slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Sunday morning bag story

    First, the tapestry diary for the week. The knots are showing on purpose, by the way. We had some problems to figure out this week at work. Fortunately, they were resolved and next week’s path forward should be clearer.

    I wove a little bit on Cathedral, but my main focus was stitching this Japanese tsunobukuro style bag along with many others all over the “whirled” (India Flint’s phrase) in India’s Bagstories Facebook group. She set it up as a companion online group for those who bought any form of her wee booklet “Bagstories” on Blurb. I bought the PDF, since I am not buying stuff that takes up space in the house this year, unless necessary. Like a new vacuum cleaner.

    Anyway, I’ve been obsessed with stitching this bag. I love hand sewing but I have to give it up frequently due to chronic tendinitis problems. Right now I’m on a roll.

    This fabric is upcycled from two favorite pairs of pants I wore back in the late 80s/early 90s. They are special to me because they were the first “arty” kind of clothes I ever bought, and when I wore them, I felt beautiful and fabulous. They were my go-to clothes for art openings until I quit smoking and gained a lot of weight. They felt like friends, so I could never get rid of them.

    I redesigned it after I began because the brown and gray/orange rayon batik fabric was a little too stretchy so I decided to line it with the brown fabric.


    I can’t wait to get this bag put together and use it, and start on the one that is actually in India’s booklet.

    This is the closest that India has come to doing an online class, and normally I am enthusiastic about an online or video class for two weeks, then I abandon it. However, I love this group intensely, and I’m glad that she cut off enrollment at a manageable size. It is still over 200 people but most people don’t post. So many times I join a group and unfollow because the number of posts become overwhelming as it gets popular.

    India seems to be enjoying this immensely so it may be something that she continues. Personally, I don’t see how many of these artists maintain online classes and social media and get so much wonderful work done. I fall down rabbit holes way too quickly on the Internet.

    As far as the vow to not buy stuff this year, I’ve broken it twice so far. At the Women’s March in Raleigh I bought this pin from a street vendor. I mean, seriously, how could I not? I’m not made of stone.


    The other item was this 4 bottle set of chalk paints from the shop that hosted Seth Apter’s workshop this week. I always feel like I should buy something to support the venue, and I’ve wanted to try chalk acrylics.

    Yesterday we drove around disposing of several boxes I had filled with purged stuff from the studio. It was not nearly enough. A box of books went to the used bookstore for credit. I came very close to getting a couple of book arts books that I had not seen before, but I remembered the point is not spending money…the point is making space. A box and a bag went to Reconsidered Goods. A box of denim jeans that were too good to cut up went to the Salvation Army. Normally I avoid the Salvation Army because of their anti-gay stance, but the Interactive Resource Center doesn’t accept clothing donations and they told me that they give vouchers to homeless people for clothing at the Salvation Army store.

    Some of the paper ephemera went into the recycling can and into the kindling box. I mean, honestly, why do I save every little piece of paper?

    Now I need to fill up 3-4 more boxes this week.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    This was a busy week. First, here’s the tapestry diary as of last Sunday. I haven’t worked on it so far this week so it will be a simple narrow entry for the entire week and I’ll weave it as soon as I am done here.

    On Tuesday, I went to Seth Apter’s 52 Card Pickup class at Betty’s Creative Studio here in Greensboro, NC. I had not known about Betty’s before I saw Seth’s announcement on his “The Altered Page” Facebook page, and that was a welcome surprise since I was trying to figure out how to go to Lexington, Kentucky to take a joint workshop with him and my favorite book arts teacher, Dan Essig. As usual, there are way too many things that I want to do and sometimes the knowledge of this is overwhelming, since of course I can’t afford it all or take the time off for it all, especially between January and April. And yes, he is as nice as you have heard.

    This was a nice break from work, since it was fairly mindless and relaxing. We learned his process for making textured painted backgrounds on a deck of cards that had been painted back and front with black gesso, plus two slightly larger bookboard pieces to use for covers. Messy fun!

    The idea was that you would collage one side of the card and journal on the other side. The cards are not bound so you’d pull out a collaged card to suit your journaling mood or subject for the week. We didn’t get around to much collage. I got a little overwhelmed with the free stuff that was being passed around to choose from, since I’m trying to use or purge this kind of thing from my studio. There are still so many boxes of random papers in there!

    This is a method that I will reuse, although I think that the next batch of papers or cards will be less busy so they will be easier to write on.

    I started out the gate with some serious sinus problems and so I stayed home from work on Monday. I’m pretty sure that cleaning out and trying to repair the vacuum cleaner was the main cause, because I am getting over it too fast for it to be a cold. All that diatomaceous earth from the carpet flea treatment sandpapered the inside of my head. I made it known publicly that I would not be offended by the gift of a new vacuum cleaner for Valentine’s Day. Sandy, however, is Mr. Fix-It in his imagination and sometimes he does actually accomplish some of these repairs that he says that he can do, so I’m giving it until I get my year-end kickback check from Costco and then if it is not fixed I am buying a new one. I can’t keep up by using the attachments on the hose!

    The rest of week I had my head down catching up on work, dealing with a lot of grids and spreadsheets, so that will show up in the tapestry diary entry for the week.

    Sandy ended up going to the City Council meeting without me and speaking, among others, in opposition to the way the city is treating Cafe Europa. Sadly, I don’t think that much will come of it, but there are some passionate people on Jakub’s side so I hope that my pessimism turns out to be wrong.

    Last night I finished watching “Godless” on Netflix, which I highly recommend if you can take violence that serves a purpose in a very well-written story. I have been a big fan of Merritt Wever since watching her play Zoe on “Nurse Jackie” so it was great to see her play a badass on this one season Western series. I thought that it was a touching story of redemption, with the twist of a town full of very strong self-reliant women. Sandy found it very sad, but he liked it enough that he watched it again with me.

    I finished “Run” by Ann Patchett and am now reading “Straight Man” by Richard Russo, which is pretty hysterical, especially if you have had the experience of working in a small college or a dysfunctional academic liberal arts department. Not that ours is that bad, but much of it rings true.

    I was planning to cut back the fig tree hard, like by half, and set up my little greenhouse this weekend, but it appears that it is going to rain for four days. Oh well. As long as it is not flooding, I will not complain about rain. It is time to start seeds and I’m going to give that another try this year. We’ll see how the tomcats in the house behave. If I can get a few weeks of good behavior from them then I can set up the greenhouse and move some seedlings out there.

    Tomorrow I hope to write about the project that I’m doing in India Flint’s Bagstories group. It has been such a joy.

  • Whoa Nelly, two posts in a day

    WHOA IF TRUE! I’m so bad. Wonkette is the main source of my news these days. I can’t take much of anything else. Sheer burn out.

    Which is partly why these coal carts evolved their way into my tapestry diary early this week for the end of January. There is more of a story here, but it began as a train in the night and was supposed to end with the blood moon. Sometimes what needs to come up comes up.

    I’ll work on the rest of the week’s entry this weekend.

    My other project this weekend, other than probably a token pick or two on “Cathedral,” is this lovely “Bagstories” project led by India Flint on Facebook this month for those who bought her book on Blurb last month. Much of my fabric is buried in boxes and I’ve yet to find the “eco-printed” samples I made in her class and elsewhere, but I’m not in a hurry and am happy to upcycle some of my favorite batik pants from the late 80s/early 90s that I outgrew but couldn’t let go of all these years.

    I’ve got nine squares yet to cut and hem and then I get to sew them into a lovely bag with “horns.” I think that I will line the three larger bag pieces first to make the fabric stronger though. This is pretty lightweight and a bit on the stretchy side.

    One of the pieces will look like this:

    Once I finish measuring the warp for the future rag rug project and cutting and ironing the pieces for this bag project, I’ll be bringing the rest of the Wharton St. studio home. I’ve cleared out and boxed up more stuff, cleaned off the top of Mama’s sewing machine table, and feel much more comfortable with the extra lighting and changes we’ve made to the front room/studio. Now I just need to take these boxes of stuff around to the appropriate places to drop them off.

    On Tuesday, I have a special treat for myself. I’m taking a day workshop from Seth Apter right here in Greensboro! I didn’t even know about this place when I saw his announcement about it on his Facebook page. It’s called 52 Card Pickup, and nyah nyah it is full, but I will post about it and take photos if I am not so completely enthralled in what I am doing to think about it. A workshop where I can take my new bag full of little bits to make collages with! YAY

    It’s funny, because I was seriously considering driving to Kentucky to take a workshop from him when I discovered this one right here in my town.

    Right after the workshop on Tuesday, I’ll be joining my husband and many others at the City Council meeting to demand to know why the control of Cafe Europa’s lease oversight was magically transferred from the city by one city staff member to the park’s board, a private corporation, and demand that our friend Jakub is fairly treated and the city take back management of the space.

    If I’m gonna do all this, I better get cracking.

  • Jan-Ru Wan and “Slow Art”

    Last night I found a new artist crush at GreenHill gallery’s “Slow Art” exhibition in Greensboro, NC. My camera ran out of juice, but the photos didn’t do justice to the work anyway. For example, I am not posting the photos of the series that stopped me in my tracks, “The Efforts of Preserving Oneself.”

    Her name is Jan-Ru Wan. See her website for more art and much better photos.

    Go to GreenHill Center for NC Art to see the show, which runs through April 15. It features four artists, including Greensboro’s Setsuya Kotani, a legend around this parts whose story written by Ian McDowell is on the cover of this week’s Yes Weekly. I didn’t have the privilege of taking classes with Kotani, but I’ve had the luck being seated next to him at a dinner party and I can confirm that he is fascinating and charming. Jan-Ru Wan is doing an artist talk on March 18 and I’m putting it on my calendar. Kotani’s artist “dialogue” is schedule on March 28.

    Detail:

    Powerful stuff. Lit a fire under me this weekend. What’s funny is that I pretty much had to be dragged downtown by my husband last night. I didn’t go to the opening reception for the Triangle Book Arts show in Raleigh. It was cold and I didn’t want to be in a crowd. We had dinner at Cafe Europa afterwards, which is always a pleasure. This restaurant/bar in the Cultural Arts Center is in danger of losing their lease and there is quite an uproar about the unsavory circumstances in which it is happening. But more about that in another post.

    Go see this show.

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    This time, with a full pot of coffee! Who knows where this might go?

    Yesterday I made a sudden decision to get my hair cut. Nothing drastic, just what Mr. Robert at Leon’s Beauty School describes as “my annual shearing.” I love Mr. Robert. Anyway, it looks healthier and bouncier and it will probably get curlier again because the weight is off. However, when I looked in the mirror this morning my first thought was of Snape looking back at me.

    Since I adore Alan Rickman, I suppose that is not altogether bad. I won’t dye it black, though. Maybe this summer I’ll do a wild color rinse. I’ve wanted to do that for a while.

    I need to lay off the electronics late at night. This is an addiction that has to be addressed immediately. Even melatonin is not working for me. Last night around 1 a.m. I gave up and finished “The Loving Cup” by Winston Graham, the tenth in the Poldark series. Then I went to my bookshelf with the intention of choosing something less fluffy, and picked up “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller. I bought it because I knew it had been banned for decades and it was the number one bestseller the year I was born. But after the first dozen pages, I realized that I am not wasting time on it. I hated it. I flipped through it for another thirty minutes, reading excerpts here and there. It will go into the stack to sell to the used book store.

    The antidote to this is that I am also reading “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert, but small bits at a time. All right, I’ll confess – it is my bathroom book. I want to keep a novel in the currently reading list, so taking a cue from “Big Magic” I’m going to read Ann Patchett’s “Run” next. As I finish novels, they are going to the used book store or the Little Free Library down the street. There are a few that I will always hang on to, like my Lee Smith, Joseph Mitchell, and Wendell Berry books. And any autographed books. But the book purge is going to happen and happen big. I already donated eight books on book and paper arts to the Triangle Book Arts member library.

    I caught up on my tapestry diary for the week, weaving most of it yesterday. I thought that the rough brown yarn in the middle would be interesting to weave with, but it ended up falling apart as I wove. I think it may have been jute. So the rest of that will go in the paper bits bin for the next papermaking session. I hope that I’ll get to a little of that this year.

    I have work in two shows right now – a first for me! “98% Water” is currently in “A Strand, A Shape, A Story,” the Tapestry Weavers South exhibit at the Folk Arts Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, North Carolina. I have two books, “First, the Seed” and “Flow” in the Triangle Book Arts show “Re(f)use” in Artspace in Raleigh, North Carolina. “Flow” is hanging as part of a collaborative work led by Barbara Livingston, and it is definitely my favorite of the two books I submitted. I will photograph it when I visit the show. Both shows are incredible, and the book arts show will twist your head about what a book can be. Opening reception for Re(f)use is on Friday, Feb. 2. I don’t know if I’m going yet. Feeling a bit shy and a lot agoraphobic about it.

    Okay, time to get to work in the studio.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    I spent so much time on other blogs, Facebook, and Instagram that the morning and the coffee is nearly gone. And some weaving.

    Here’s the area in “Cathedral” that I’m concentrating on this weekend. I’m deviating from the cartoon in this area, so it’s a bit tricky.

    Another detail. It’s nice to get back out of the shadow. Seems like a metaphor for my life right now, as I rise from a depression/anxiety phase.

    I posted this photo for feedback on which tiny tapestry to send to the American Tapestry Alliance’s unjuried “Biggest Little Tapestries in the World!” exhibit planned for Convergence in Reno, Nevada this July. I’ve been convinced to submit the one on the left, which I wove during one of Pam Patrie’s workshops with Archie Brennan and Susan Maffei from a drawing I did of the pines on the seacliffs there.

    I’ve always loved the other one, and the frame loom that I’m doing my tapestry diary on was originally warped with the intention of weaving it in a much larger version. Maybe I’ll weave it on the Shannock loom once Cathedral is finished.

    More photos from my walk back and forth to work, on the UNCG campus.

    Pablocito is the new spokescat for Slowly She Turned. He carries on a long feline tradition that passed from Miss Jazz (of Jazzcat Productions, the website of the 90s), Squirt, and Theo. Welcome to the staff, Pablocito O’Neill! Right now Pablocito is guarding the back of the laptop and purring loudly.

    Okay, I’m done with computer stuff for the day. Will be back tomorrow with a tapestry diary update.

  • The Year of Going Deeper

    A lot of articles and posts came out in the past few years about people who have decided to drastically cut spending for a year. Pledges have run the gamut of the obsessive compulsive buy absolutely nothing, create no waste, grow all food and barter plans to more moderate plans to cut down and purge. And then, of course, there are those whose poverty leaves them no choice.

    I became an advocate of voluntary simplicity in the late 80s, when I really couldn’t afford much extra anyway. For several years I wove on frame looms (still do) with rags and bought the cheapest yarn I could find at yarn outlets. I crocheted a lot. I worked at a bookstore that carried a lot of remainders and I was able buy samples from book buyers very cheaply and so book buying was my biggest addiction. When I came into a small inheritance from my aunt I spent it on a Harrisville floor loom kit, which I got at a wholesale price from a friend who had a weaving supply store.

    We didn’t travel much or far. Both of us had low-wage jobs that gave little vacation time and no sick time at all. We would toss a tent and the dog in the back of our little pick-up truck on the rare weekend we had off at the same time, decided what direction to head, and went that way. We went to Lake Waccamaw a lot because it was free.

    My life has accumulated a lot of stuff since those days, as we both got better, more stable jobs, a small house, and we absorbed the belongings of our parents that we couldn’t bear to part with. The book addiction is deeply rooted in both of us. I LOVE COLLECTING BOOKS of ALL kinds. Novels, art books, old musty books with Art Nouveau covers, dictionaries, encyclopedias, nature books, old textbooks, secretarial manuals…it’s bad in my house. The hoarding is bad. Bad, even though I regularly purge these books boxes at a time. At one time I justified it as wanting to open a used book store one day. I sold books on Amazon for a few years. Now I justify the hoarding as supplies for my book/mixed media/collage creations.

    So this year, no purchasing of books or art supplies or knick-knacks that we do not need. I like the way David, the author of Go Deeper, Not Wider, approaches this idea. It puts a positive spin on using what we already have to enrich our lives. I’m not going without, I’m going deeper.

    It’s already hard for me. I see a recommendation for a magazine, or a particular kind of scissors, and I look it up online. I know that if I buy an e-book or digital issue of a magazine it will most likely be forgotten without reading it. That has been proven. Online classes are bought and abandoned halfway through or sooner than that.

    However, I mentioned that I bought the Blurb PDF of India Flint’s “Bagstories” and I have joined the private Facebook group where she is going to guide the buyers of her wee book in a project. This, so far, has already been worth the price for the connections I’ve made to other North Carolina artists on the Facebook group! This fabric may be a tad too stretchy for the bag projects, but I finally sacrificed my batik pants from the late 80s/early 90s that I loved so much and started cutting them up to reinvent them for a new use. I’ve almost finished measuring the warp for that rag rug project I began several years ago.

    I’ve hoarded fabrics the way I’ve hoarded books – it’s time to go deeper into them as well.

  • Molly Elkind

    A quickie post to alert readers to the ATA blog tour, which started with this fantastic collage-to-tapestry design post from Molly Elkind.

    Using Collage to Make a Tapestry Design: The ATA 2018 Blog Tour

  • Women’s Rally on Raleigh, etc.

    Yesterday’s protest rally was a family affair: husband Sandy, sister Lisa, me, brother-in-law Tim.

    My favorite sign was the Black Mirror sign, although I like that the sign on the left covers most of the bases:

    I also delivered my book to Artspace where the Triangle Book Arts exhibition will be installed. Opening reception is Friday, Feb. 2 evening. I haven’t decided if I am going or not. I would like to. I didn’t have much time to spend there, but I loved the mixed media show by Megan Bostic and Davis Choun currently in the front gallery.

    WATER IS LIFE! And so are seeds and worms…

    Birds cluster around the areas where the snow has melted.

    Tapestry diary completed for the week. (My weeks begin on Monday in this diary.)


    Now going for a massage to get my poor back and hips in shape, then a bit of grocery shopping and studio time at the “other” studio.

  • Snow days

    There is one thing that is true in the South about snowstorms. You can tell who is a Northern transplant by the state of their driveway and sidewalks. Southerners wait for the snow to melt. Northerners shovel.


    Once the snow stopped, we got about eight inches here in my town, and a foot an hour east in the Triangle area. Which means I was off yesterday and today, and I got some weaving done. Not a whole lot, because I unwove some parts and rewove them with a color combination I liked better. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

    It is so nice to get moving in the morning when I’m ready and not on someone else’s schedule. As state employees, we have to take personal leave days when the university is closed, though. Not really fair since they give us no choice to work, but we can make it up, and we’re doing what we can over email anyway. I’d whine more about it, but I’ve been in full-time jobs where I got no leave at all except a week of vacation once a year, and plenty where I had to go in regardless of the road conditions.

    Sandy worked from home yesterday, which he does not like to do. This morning he managed to get the car out to the main road and drive to work. I get a chance to hear what he does for a living when he works from home, and I’m always impressed by his communication skills and patience with customers. It really is a talent. With me it is forced, pretty much. I hate to hear the phone ring.

    After he got off work at 5 yesterday, we shuffled down the street to the corner bar where we seldom go anymore. It filled up with 20-somethings after I took this shot. I love bar dogs. We used to take Janet Planet to bars with us.

    On Monday, I went to the other studio and ironed interfacing on the rest of my t shirt fabric for the t shirt quilt, then I resumed measuring warp for the rag rug project I started about 3-4 years ago. Why did I decide to make this warp so long? I must have been crazy. Well, once I get it on the loom I can either weave a really long doubleweave or double-width rug or weave several projects. I brought a few more boxes home and found places for the contents, so I’m happy about that.

    Since I’m home another day, I have no excuse to avoid housework so I’ll do a little, but I’m going to turn up some music and concentrate on weaving Cathedral.

    However, I am in India Flint’s Bagstories Facebook group, so I could dig through my box of dyed and printed fabrics and cut squares for that. If you are interested, it is available for those who buy her little book in any form from Blurb. India doesn’t teach online, she is not planning to do any U.S. classes any time soon, and her classes fill fast wherever she goes, so this is a good opportunity to work with her remotely for the low price of her book. If you are interested, here’s the link: https://prophet-of-bloom.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/celebrating-both-collaboration-and.html.

    What I don’t want to do is waste any more of this time on the computer, so the next post you’ll probably see will be about the Women’s Rally in Raleigh, NC on Saturday morning.