slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Back to reality

    Oh my, has it really been weeks since I last posted? I’ve been so busy. And tired. All this jet setting is great until you have to go back to work and get on a different sleep schedule. My husband can sleep at all times of the day and night. I have a very rigid circadian clock and it doesn’t care to be messed with so often.

    Our new bathroom is functional and mostly painted, except for the trim. Our house is still a wreck and will continue to be for several months. Next on the schedule is replacing kitchen cabinet doors and drawer fronts with real wood (the current ones made from particle board are falling apart) and then we’ll gut and repair the foundation and floor under the original bathroom, then remodel it. However, next time we are going to paint the beadboard BEFORE it is put up. There was some frustrating finagling going on trying to get the paint in the grooves in that high corner above the shower. I love the way beadboard looks but man, I learned that it is hard to paint.

    However, my attention now needs to turn to my mother’s house and cleaning it out. My sister has been carrying this load while I’ve been dashing off to my art retreats having fun. For the rest of the year, I’m going to try to spend about every other weekend in Marietta working on that. Hoo boy. It’s tough emotionally and physically.

    I will work on blogging my trip as I can during breaks in the action before I forget the details, but the full load of photos has been uploaded to my Flickr site, accessible by clicking on one of the photos on the right sidebar.

  • In the air again

    I’m about to head out west again, this time with my husband to visit family in and near Denver. Sandy will fly back home on Tuesday while I hop another flight to California to attend Art is You Petaluma. I will be glad to see my family, but I just can’t get up much enthusiasm for the retreat afterwards. Usually I am pawing the gate. Now I would rather come home and paint the new bathroom, get the house put back in some kind of order, and weave. I’m feeling low about Mama and the big tasks on the other side of this trip, but I paid too much for this retreat to skip it due to moodiness.

    Some good news: the bathroom should be finished by the time I get back, except for the painting and window treatments. I have a loving pet sitter so I won’t worry about my critters. I’m caught up enough at work so that I should not have a huge pile waiting for me.

    I know that once I get there I will thoroughly enjoy myself. I went to this one a couple of years ago and it is really one of the best, in a beautiful Sheraton which is also a marina on the Petaluma River. I’m taking classes with three artists who I really like. I’m splitting a room with the retreat vendor and she lives in Petaluma so we will probably use the room at different times. The weather forecast is great for all of it. I will get a little alone time. I will even enjoy the bus ride from the San Francisco airport to Petaluma.

    I’ll come home with a couple of fabulous journals, a little more knowledge about watercolor and mixed media, a few new friends to bombard with Facebook posts, and some grand memories. That’s the good life for me, and I’m grateful that I can do it. Of course, I’ll blog it here because that’s one of the best parts of traveling – reliving it.

  • 98% Water tapestry progress

    Almost there. Maybe by the end of September?

    I had forgotten about my community garden plot. It was bursting with flowers and the red amaranth had gone to seed. The green cotton is still struggling (planted too closely) but blooming. Maybe I’ll get some bolls this year if it doesn’t turn cold suddenly. Lots of carrots.

    A week from now I’ll be on my way to Colorado to see my aunt and cousin, then to California for three workshops at Art-is-You Petaluma. I’m so lucky to be able to do this, but wish that I could have spaced out the trips a little more. I’m still flying high from Oregon! When I get back I’ll have to knuckle down and deal with my mother’s house and estate. Oh, man. Let’s not think about that right now.

  • A gift left unopened

    I don’t usually take photos from airplane windows, but I couldn’t resist this time. What beautiful compositions!

    Those are sand dunes ^^^

  • and a flower, always a touch of beauty

    Wednesday, August 27, our last day at Cannon Beach…

    The famous Haystack Rock.

    Not nearly as crowded as an August day on our beaches here.

    At Wave Crest Inn

    Shirley’s little tapestry

    Flowers around Pam’s cabin

    Pam drove Linda and I back to Portland where we stayed at the fabulous Lion and the Rose Victorian Inn. Possibly the nicest place I’ve ever slept.

  • A footprint like no other

    Tuesday, August 26, morning low tide in Cannon Beach, Oregon

    Pam helps me with the finishing touches on my wee tapestry, “Laurie Meets the Pacific” or “Saint Feet.”

    Linda Weghorst’s small tapestry

  • With the turning…so goes everything

    Sunset at Cannon Beach, Oregon on Monday, August 25.

  • What beholds a given day, an hour, a moment

    The rest of the day was devoted to weaving our tiny sample tapestries and Pam discussing her work. She showed us many of her samples for her large commissions and smaller pieces in a series of personal work she is doing. She had asked us to write down what kind of boat we would choose to be. We drew her pictures too. The photos below are of Pam Patrie’s work. You can see the larger tapestries on her website. Wow, her samples are bigger than most of my tapestries.

  • The light awoke the morning, silently

    A walk back to the cabin on Monday morning.

  • So fresh was the air, like a breath taken from the stars

    On Sunday, I took a walk on the beach with my camera in tow. I nearly wore it out. I learned that the greyish green circular blobs blossomed into sea anemones. The starfish were celebrating in their party clothes. The sea gulls were really, um, mean to each other.

    Linda Weghorst showed us her portfolio and photos of her work. Her figurative work inspired me to try my hand at it. She is the current president of Tapestry Weavers South, and as such she has connected me with the local tapestry weavers in my region. Plus, we hit it off like gangbusters and I am quite happy that she only lives two hours away!

    Both Pam Patrie and Linda are professional tapestry artists who have woven very large commissions, and they provided a wealth of information about that process. I myself am not interested in doing any commission work but it was very enlightening to hear stories from the business end of being a tapestry artist.

    Steve Karakashian showed us his progress in sampling for a large project – to reproduce an Egyptian shawl that belonged to his mother. Here is his sample for a border design:

    I love this tapestry of Mount Rainier in progress by Ashli Tyre. She is weaving this design sideways. I use this same type of small loom and it is great for travel. Ashli is an accomplished Navajo rug weaver and she is trying tapestry as a less rigid approach to weaving design. She spins and dyes her yarn as well.

    Jeanne Bates was a familiar name to me from the Internet world because she started a website about tapestry way back around I first started my own website, before I started blogging! She was a worker bee, making sure that we were all comfortable and fed and provisioned with the weaving supplies we needed. I was in awe of Jeanne. She hardly ever sat down! She brought along some of her tapestry samples as well, which you can see at her website.

    Pam and Steve left for the day to attend a service in Portland, and Shirley Anne, a talented artist in many media, and I checked into our rooms at the Wave Crest Inn, within walking distance in Cannon Beach. It is a fascinating older place filled with antiques, artwork, and a quirky sense of humor. Jenny drove us around Cannon Beach so we could fantasize about buying a house there, and we briefly went to Seaside for a quick grocery trip. Safeway and Costco were the ONLY stores I went into during my entire trip! Guess it is obvious that I am not a shopper.

    Then Jenny Heard and I got down to weaving our tapestries on the back porch (see top photo), where it was chilly but humming with the surf of the Pacific Ocean and the cries of gulls. Guess what? NO BUGS. Just some cute chipmunks running around. I could hang out with Jenny for days, I think. I tried to get her to hire me as an assistant, but she is happy with the one that she has.

    Jan was the Divine who gave us rides to and from town. I hope to see her on my next trip because I didn’t get a chance to get to know her, and I’d like to.