slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Bringing in 2018

    Ah, first day. We went out for the first time on New Year’s Eve in many years to a Steampunk Ball at the Haw River Ballroom with friends, and it was fabulous. We all enjoyed dressing up steampunk and dancing. The music was fabulous, both the dj selection at the beginning of the evening and the live music by the Onyx Club Boys later. I could see myself getting into this bigtime.

    Today I’m looking ahead. I am actually going to begin a tapestry diary today, something I’ve intended to do for several years. I have a frame loom warped already and I’ll use that. The plan is to work on it weekly, but I’ll attempt to do something daily if it is at all possible. I’ll probably use a photo for inspiration of color or shape. I’m not going to promise myself to work daily on anything, because I’ve seen that aspiration go down in flames too many times. It only produces guilt.

    Another goal is to not buy any clothing, books, or art supplies for the next year. Basically, nothing that is not necessary. Something else I’ve wanted to do for a while. I have enough books to last a lifetime and I need to get rid of a lot of stuff.

    I want to spend more time with the Triangle Book Arts group.

    I don’t want to sell anything or enter competitions or juried shows again this year. This may change.

    I have to consolidate my studios soon, and I’m getting there little by little.

    Trips and workshops for the year are planned as followed: Seth Apter one-day workshop here in Greensboro in early February! Tapestry Weavers South retreat on the Georgia coast in May. I have put down a deposit for Tommye Scanlin’s tapestry class at John C. Campbell Folk School, but since I am third on the waitlist and it is the week of Memorial Day, I have very little hope of getting in. I especially want this one because Jenny, a friend from Washington state, is going, and I always want to spend more time with her.

    Sandy and I plan to take a week in mid-September as usual, but this time we are going to try to hit both Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks in our quest to visit as many National Parks and Monuments as we can. My friend Judy from Montana plans to join us.

    Here are more photos from last night’s festivities, including our friends Jerry and Susan Wong. Gerald Wong is running for Congress. How’s that for cool friends!


    From the peanut gallery at the Haw River Ballroom

    Jerry and Susan


    Jerry made this awesome staff that had lights that synchronized to the music.


    Sandy and I relaxing between dances

    I don’t normally take bathroom selfies, but it was the only place with light!

  • 2017 Wrapup. Hmmm.

    One great thing about writing these wrapups is that I always see that the previous year was busier than I thought, or better than I thought. I did manage to write at least one post every month. I tried to stay away from political commentary, just because I am so sick of it and there are plenty of other places to go for that. This year was tough for everybody with brains and heart. In the end, this blog serves me and me only. My first post of 2017 explains my thinking pretty well. I don’t dwell on it because I have friends with children. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

    In January, I had moved my studio into my friend Susanne’s rental house, occupying the little area of the kitchen where the dining table would have been. I enjoyed a lot of sewing there, and good company. Soon I will be moving out as Susanne looks for new digs in the coming year, so I’m consolidating it into my home studio slowly. It’s working out.


    On January 21, I participated in the amazing Women’s March on Washington along with about half a million other people. What a rush!

    In February, this blanket woven and stitched from Sandy’s discarded shirts was well under way. I need to get back to that. The cats were loving our newly screened in front porch. However, Miss Penny from across the street had a much different opinion.

    March was mostly about thinking about upcoming trips. The depression was starting to sink in. Theo obviously didn’t have much more time to spend in this world. I made a book from the denim paper I made the previous year and had hopes for gardening in the back yard of the studio house. I tried to ignore growing physical pain because my chiropractor moved away and I was in denial.


    In April, I worked hard on the front yard garden, spent a lot of time on the front porch, and went to Lake Waccamaw for Easter. Apparently I didn’t write about going to the People’s Climate March in late April! Wow. I’ll have to go back and do that.

    May was bittersweet. We let my sweet Theo go on May 5. He spent a day at home on the front porch eating all the treats he wanted and accepting last visits from friends. He was quite emaciated so I posted a photo of him from when he was healthy. I will probably never have another cat as loving and needy of attention as Theo. Everybody was in love with him.

    Ten days later Sandy and I left for a two week trip to Ireland, London, Devon, and Cornwall for our 30th anniversary. I wrote it up in June. It would take all day to pick out one photo, so I made a quick decision about one photo from Trebarwith Strand on the Cornwall coast, since I think that was probably my happiest day of the trip, walking on the Coast Path. Afterwards we hiked the opposite direction and climbed a bazillion steps to visit Tintagel Castle.

    I’d barely caught my breath in June before Susanne, Joseph, and I got on a plane for Oregon where Susanne and I went to Focus on Book Arts and Joseph visited family. I was thrilled with my classes with Jennie Hinchcliff and Leighanna Light! I then spent a day on my own in Portland, visiting Powell’s City of Books and the Japanese Gardens.

    Above, from Jennie’s class “Collecting & Keeping: Chinese Thread Books.”

    Above, pages in progress from Leighanna Light’s “Lily’s Book” class.


    Above, Japanese Gardens, Portland

    July brought a trip to Lake Waccamaw again and lettuce and tomatoes from my new container garden in the front yard. The woodchuck came back and decimated a lot of the back garden. I was sick and in pain and frustrated.

    In August, I found out that my gallbladder was a mess, but I found a massage therapist who, although she made me cry on the table, fixed my neck and shoulder pain with trigger point therapy. I lost a couple of friends. Sandy and I went to see Lyle Lovett and His Large Band at the Carolina Theater. Lots of figs.

    A trip to Colorado has become a tradition in September. This time we stayed in an AirBNB in Boulder for one night before joining my cousin and aunt on a weekend trip to Cripple Creek to celebrate my cousin’s birthday. There are donkeys that roam freely through the town and they were spoiled rotten! I would love to move to Colorado.



    My gallbladder was removed in early October and I learned a lesson about pain management and trying to be tough. I worked on an accordion book to hang in the Triangle Book Arts show coming up in January.

    Deep depression came down like a dark cloud in late October and November, although you wouldn’t know it from the photos. I had a good time that night, although I won’t be playing the bongos again, because Sandy bought us bodhrans for Christmas! The whole #metoo thing got to me really bad. We spent Thanksgiving with my sister at Lake Waccamaw and got to see my brother and nephew. It pulled me out of my funk.

    December was better. I took a lot of good photos in the winter storm and began weaving on Cathedral again. I missed having Christmas with my family because of a stomach virus, but over all I feel better than I have in months. My friend Jackie and I went to the Asheville area for a couple of days to deliver “98% Water” to the Folk Art Center for a Tapestry Weavers South show. Tonight Sandy and I are going to a steampunk ball at the Haw River Ballroom with friends. This is very out of character for me to go out on New Year’s Eve, but we are looking forward to dressing up.

    Here’s the progress I made from early January to yesterday on “Cathedral.” Not much, but at least it’s growing again!

  • Too soon

    I was optimistic about getting over this virus in time to go have Christmas dinner with my family in Chapel Hill. As much as reading the ingredients on a bottle of Gatorade repulses me, (glycerol ester of rosin, really?) drinking it helped get some energy back and I was able to get up and moving around. Unfortunately, after making myself eat soup, the whole damned show started all over again and I ended up staying home watching TV with Sandy, and we had crackers and cheese for Christmas dinner. At least it was really good cheese.

    One of the first things I need to concentrate on is getting the finishing touches done on my book “First, the Seed,” so I can get it in the mail to Artspace in Raleigh in time for the Triangle Book Arts show, “Re(f)use.” This is an altered book cover bound with handmade paper which I’ve worked off and on for several years. It still needs something and it is pure fear of messing it up that keeps holding me back. I need to push through that.

    That being said, I just bought a hardback copy of Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert for two bucks a couple of weeks ago so maybe that should be my next read. So far I’ve just been reading it in the bathroom.

    I just finished The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan. Very good. I got a little bogged down in the middle during all the instructions for being a courtesan in China, which I thought ran long, but it did help understand the complexities of the system.

    I’m being hesitant about moving about too much today since that plus food seemed to set the nastiness off yesterday, but I need to move. My body is older with some arthritis. It gives me a very mild insight about how it must be to be terminally ill or elderly in a nursing home and not have the choice or the hope of getting better. At least I know that there will be an end to this. It makes me remember my father’s last year and my mother-in-law’s miserable last years. I need to get up and move. My body needs it.

    I will weave some tapestry today.

    I won’t try to move anything around in the studio today. It’s hard not to do this because I have to bring home my other studio at a friend’s house. She is moving. I have time, but I don’t have room for all of it. I have to be a big girl and let some of it go. I might sell my Schacht Baby Wolf loom.

    My friend is bringing me minestrone for lunch.

    My husband has the day off since he worked yesterday.

    My cats are a joy. They are so funny, wanting to go on the screened porch in this cold wind. I shut the door and less than five minutes later they are standing at it, wanting back into the warmth of the house. It is incredible how much they sleep.

    Okay, Diego is now on my lap. Gotta go, since we are trying to encourage them to be lap cats. He needs some attention.

  • Merry Christmas!

    I’m having a quiet Christmas day with coffee, cats, book, and tapestry weaving. We’ll drive to my sister’s house tonight (not far away) for dinner and some family love.

    Last night Sandy and I exchanged gifts, which we don’t always do. I declared Christmas to be a no obligation zone years ago, although I’ve yet to completely enforce that internally. I much prefer to give and receive on the heart’s schedule rather than obey the social demands of a day on the calendar. This blog has long advocated Buy Nothing Day and Buy Nothing Christmas. Sandy, however, has never really been on board with my anti-consumerist holiday philosophy, and this year I gave it a pass.

    I bought Sandy a present because I saw something I knew he would like and be surprised by. (It was a Flexcut wood carving tool set.) He bought us two bodhrans! Now we can really annoy the neighbors. He nailed the perfect gift, something that we could do together. We will need to learn the techniques of playing these drums.

    Normally I do a Festivus post, but I’ve been really sick for almost a week and didn’t feel up to it. Still sick as far as my intestinal health, but my energy began returning last night and I actually got out of bed and did laundry. I feel better today than I have in weeks so who knows how long my body has been fighting this off? If I’m not okay after eating Christmas dinner at my sister’s house tonight, I suppose that I’ll go to the doctor, but at least I had a colonoscopy last year so have no worries there. Maybe it is related to my gallbladder removal almost three months ago.

    Sandy volunteered to work today and since no one else is in the building and he expects no calls, I noticed that he took his violin. He used to do that when he worked third shift. Maybe I should get out my woodrow and tune it. We are both wishful musicians without the drive to actually practice, and it is shameful how many unused instruments are in our house. I learned early on that my creative gifts are in areas other than music. I took music lessons for most of my childhood and teenage years, including singing, piano, percussion, saxophone, and music theory. At some point you have to appreciate that you tried and the path is not yours. It made my life richer in the effort, and high school band was the bright spot in my dark teenage years.

    A friend and I plan to hand deliver my tapestry “98% Water” to the Folk Art Center for the Tapestry Weavers South show later this week. It will be nice to have a road trip with a friend.

    Now I’m going to make myself eat something and finish The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan before giving sitting at the loom a try. The one good thing about getting sick is that I’m back to my pre-gallbladder surgery weight, but it’s not a diet that I recommend. It feels bizarre to have no appetite at all for three days.

  • Yay! I am weaving again. I’ve gotten a bit more done than the photo above shows, but I didn’t get a clear shot of the most recent version. I am weaving this sideways, so I flipped this photo so that you can see it as it will look when hung. I’m a little over halfway through.

    One of the things that was worrying me this past month was the possibility of having glaucoma. I finally accepted that possible outcome and stopped losing sleep over it, and then the test showed a healthy optic nerve. I will need to have this extra test once a year, though, since I have high optic nerve pressure.

    I’m putting together a steampunk outfit for the Steampunk Ball at Haw River Ballroom on New Year’s Eve. The headdress was made be Jenn Guarino. There will be photos, trust me.

    I may be a grinch about Christmas, but I do love the lights.

    “98% Water” will travel to the Folk Art Center near Asheville and then Yadkin Arts Center for the Tapestry Weavers South show. I will have at least two books in the Triangle Book Arts show at Artspace in Raleigh. Step by step, inch by inch.

  • Last Friday we had snow and ice

    The view from my office window:

    Then the walk home:

    This one has tapestry potential:

    Three days later the textures are still wonderful.

  • November update and Thanksgiving 2017

    I’ve been neglectful of the blog, as usual, but my mental health bogged down for a few weeks. I feel better now.

    I threw a soiree for Sandy’s 65th birthday at Cafe Europa on Nov. 16 that went well. My sister and brother-in-law came to it, which made us both very happy. I don’t have any good photos because it was a little too dark for my camera. We haven’t had a party since Sandy’s 50th birthday, mainly because of my overwhelming anxiety about throwing parties. That one was fun but definitely had its problems. We had just moved into our house and didn’t have as much stuff so there was more room for people. Nowadays, it would be a real squeeze. We don’t have the back deck any more and I can’t even figure out how to make room for a Christmas tree.

    The following week we went to Lake Waccamaw, as has become the tradition. As usual, the photos begged to be taken. There are different birds at Lake Waccamaw in fall and winter, and that’s a nice change from the usual mallards. There were flocks of American coots and we identified a pair of buffleheads one day. Photos at the end of the post.

    The big surprise was when we went to lunch at Cape Fear Vineyards near White Lake in Bladen County. Seriously in the middle of nowhere, and as a former resident of Robeson County, I know about nowhere. Delicious food at decent prices, beautiful grounds, horses, miniature horses, llamas, and an art collection worth millions of dollars. There were at least a couple of hundred autographed celebrity photos and paintings, prints and memorabilia from movie and rock stars, including every member of the Beatles. But also, many signed prints and lithographs from Dali, Picasso, Chagall, even a Renoir. Shepard Fairey prints in the freakin’ bathroom. I was stunned. The owner moved back home after years of owning a restaurant in L.A., and he was friends with a lot of famous people. The question remains, why would anybody rich want to move back to inland eastern North Carolina? Amazing.

    After that we took a little two-car ferry across the Cape Fear River and back just for fun.

    And here are my annual November Lake Waccamaw shots. We stayed at Fred’s (now Weezer’s and our family’s) house again. The first time we’ve stayed there since it has central heat.

    American coots on the lake and on the canal:

    Big Bird came by at some point that morning (great blue heron).

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    Did I catch a flying saucer in this photo?

    My love/hate relationship with Daylight Saving Time continues. Even though I love that extra hour of sleep in the morning I do not love the earlier darkness at the end of the day. Then spring is so hard to adjust back! I have always had a very regulated body clock. My husband does not and can stay up all night and sleep most of the day on the weekend then switch back to an 8-5 weekday schedule. I envy that and his ability to fall asleep in less than 60 seconds, but I also believe that it affects his health negatively.

    My spirits are better this week although it seemed like time dragged. Last Sunday I made myself go to the studio and then made myself sit down at my sewing machine just to play with tshirt scraps. I ended up with a block I liked and will do more in this vein.

    Friday night Sandy and I took his little bongo drums to the drum circle that meets in Center City Park on First Friday nights. (They won’t meet again until March or April.) That was fun but I think I’d like to get a bodhran, which is an Irish drum. The vibration on my fingers is a little too much. Then we went to Little Brother Brewing, a new micro brewpub on South Elm, and listened to feminist poetry. An Asheville-like evening in downtown Greensboro.

    I’ve been purging collage materials from my studios, trying to get ready to consolidate them if necessary. When I get blocked, I reorganize. I have a lot of pure junk paper that I am recycling, but I also have a lot of old dictionaries, textbooks, natural history books, music sheets, maps, and atlases. My plan is to make collage variety packs to sell at a very low cost because I know there are artists who would love them. I’ll include painted and handmade papers as well. I’ll probably get this going around Christmas when I have time off and sell them through here, my Facebook page, and Paypal.

    I think that I’ll make paper and fabric garlands and prayer flags too.

    Now, going to work on “First, the Seed” and “Flow” books for the Triangle Book Arts show if I can get my worktable cleared off!

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    Whoa, stayed up way too late last night, reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. This is not an endorsement of this book. Rather it is the desire to finish it and move on to an author that I like better. He does hook me enough that I can’t simply not finish the book though. I read 1Q84 and I really wish I had those weeks of my life back. I tried this one on a recommendation because I’m usually willing to give a writer another chance.

    To lighten my reading up I went back to the Poldark series by Winston Graham, which is so fluffy it is a huge relief and I can pick it up after weeks and not be lost. With Murakami I find myself searching backwards constantly for clues I remember but can’t find. This must be satisfying to his multitudes of fans but it drives me crazy.

    This weekend I have been petsitting for my neighbors, which is a pretty big undertaking. They have three geriatric dogs, two cats, and a parrot. In exchange for our brief periods of care, they have taken care of our cats for our long and more frequent vacations. It works out well, since our cats are extremely low maintenance these days. I am reminded of how much I am intolerant of the smell of unwashed dog, and how much I love the smell of my cats’ fur. Although when Squirt went through renal failure he smelled awful. The parrot and I are wary of each other after we scared each other the last time, but this weekend he talked to me and I tried not to jump when he took his fruits and veggies from my hand. I am not a pet bird person at all.

    These dogs don’t seem to like being outside, which baffles me. They have a great fenced in backyard.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about feminism with the #MeToo movement that happened this week, and its connection to fighting sexual assault and harassment. I like to think of myself as radical and far left, but I get a bit fed up with radical feminism sometimes. One of the posters that the organizers of the Women’s March handed out proclaimed “Women are Perfect.” WTF, really? Some of the worse sexists and bigots I ever met were women. Then a bunch of feminists got all pissed off because Bernie was invited to speak at a women’s rights conference. We’ll all be better off when we a) acknowledge that women need to also take responsibility for their own bad behavior, including Hillary, and b) stop lumping all men together as deplorables, and accept that they sometimes make mistakes as young men and can change with guidance. And yes, accusations of sexual harassment can sometimes be used as a weapon. I’ve seen it happen to a friend, and a woman was complicit.

    I say this from my own experience as someone who has been sexually assaulted twice and sexually harassed more times than I can count. All of our experiences are unique and they should all be taken seriously and listened to as separate experiences. But if you don’t know yet that there are some women in this world who are fucking evil, you are not paying attention.

    Speak up if you can (I didn’t and still can’t), get help (I didn’t), and know that nearly every woman shares your experience. Don’t blame yourself, but do realize that when you’re young and alcohol is involved, bad judgement can happen on both sides. Consider that if violence or coercion was not involved, that the other person’s judgement may have been just as impaired as yours. In one of my experiences, the guy was wrong, but we were both hammered and I can’t hate him for reading the situation wrong, although I do wonder how attractive a young woman who had just thrown up and passed out really could have been. That was on my 20th birthday. In the other, which happened when I was 18, I’d put him in prison if I could, lock him up, and throw away the key. But at the time, all I could think about was not putting my parents through that pain of knowing, and that I was stupid for not getting out of the car and running. And yes, worried that they would not support me.

    Above all, be kind to yourself.

    The election of a sexual predator to “lead” our country has done more to unravel my psychological health and bring up terrible memories than anything in my whole life up until today. The worst of these experiences happened in the late 70s and early 80s when I honestly did not know what to do and blamed myself for letting myself get in the situation or didn’t want to “rock the boat” at work because it was so hard to find a job. Some of my first serious run-ins with sexism came from women.

    Now that these sexual predators are empowered and in charge, at least they are being exposed and we are bonding together in fighting them. They have always been there, and like the white supremacists they are scurrying around like cockroaches in the light. Don’t forget the female traitors who uplift them. They are just as bad.

    Yeah, it’s pretty likely that I’ll come back and delete this post.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    This really will be random.

    Last night, for the first time since surgery, I could turn over in bed without my insides feeling like they are rolling around! Sometimes the absence of a thing feels like a real thing. So I’m pretty happy this morning. Haven’t even taken a Tylenol yet, although I will.

    I think I’ll go to the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market and buy broccoli and some combo of locally raised beef and pork and chicken. They have wonderful lean brats and
    sausages there too. I always see a lot of great people there. Back when I was agoraphobic it was one of the first places where I felt comfortable as I was healing.

    My field peas are about done but my butterbeans are having a big end of season run. I picked twice this week and shelled, blanched, and froze them. My tomatoes are about done too and I’m going to dehydrate my last batch this weekend.

    The California fires are nightmares and my heart hurts so much for the terror and trauma and loss of the people there. Fire is a particular dread of mine and I’ve lost some loved ones to it.

    I went to two Art-is-You retreats in Petaluma and one of my classes with Roxanne Stout went to beautiful Cornerstone Gardens in Sonoma to sketch and take photos. I hope they survive this. What beautiful country it is there. It’s little wonder so many people have moved there to retire. It seems from the news reports that many of the elderly residents could not escape in time. So horrible.

    I’ve been fantasizing about moving west again despite all this. I keep thinking about a co-housing community near Forest Grove, Oregon. We met one of the residents at a bluegrass jam in a tiny brewery there, and he asked us out to a cookout there the day we were leaving. Even offered to pick us up. Unfortunately it was 100 degrees that day and Susanne had to get on down the road to Eugene to meet her boyfriend and turn in the rental car, so we couldn’t go. I looked it up online yesterday. I would really love to live in that area. I think Sandy would like it too.

    I picked the glue out of my belly button and I’m so glad about that. It was driving me crazy. The little things, you know. Also, I never thought I’d be typing that sentence.

    Also on my mind: if given the opportunity to sell my part of my cousin’s lake house, will I do it? Anyone who has read this blog for long or knows me well knows of my intense attachment to it. I don’t consider it partly mine because my cousin’s wife has lifetime rights but she can’t tear down the house or sell the property, so apparently it IS partly mine. I don’t pay a cent in taxes or expenses for it but she encourages me to go down there and stay as much as I want. I hear that she is considering making us an offer, which I’m sure means that the house will come down. The lot is what is valuable.

    I could use the money for retirement, or buy a nice camper and go where I please.

    Ay yi yi. Probably won’t happen but it set my brain in motion. And I’m still smarting over selling my mother’s house.

    Okay, better get to the farmer’s market. Time has run away from me. I’ve signed up to do this, which I pretty much do all the time anyway.