mini-fridge in the back and a small freezer that was empty because I had decided that I didn’t need it any more. Well, I did, and given the way things are I might need it in the future!
I put up a magnetic screen over the studio patio doors in the back (there’s no patio), and will put up another over the studio front door today. It gets stuffy back there quickly. So I also ordered a refurbished window AC unit off EBay yesterday. I am trying to stay away from Amazon and Paypal, but it is hard because really, the big box stores are just as bad. I’d love to find a hardware store that doesn’t support the regime. If anyone knows of one online, please leave me the info in the comments. I sure do miss the little local hardware store we used to frequent that was just down the street.
a fuzzy photo of sixteen great white egrets roosting on Cove Canal
A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days down at Lake Waccamaw. (On the tapestry diary, indicated by what looks like a mirror image of EL, but is actually LW.) My intention was to go to Holden Beach and hunt for fossils, because the weather forecast was great. I put it off a day and then the weather turned windy and rainy so I didn’t make it to the beach. It was good to see my sister and niece, though, and I actually enjoy watching stormy weather at the lake. I’ll get to go to a different beach with some friends for a long weekend in late April.
^I had video of the windstorm the next day, but the wind was pushing me so hard that the camera was wobbly. Suffice it to say that there were big breakers and the Spanish moss was flying horizontally and flipping upwards. There were even small waves on the canal. There was a brief sunny time when a huge rainbow stretched over the lake.
I used the time inside to stitch.
Reading: I checked out Wendell Berry’s most recent book of short stories from the library. I didn’t realize that he was still writing fiction. This one was “How It Went: 13 Stories of the Port William Membership” and they were all told from Andy Catlett’s remembrances as an old man. Andy Catlett is Berry’s alter-ego. If you love WB’s fiction, it’s for you, but it isn’t an exciting read. It reminded me of some of the old characters from my childhood in rural North Carolina, toward the end of the tobacco subsidy era.
After that my hold of “Mistborn: The Final Empire” dropped on Libby and that was a complete turnaround. What a fast-paced wild ride! Loved it, although I did find some of the fight sequences to be overly long and repetitive. I immediately put a hold on the second book in the series.
Still reading “Virgil Wander,” since I put it down to finish my library check-outs. Also checked out “The Killing Moon” on Libby since I realized that there are several N.K. Jemisin books that I have somehow missed.
I went to my new dentist (sniffle – I told my hygienist and dentist of almost 40 years that they couldn’t retire until after I died, and they disobeyed me!) and he informed me that I needed two crowns, one of which needs to be done sooner than later. Since they are on the same side, I scheduled them both to be done on the same visit. One thing I learned from “Castaway” was that you should not put off dental work. My COBRA dental policy ends this summer and then I will probably go on the state retiree dental policy, which is not as good. So that’s coming up this month.
Still not watching much TV or movies, but we began watching “Dark Winds.” I read all the Tony Hillerman books way back in the 80s-90s. And I did register for the online Collage Makers Summit, but I haven’t done much of it yet. I am excited about a couple of the instructors, so that is going to spark some art making.
Well, as usual, when I wait so long to post, there’s a lot to catch up on as far as recording a life journal. I’ll try to do it a little more often this month so I can put some thoughts down instead of just documenting events.
Retirement is so weird. The world is disgustingly surreal. The day is over before I know it. It goes so fast. I was supposed to have so much time on my hands to do ALL THE THINGS.
Much of it is wasted on computer games and scrolling through social media. I do focus on artists, so it’s not all bad. The dopamine addiction is a problem, but I guess it could be worse. At least I’m not drinking much or overeating. My cholesterol is down 100 points since I went on statins and I’ve lost a few pounds.
We went to a rally for the first time since the pandemic. Sandy and I aren’t in the physical shape for marches any more. Next time we need to bring chairs. I had a back spasm and had to sit on the ground. Sitting was harder than getting up! I really need to get a chiropractic adjustment but I keep putting it off. I did get a massage this week, though.
We were considering adopting an older cat as a companion for Pablocito. I think that a lot of his problem is simple boredom. He runs around meowing several times a day. Frida the parakeet also needs a companion since Bernie died, but that is entirely up to Sandy. He plays parakeet videos for her, and sometimes she sings. However, with the chaos going on in our “government,” I’m nervous about taking on the financial responsibility of another cat. Pablocito and Diego cost us over $3000 in vet bills last year.
Sandy is doing better. He is able to lift his feet better and his shoulder aches but he has been painting a lot and he is very enthusiastic about it.
One saving grace has been the Hirsch Wellness Center, which supports cancer patients, carers, and survivors with art and wellness classes. I’ve attended three classes in the past few weeks, two with Sandy. We came home with homemade bars of soap from one, painted in another, and I took a tunnel book class from Mary Beth Boone by myself in another. I was very excited about Mary Beth’s class, not only because I admire her work so much, but because I needed someone to show me step by step how the tunnel book functioned. Now I’ve got it and I see so much potential if I can only motivate myself to do it.
sample of tunnel book with swamp landscape scenequick acrylic painting of Diego lounging on the cat tree. I may go back to this.
I’ve buried myself in reading and stitching. The tapestry diary is still going, but it takes very little time. I’ve woven a little on the Tucson tapestry. The main thing I want to do is sleep, but second to that, I want to stitch these stitch meditations and slow stitch pieces. This is Liz Kettle’s annual challenge for doing her copyrighted “Stitch Meditations” for 100 days. If it wasn’t copyrighted, I would be glad to teach it, but the basics of it are so simple. See her website here: https://www.textileevolution.com/pages/stitch-meditation. Honestly, it is the best thing I have found to calm my mind. I’ve found that doing it in the evening is best, although sometimes that backfires now that spring has arrived and my allergic headaches flare up at the end of the day. Yesterday I spent the afternoon alone in the studio stitching happily, listening to Hearts of Space in the background. Here’s a slideshow of what I’ve done so far.
Current reading is “Virgil Wander” by Leif Enger. I just finished “Mohawk,” Richard Russo’s first novel. Russo is one of my favorite writers. Before that, I finished “Dawn” by Octavia Butler, which was an extremely bizarre one. I have three books about to drop on Libby, the library app, with one that I’ve had on hold for a long time. Isn’t that the way? I’ll have to put down the physical book and make a choice. It will be nice to read some sci-fi fantasy although I do love character-driven novels and historical fiction. I tried to read the extremely popular follow-up to “Fourth Wing,” which I enjoyed although I found it mildly annoying towards the end, and gave it up early in the second book when I found that I just couldn’t take that immature main character any more.
“Constitution”
Still can’t make myself pay attention to video. I dropped “A Paper Year,” Helen Heibert’s online course. It’s not that it wasn’t worth it. After the first month’s lesson, I just was not doing it. I have to save money where I can. The woven paper lantern cover was fun. Then I saw the Collage Makers Summit advertised and it is so tempting, but what happens is I buy these temptations and then can’t bring myself to watch all of them. The number of unfinished online art classes in my computer is crazy.
“aneuch”
The depression and fear is very heavy, which is why I have not posted much. It’s been an effort to make myself leave the bedroom. But I do. I have to do it to stave off agoraphobia. I’ve applied for part-time jobs but I wonder if I have the mental health and the physical stamina to work outside the house again. Haven’t heard from my temp remote job – it was this way last year which makes me nervous that they will offer me the same project again, which I hated, or worse, nothing at all. It’s possible with the federal cuts to education.
But I do have good friends, and we are getting together occasionally. Sandy and I go out to eat, much more often than we should, actually. Things are rolling along, so far, so good, as long as I don’t think about the future.
Overlooking the Altar Valley at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
We went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum on Sunday morning to see the raptor release, where the trainers release birds that are being rehabilitated or can’t live in the wild for a time and they fly over the crowd’s heads back and forth. The birds were released one species at a time: a pair of Chihuahuan ravens, a great horned owl, and four Harris hawks. It had a gorgeous botanical garden with winding flat trails and places where you could sit in the shade and lots of water stations.
Chihuahuan raven in flightHarris hawkGreat horned owlBobcat washing its facethe Fabulous ZhaK on the way to the labyrinthThe aviary with its cool dappled shade and streamwood duck just chillin’ in the aviaryteddy bear chula is not cuddly
Also seen at the museum zoo: an ocelot sunning itself, a hare, and several rattlesnakes. We also saw a caracara “Mexican eagle” flying with its trainer after the public raptor release.
If you are in the Tucson area, I highly recommend this place. Early in the morning would likely be the best time to go, especially in the hot months.
I flew out of Greensboro to see my friend who lives near Tucson, Arizona on Tuesday, Jan. 28. The idea was that I would take a three day tapestry workshop with Tricia Goldberg on that Wednesday through Friday while my friend, who is a telehealth counselor, worked from home, and then we would have some fun in the evenings and on the weekend together.
I was so glad that I got a window seat for my flights because the snow that accentuated the fields and ridges and streams and mountains made stunning inspiration for future artwork.
But, as I talked about in my previous post, things did not go as planned. Although I masked up on my trip there to avoid getting any bugs, it turned out that I was bringing Covid with me. So I missed my workshop. At least I didn’t make anyone there sick, but I feel sure I infected my friend.
Anyway, when she picked me up from the airport, she took me for a beautiful sunset drive through the lands around the Desert Museum. I had just seen a rainstorm from the air, and I got this shot just before we went home.
The following two days were rainy and chilly, but I was wrapped up in blankets inside. So the weather worked out, really. We ordered delivery from Guadalajara’s – chicken tortilla soup and a veggie crispy “pizza” that I had no idea what I was ordering but it was great!
Late Friday afternoon we went out to the San Xavier Del Bac Mission and walked around the outside. It had scaffolding in front so I didn’t take a photo of that.
We bought Indian tacos from Popoverz, a food truck. The fry bread was delicious, but I found that I’ve become somewhat of a weenie about hot spicy food, which is funny because I used to enjoy it.
Saturday ZhaK tried to find an outside Indian craft event but it wasn’t there so she drove me around downtown Tucson and then up along the Catalina Highway into the Santa Catalina mountains to Mount Lemmon. It had snowed up there and there were families on the sides of the road pull-outs and parking lots building little snowmen and having snowball fights. The mountains, part of the Coronado National Forest, were full of rock stacks and hoodoos.
Overlooking Tucsonme and my buddydetail of saguaroThimble Peak
Sunday was a special treat – ZhaK is a member of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, which is mostly outside flat winding trails through the desert. We went to see the raptor release, where the trainers release birds that are being rehabilitated or can’t live in the wild for a time and they fly over the crowd’s heads back and forth. The birds were released one species at a time: a pair of Chihuahuan ravens, a great horned owl, and four Harris hawks. I think I’ll make a separate post for this visit since I have so many photos.
Later that afternoon we drove to South Tucson where I had to get a Sonoran hot dog, a regional specialty, and a horchata. Basically it was a beef dog wrapped in bacon, with a jalapeno sauce. The restaurant, El Güero Canelo, had a takeout window and a large indoor space with picnic tables and a well-stocked salsa and condiment bar. It received an America’s Classic award from the James Beard Foundation in 2018.
I was supposed to fly home on Monday, but I changed my flight to Tuesday to a shorter flight and to give me one more day to make it what I think was 10 days since I was exposed. United Airlines, as usual, was terrific about changing my flight and didn’t charge me a change fee.
On Monday I took out my Mirrix Saffron travel loom and began a little weaving with a stick I had picked up at the top and a pattern based on the many giant saguaro cacti I had seen. That night we ordered delivery from Guadalajara’s again and I had the most delicious pollo en mole!
I didn’t fly out until Tuesday afternoon, so I spent the morning packing and roaming around the neighborhood and the wash next to ZhaK’s house. The flight home was good and I did make that tight connection in Denver with time to spare, so I was glad that I made the flight change.
I will have to go back to Tucson sometime to explore the shops, galleries, and Saguaro National Park, and to have some indoor dining experiences. But I have to say, considering the circumstances, it was still an excellent trip, due to my friend.
Doing a coffee pot post today before I blog my trip to Tucson. I’ll drop the personal details here from the past week or so then do a separate post for the pretty pictures.
The days before my trip were consumed with getting the studio cleaned and the yard stuff moved to the shed part and carpet tiles laid down. This part of the project was a lot of fun because my favorite “toy” when I was little were these small plastic grids with color tiles to press into them, much smaller than Legos. I could spend hours making different patterns with these. So putting together different colors and textures of 24 inch carpet tiles was great fun for me and I think Sandy enjoyed it too. I know that both of us are very pleased with the result.
We went to an art opening reception at Center for Visual Arts on Friday night that was fun and featured a couple of friends. One shared the print studio with me and another was my ceramics professor when I was at Greensboro College. This is where I believe we picked up the Covid cooties. One person we both talked to for a while wiped his nose and said, “Excuse me, I’ve a bit of a cold.” Whereupon, I scooted away quickly, but unfortunately not quickly enough. And just as quickly, I forgot about it.
Anyway, I’ve had a LOT of problems with allergies lately, including a two week case of hives, and between that and cleaning a dirty, dusty, spiderwebby, recently repaired moldy spotted space, I assumed that the symptoms that began for me on Sunday were allergies. We still had energy to do errands on Monday. The symptoms were consistent with the many times I have tested negative for Covid. So on Tuesday morning, I took my temperature, had no fever, so off I went on my trip to Tucson. In hindsight, of course, I should have tested. I wore an N95 mask to ward off any cooties I might encounter, not realizing that I was the one carrying the cooties.
As soon as the plane got in the air, my sinuses let go. It was as if a faucet turned on. I kept stuffing toilet paper into my nostrils and breathing through my mouth. When I got off the plane during my connection, the dripping stopped. Back on the plane, it started again. When I hopped into my friend’s car at the Tucson airport and she proposed a drive in the country on the way back to her home, I was feeling fine and all for it.
That night I began feeling freezing cold and foggy-brained, and I realized that I was sick. I contacted the tapestry workshop people and said I’d be missing the first day, but I would assess the situation Wed. night and take a Covid test if I was still sick. I did, and it was positive. My first known case of Covid, and I had brought it to my friend’s house in Tucson. I missed the tapestry workshop entirely, and the people in the guild very graciously refunded my money without me requesting it.
My immediate concern was for my husband, Sandy, who has many health concerns and is immuno-compromised. He was alone at home and yes, he was sick. I texted a group of women friends and asked them to be on the alert if he needed help. One of them volunteered to drop off groceries and meds on the front porch, so that helped him get through it.
I had the generous care of my nurturing friend in Tucson, who was working from home and brought me food and hot tea and blankets and a water pitcher and tissues and of course, got sick herself, but not so bad. She went out and bought a fifth of Jack Daniels the first day and we tried our mothers’ old-fashioned cure for colds: hot tea, lemon, honey, and whiskey. I think it helped.
My main problem the first two nights was coughing and the constant sinus drainage and so I tried to sleep sitting up and didn’t get much sleep for three consecutive nights. Once I went down on Thursday, I slept a LOT. I broke a fever. We had ordered out dinner from her favorite restaurant, Guadalajara, so we had chicken tortilla soup and really good Mexican food. My sense of smell left and so did my appetite.
By Friday afternoon I was feeling better so we went to the San Xavier Del Bac Mission and walked around the outside. We bought Indian tacos from a food truck. The next day she tried to find an outside Indian craft event but it wasn’t there so she drove me around downtown Tucson and then up into the Santa Catalina mountains up to Mount Lemmon.
On Sunday, we went to the outdoor Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which had beautiful fairly flat trails through gardens and exhibits and a small zoo. But you’ll see that in the next post. We went to El Guaro Canelos for takeout and I had a Sonoran hot dog, which is a regional thing. Basically a beef dog wrapped in bacon with a Jalapeno sauce.
Anyway, United was helpful, as they have always been to us, and once I figured out when I thought I caught the bug, I changed my flight to a shorter flight that was ten days out from first exposure. I explained why and they did not charge me a change fee.
Monday I was at my friend’s house all day. I wandered around in the wash next to her house and I began a little tapestry with inspiration from the beautiful giant Saguaro cacti all around.
The flight home on Tuesday was good and for most of it the plane was not full at all, so I had lots of room around me.
And now I’m home, laundry done, coffee pot empty, and it’s time to catch up weaving on my tapestry diary.
I knew that I needed some kind of daily art practice, but I am terrible at sticking to it. In 2018 I wove a tapestry diary for the first part of the year, which started as daily, then became weekly, and then monthly, before I finally gave up due to depression that summer. I had serious decision fatigue, for reasons I won’t go into here. Based on how much I enjoyed making a Tunisian crochet temperature based scarf in 2019, I decided that temperature and weather was the way to go with a tapestry diary this year. As a farmer’s daughter who was always expected to give my father the weather report when he came home in the evening (in the days when we had 2-3 TV channels in rural NC, no cable or Internet), I have always been fascinated with and attuned to the weather.
This month has been consumed with moving out from the studio downtown, moving stuff from the back building to the house, and in general, chores concerned with getting the back building repaired, cleaned, and turned into Slow Turn Studio. So I started the diary a bit late, but that’s okay. I’m not going to be OC about this thing. Now I am weaving the day’s weather data from the day before, measured at the airport at the Weather Underground website for consistency on the high and low temperatures. I use Weather Underground because it has a calendar of history data for some stations, and that’s handy when you need to catch up.
I noticed that in 2019 I used white for all temps under 30F degrees. Ha! This year I would have a LOT of white in the tapestry already if I had chosen that. My chart for this year is more complicated, because it is a diary as well as weather related, and I wanted to add more colors for the lower range of temperatures.
In general, the idea is to use the loose yarns in the box at the top of this post. Some are leftovers from past tapestries, others are old Paternayan crewel yarns from long long ago when I did needlepoint and embroidery, and came from my mother’s house. Some are dye samples or thrums (thread crumbs) given to me from other weavers. I’m going to use the colors in this box before I turn to my other tapestry yarns.
So here’s how this is set up: the first row is 2025 in Roman numerals. After that, the edges are zig-zaggy and represent the earth, with whatever browns I pull out of the box. I’m not going to try to have straight edges because I don’t want long slits and I want it to look more organic. The first column of colors represent the high temperature of the day, and the third column of colors represent the low temperature of the day. The middle column is more flexible, representing the weather or whatever else I might feel like popping in there. So far, except for 1/20/25 I have used the weather. “pnp” means pick and pick, a tapestry weaving technique that creates vertical lines.
There are three warps on this frame loom that are about six inches wide and the weavings will likely be around 28 inches long. We’ll see when we get there.
Each day is 6 passes of weft. I started out doing more, and quickly realized that I would not have enough room on this frame loom if I made the days larger than that, so in the beginning I unwove and rewove until I got my ideas in line with reality. It works out, because even if I’m left wanting to do more, I have gotten my motor running and I go on to do other things. Motivation is difficult for me right now and this is part of the value of having a small, doable practice to begin the day.
I shade the lines on the spreadsheet after I complete the weaving for clarity, especially when I was playing catch-up after a few days.
If I’m traveling, as I will be doing next week (to Tucson, yay!) I’m going to chart the weather where I am, not here at home. It’s not a data set, like the scarf was. It’s a diary.
Here is the tapestry diary up to 1/23/2025. I’m going to weave 1/24/2025 when I finish here, then I’m heading to the back studio to put down carpet tiles on that bare plywood floor. Soon I’ll have a space where I have room to work and play, with at least one large heavy work table. I am SO ready for a dedicated art space without the distractions of computer, housework, and cat. I hope it works!
The biggest thing I plan to do today is stay out of my bedroom. As a recovering agoraphobic, it becomes my cocoon during times of great stress. When it is this cold those blankets beckon me. I bury my thoughts in reading novels and playing games and puzzles for those addictive dopamine hits. It helps (or hurts) that Pablocito pretty much spends all his time on my bed these days. He is much better and is eating canned food without too much complaint, and he has caught a couple more mice. But I know from experience that I am not cured of agoraphobia and I have to be ever vigilant not to get sucked back down into that hole.
Anyway, I managed to take a shower last night and watched some reruns of Better Call Saul and Doc Martin on Pluto TV on my Kindle. Tonight I’m going to try to hang out in the living room with Sandy and watch Northern Exposure again. I’m in the middle of two very different novels about Ireland: This is Happiness by Niall Williams, and The Searcher by Tana French.
I logged out of Facebook and Instagram for a week, and I deleted my Threads account. I am building community on Bluesky (@slowlysheturned) but I’m not leaving Meta yet, since I would lose valuable connections with friends, family, and artists from all over the world.
I subscribed to Hearts of Space again and it has helped to keep the ambient music going, especially at the times when my husband is listening to political news. I’ve been a fan of ambient music since 1978 when I first heard the choral students at Governor’s School East practice some harmonies outside and it transported me to a peaceful place at a time when I was quite unhappy. Then when I worked for an local bookstore chain in the 1980s/early 90s, we sold cassette tapes by Windham Hill and I played them in the store often.
My daily (sort of) practice now is to weave only six wefts across on a tapestry diary for each day, color-coded to reflect temperatures, weather, and occasionally mood. The last time I attempted a tapestry diary was in 2018, when I started out daily, then weekly, then monthly, and finally quit altogether as I had sunk into deep depression. I’m not saying that won’t happen again, as I am deeply depressed right now, BUT I have crocheted a temperature scarf before and really enjoyed it. My friend and teacher Tommye Scanlin published a gorgeous book about fiber art diaries called Marking Time with Fabric and Thread. It includes several friends of mine so it is a pleasure to use it for inspiration. More about the tapestry diary later, since this is really a catch up post about my life in general, and I have more to say about the diary.
We are smack in the middle of a polar vortex right now, and the unusual part is that it is much colder and snowier to our south and east. We got the edge of the winter storm last night so the street and ground has a light cover of white. I’m keeping the faucets dripping inside as a precaution against surprise plumbing bills.
It’s been mainly the mud from the melting snow and ice from a couple of weeks ago that has kept me from moving into the studio in the back. This North Carolina Piedmont red clay mud has sticking power. It’s one of the reasons that we have a local pottery craft center. After tracking it in over and over, I decided to wait. I’ll put down cardboard on the floor of the studio the next time I go out there, as we have in the back room of the house.
But the little studio is going to be great, and I’m sure it will lift my spirits once we get it set up. The new roof is on, new insulation installed, the steps replaced, and the drywall ceiling patched and replaced where there were leaks. The shed on the side has a new frame, latticework, and doors. A lot of stuff inside can now go under the shed, because I stored yard and gardening tools and supplies inside when it got to be so viney and such a mess that it was difficult to get into. There was an extra pack of shingles so I put them down on the ground under the shed. It does need a new door and I have a ceiling fan that can be installed later.
The next step, once I get more of the stuff out, is to put down carpet tiles on the plywood floor. After we got an estimate on carpet we decided that we could do this part ourselves. I mean, it’s gonna get paint on it anyway so why spend a lot of money? Mainly we need some padding for our backs and for warmth. Once we get the tiles down, we’ll add extra rugs or remnants or tiles on top where we’ll tend to stand.
Sandy has laid claim to one corner, where he intends to set up his easel and paint. I’m planning to use the big heavy tables I found leaning against the walls behind the shelves (woo hoo!) and this will mainly serve as my book arts/mixed media/natural dye studio. I’ll take my small tapestry projects out there on the basis that I’m not going to store them or any yarn or fabric out there. They will need to come back inside the house the same day. The Macomber and Shannock looms stay inside. (I might sell the Shannock.) We have an oil-filled radiator heater, and I’ll probably replace the window unit air conditioner once it gets hot.
The next thing I plan to do once I post this is weave yesterday’s weather entry on the diary, then I’m going to finish preparing the cartoon for my next tapestry. I’m going to warp the Mirrix and a small travel loom for the workshop I’m taking with Tricia Goldberg next week in Tucson. I need to prepare some sample cartoons for this workshop, and I thought I’d use sections of the larger tapestry I plan to weave. I’m staying with a dear friend of mine in Tucson, and this trip is a very bright spot on my horizon.
I’ve been invited to participate in another exhibition at the Continental Club, but it has a Valentine’s Day theme, and I’m not sure I’ll do it this time. I didn’t sell anything at the Christmas one, but it was a lot of fun so I’m sure I’ll continue once I get my bearings again.
I applied for Paper and Book Intensive, which happens in Michigan in May. Several years ago I applied and didn’t get in, so I’m not going to get my hopes up. I’m also signed up for Helen Hiebert’s “A Paper Year” ongoing classes, despite my dismal experience with online classes (wholly my bad) and my dislike for Zoom, but it’s monthly and if I’m not doing it by the end of February I’ll cancel it.
I didn’t post much this past year, and honestly, it will probably fall even more to the wayside this year. I realize that social media has become more of my journal. However, a lot of it is that I just can’t face much reality anymore. Writing in depth about it is too much for my Vulcan brain and I wander off to some distraction before my head explodes. I thought that maybe I wouldn’t even write this post, but as usual, I found that I actually did a lot more this past year than I remembered. The fog of depression obscured it. I feel better now for writing it.
January 1, 2024 was my first day of retirement – a long desired and anticipated date which was not so sweet since I felt like my hand was forced because my position was eliminated in budget cuts and moved to another department with different duties that I did not want at all. The work itself didn’t go away – it was instead passed over to be handled by my co-workers and faculty with no extra pay. So, there has been a lot of bitterness. I spent the month mostly trying to get my head around not being employed. Later I took some satisfaction in that the faculty passed a no confidence vote in the dean and the provost, which is a huge condemnation and does not happen unless there are egregious circumstances.
One of the many student protests at UNCG in 2023 and 2024.
In March, I took a marvelous class for a long weekend at John C. Campbell Folk School: “Decorative Wrapping on River Stones.” Over a dozen grace my front porch and elsewhere now. Another thing that I vow to get back to doing one day. And I forgot to post about it. Here’s a photo from that class.
In April, I started a remote temporary job with Measurement Inc., a company that I worked for in person 20ish years ago. I found it not to my liking at all – all human elements seemed to have disappeared and I was not nearly as proficient at the work as I had been in the late 20th/early 21st centuries. However, I had a big trip already planned in May to look forward to and I had to quit the job early because of that. We took a quick weekend trip to Oak Island with friends and made a brief stop at Lake Waccamaw on the way back. I was worried about Diego, who, despite getting a clean bill of health in January, didn’t seem to be doing well at all.
May brought a wonderful two week trip to London and Cornwall with my sister and my good friend. We are a trio of women who love to laugh and it worked out wonderfully for most of it. After London, we took a train to Penzance, then a train and taxi to Port Isaac (my sister and I are “Doc Martin” fans and it did not disappoint!), then a train for one night in Bath, then back to London to fly home. Lots of posts and photos on the link above.
The girls in Boscastle on a rainy day in Cornwall.
June was very, very sad. Diego was diagnosed with an aggressive salivary gland tumor and the surgery would have been extremely tricky and unlikely to be successful. He quickly reached the point where the only kind choice was to euthanize him. Sandy and I were wrecked.
In July we took a short trip to Lake Waccamaw. I took a clay sculpture class at the Creative Aging Network and over the summer created a garden totem that I love.
In early August, I got into Bryant Holsenbeck’s and Nicole Uzzell’s wire and paper sculpture class at John C. Campbell Folk School. It was focused on paper on wire armatures and papermaking and natural dyes. One of the best classes ever, and man, did I need some joy! I finished the squirrel that I had begun in Bryant’s 2023 class. When I called my art practice “Slow Turn Studio,” the emphasis is definitely on SLOW. I’d like to make more birds. Lots of photos at the link and there are three posts about it if you go forward and backward at the end of the linked post.
Late September brought the much anticipated trip to Scotland for Sandy and me, which we booked with a group tour for the first time. Unfortunately, Sandy took a nose dive off the bus on the way to our hotel on the first day in Edinburgh and we spent the rest of that day in the A & E (their version of our ER), which sent him out in a sling with a broken arm at the shoulder joint. After a couple of miserable days, we met with the group tour manager at the first hotel and we decided to give the tour a try. Long story short (which you can read about at the link above) we went on the train/bus tour to the Highlands for five days of the eight day tour before Sandy started feeling sick and had had enough, so we flew home early. I thought that he was an incredible trouper not to ask me to fly home after the first two days. Lots of great photos at the link, but here’s one from the Highlands tour.
We came home in early October to witness my friends’ devastating losses in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene. I participated in my across-the-street neighbor artist’s home show and sold several pieces of different media – tapestry, collage, ecoprints, and painting. On Halloween, on a creative and entrepreneurial high, I signed a three month lease on a studio in a downtown art collaborative. I had a few doubts about the unheated space in an old industrial building, but I really liked the artists I met there. I was chauffeur for Sandy’s many doctor appointments since he couldn’t drive.
November brought that heartache and chaos of what the United States has become. I got sick with a virus that turned into bronchitis and wasn’t able to use the studio much, although I did finish the tapestry of Rascal and Sissy. Pablocito went to the vet for the first time in seven years. Our old Volvo that Tim gave us started hiccuping and those repairs and other issues they found ended up costing a bundle. Still cheaper that buying another car, I keep saying!
In early December, Pablocito had all of his teeth behind his fangs removed. He had a lot of infection and for a while we were concerned that he wasn’t going to make it. So nearly all my energy went into making sure he had pain meds and got some food and water in him, even if it was by syringe. I’m happy to say that he seems fine now, back to his annoying destructive ways, and still very picky about his food.
the first and only time he has gotten in my lap and gone to sleep
On Dec. 13, I participated in a group exhibition at the Continental Club gallery organized by Preston Wiles. It was the most fun opening reception I have ever been to, with our talented friend Brad Newell’s String Thing duo playing music and two wonderful burlesque sets of Christmas music from Miss Candice. My art will be there until mid-January. Even if I sell nothing, I was happy to be part of this show. I wanted to see if any of my fabric weavings would sell.
Even though I tried to close off the space in the downtown studio to insulate it more, and Sandy moved his painting stuff into one corner, I felt the bronchitis coming back every time I spent more than a couple of hours there. It was very cold and drafty, even on warm days outside. So I started moving all that stuff back home. I am cleaning out the back building because…
In 2025, the back building is going to be repaired (beginning on Jan. 2) and it will be the new studio. It has a lot of rot and needs much repair, including a new roof and probably the ceiling, so I took out a home equity loan. I have used this space for a studio before, and it was one of the reasons I wanted to buy this house in 2001.
So this will also be my annual “Looking Ahead at 2025” post because I honestly can’t picture much beyond this month. In late January I’m using my air travel miles to visit my friend who lives in Tucson, AZ, and I’m taking a three-day advanced tapestry workshop with Tricia Goldberg there.
I plan to apply for part-time jobs, although I have signed up again for Measurement Inc. if nothing else pans out. I realized that with all these extra expenses that have popped up in the last two months, if I don’t make some extra money, I will not be able to travel and take classes, and that will make me miserable. I had registered for a couple of classes at Art and Soul in Harrisburg, PA in July with Seth Apter and Thomas Ashman, but I am considering canceling them and getting most of the money refunded. What I really, really, really want to do is to go to Morocco with Leighanna Light in late October. The future looks so chaotic and uncertain that I’m afraid to put down deposits or make plans too far out.
However, I do know how fortunate we are. We may live in a mess, but so far we have a home that is paid for, we are warm and dry, and we are still well fed. We have enough money that we can go out to eat and enjoy a few events, like seeing Postmodern Jukebox a couple of weeks ago. We have hobbies that we enjoy. We have the lake that we can go to that costs us basically nothing. I do worry about the younger generations and the exorbitant rent and housing prices that they have to pay, and I don’t have to go into all the other awful things that are likely to come from the new fascist U.S. government in January. Everybody knows, even and especially those who voted for it.
I’m curled up on the sofa in the front room after a sleepless night, determined that I will be awake to sign for this scheduled Fed Ex delivery if it is required. If I have to get up early, it’s nearly guaranteed that I won’t fall asleep until 3 a.m. or so. When I was growing up it seemed like all the old people got up before dawn. Why not me?
Anyway, I’m looking forward to this package (maybe two packages) today. One is a wooden folding screen with a pegboard and shelves that I am putting in my studio to hide that huge water heater, and to use for display when I need one for a show. The other is something I’ve wanted for a long time: an electric fireplace heater. Then I can take this ugly radiator style heater to the studio. I am SO looking forward to getting back to the studio. We are supposed to get our first real cold weather this weekend, so I’ll find out how cold this unheated space is.
hey, I like it!
I haven’t been to the studio in about a week, and I didn’t stay long then. I had a relapse with my respiratory illness, and then my stomach went kablooey, and then this weekend I was dizzy for a couple of days. So, partly at the insistence of my friends, I went to the doctor on Monday and she prescribed me antibiotics. She thinks my bronchitis is the results of bad seasonal allergies, but I still think Sandy and I had some kind of virus. Anyway, it’s a relief to know that it isn’t pneumonia, which has been making the rounds in this area. Definitely a relief to see the light at the end of this bronchial tunnel, although I have thought I was at the end of it enough times that I am afraid to get my hopes up.
Best to assume the worst and be happy when it doesn’t happen, I guess. Not a positive approach, but a practical one.
I took Pablocito to the vet yesterday and he handled it really well. He let her look at his teeth and she said that his gums look much less infected. He’ll still be getting almost all his teeth extracted on Monday morning though. He’s almost a different cat now that he is on pain meds, and it makes me feel quite guilty that I waited so long to take him to the vet.
We will get the old Volvo back from the shop today. It needed a lot of work and will be expensive, but at least Sandy can drive again so having two cars will make him feel less trapped in the house while I’m in the studio. He’ll start PT for his shoulder soon. Funny thing…he fell yesterday and landed on it, not hard, but he said it felt better AFTER he fell on it. I worry a lot about him falling and that’s one reason I don’t like leaving him alone any more.
Speaking of which, I will be visiting my friend who lives in Tucson at the end of January. I saw that Tricia Goldberg was offering an intermediate/advanced three day tapestry workshop at the guild there for a reasonable price, and I have the miles to fly there practically free, so I have a double joy trip to anticipate! Tucson is a totally new area of the country for me to visit and to be able to do it in the company of the Fabulous ZhaK warms my hurtin’ heart. Now I’ll need to decide what I want to focus on in the workshop. The tapestry on the Mirrix will be cut off very soon, maybe within the next day or so!
Lots of minor life annoyances have peppered a disasterous month, but other than the occasional sleepless night, I’m handling it okay. I mainly try not to doomscroll too much, but I’m keeping up with the news. I opened a Bluesky account to follow the journalists and others there at slowlysheturned.bsky.social. If you’re there and give me a follow, I’ll probably follow you back, but expect no tolerance for MAGAs and more sweary political posting. I have zero patience any more for bullshit from any direction. I blocked someone who fussed about my profile pic where I held a glass that said “Shalom, y’all” on it. Really, people? Makes me want to become a hermit.
Reading: finished “Tom Lake” and “Rebecca.” I enjoyed them both, but “Rebecca” surprised me. I thought I had read it long ago, but apparently not. For the first half of it, I was bewildered and irritated. What a drag, being hauled through the imagined slights, gossip, and paranoia of this neurotic, low esteemed mind. But suddenly, ah! I couldn’t put it down.
Now I have delved back into the Plantagenet historic fiction of Sharon Kay Penman with “Lionheart,” but I’m tempted to put it aside for a shorter, lighter read.
slowly she turned 
