slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • The Great Getaway

    My mother won the People’s Choice Award for her painting in The Great Getaway Art Show in Lumberton, NC last week. Her painting was part of the Garden Club Council display where local garden clubs were randomly assigned one of eight paintings to design a complementing arrangement. We thought that was the only contest she was part of, so my sister and I didn’t even vote for her painting for the People’s Choice – she won it without us! Sorry about the glare. It was unavoidable.

    We voted for this incredible fiber piece by Jim Arendt, “Ian.”

    Detail

    An old warehouse space next door is being converted into studio and gallery space for an art co-op.

    Lumberton, you have impressed the heck out of me. One day I hope to eat at Candy Sue’s downtown!

  • Back Forty Update

    Pablocito chose this very moment to bite me in the back of the head. Will ya look at the fangs on that guy? No harm done, just part of the dominance games. I was nipping him on the back of the neck earlier.

    But this is supposed to be a Back Forty Update, right?

    I have learned over the years that when the Back Forty is a mess and I don’t take “before” photos, I am sad when it turns beautiful and the mess is gone (or cleverly disguised) and I post the “after” photos and there’s nothing to compare them to.

    Today I planted Long Standing Bloomsdale spinach and Red Deer Tongue lettuce in the two shadiest areas along the fence. This is a new place for planting veggies because it used to be much shadier when my neighbor’s tree was on the other side of the fence there. The flowers in between are bloodroot, and they may be moved to the front yard since they like shade. I had one Zephyr squash and one okra there last year. I used to plant lettuce and spinach under the maple tree and let the lettuce reseed itself. That area has been reclaimed by ground ivy, English ivy, and soapwort. I don’t think that I will plant on that side of the Back Forty anymore.

    This year my focus will be on keeping the critters from eating all my food and flowers. The rabbits will have to make do with the violets. This nifty little black netting hoop whatchamacallit is from Pinetree Seeds and I hope that it will last a few years. I’m going to start my beans and peas under it. The other beds will have wire cages and gauze fabric over them. Not attractive but my husband will just have to get over it.

    I dug out the Lenten roses here and moved them to the front and the plan was to move these day lilies to another spot toward the back to give me this newly sunny area to plant veggies in. My body, however, had a different opinion so this may have to be a fall/winter veggie bed or wait another year.

    The front shade garden is getting better. This is the second year. I transplanted more large Lenten roses in the middle between the Yoshina cherry trees and that’s why they look so sad. Eventually I’ll have this area covered with hostas and foxgloves and ferns and whatever else I can snag for free. I still have many in the back but I have to stop digging for a while because of tendinitis.

    The plot at the UNCG Community Garden is small but I am excited about having a dye/papermaking garden there with Susanne. I was going to prepare the bed this weekend with the soil and compost they provide but the shoulder thing put a stop to that. Sandy is working a 12 hour shift today, and Susanne is out of town. Next weekend I will probably go to Mama’s. Maybe after work one day. I’d hoped to get a few seeds planted before the rain tomorrow.

    Yes, we butchered the fig tree. It was way, way too big and most of the figs were feeding the birds. I wouldn’t have minded that, but it was shading too much of the garden area. I hope that it will come back, but if it doesn’t I won’t be upset.

    There are a few pretty things happening in the back though.

  • Chad Alice Hagen’s Felt, Resist Dyeing and Bookmaking Class

    Whee, this was better than Disney World. Seriously.

    Chad Alice led us through finishing prefelted needle-punched merino wool batts, then we clamped fun metal and Lexan and wood stuff to folded pieces and dyed them, and took them off, and reclamped, and dyed them, and took them off, and reclamped, and dyed them. All in all we used nine colors in the dyepots and most pieces went into three dyepots before the sun went down on Friday.

    ^^^After the second set of dyebaths.

    ^^^Look at her beautiful pieces. She is showing us how they were folded and what “tools” were used for the designs.

    ^^^After the final darkest dyebaths.

    ^^^Probably my favorite piece. I didn’t put it in the third dyebath.

    ^^^This is my favorite large piece.

    Then we picked a piece for a book cover, cut it down, embellished the flap with stitching and beads, then glued thrift shop leather to the inside cover. She taught us a simple longstitch binding but I still learned a new way of doing it. She taught us how to do two different closures but I didn’t get around to mine – I’m still deciding what I want to do about it.

    This was my second favorite for the book cover, so I chose it. She said not to chose our favorites.

    Here’s an example of taking a mistake and working with it. My first two middle stitches on the cover were too loose. I could have gone back and rebound and tightened them, but instead I decided to do a twisty thing to them. Longstitch is versatile like that. Chad Alice showed us an elegant way to finish off the final knot for the binding on the inside of the cover.

    The back cover.

    And voila!

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    First I’ll do a coffee pot post to sweep out the brain junk, then I’ll post about my wonderful two day workshop with Chad Alice Hagen.

    I discovered where this fine feral feller likes to hang out and started leaving him a little cat food on my walks by these bushes on my way to work. I first saw him this past fall and I’ve worried about him in the bad weather. Hopefully someone nearby has been caring for him over the winter because he looks pretty healthy. What shall I call him? I’m thinking “George.”

    I sure did eat out a lot this week! I visited Fishbones with Sandy on Wednesday night and again on Friday night with Chad Alice Hagen, Victoria, LaMoyne, and Rosser. We had a grand time and I look forward to deepening my friendships with this women. Rosser took this photo of Chad Alice, me, and LaMoyne.

    Thursday night was really special too. I went to Scuppernong Books and listened to Natalie Goldberg read from the re-released and revised Living Color. One of the reasons that I started writing for myself again was Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. I realized that I could enjoy writing without judging myself and that made all the difference in the world to me. It has been a form of emotional release and a satisfying way to express myself since I was in middle school. I bought Living Color, which focuses on painting, but as with her writing books casts a large net over all creative expression, and Waking Up in America and Old Friend from Far Away, so I have some great books to read this summer. Another plus – I didn’t make a fool out of myself when she signed them, as I am prone to do with writers who I admire.

    I’ll add a photo if I can get my Kindle Fire to connect to Wifi today. (Update: It’s a horrible photo but isn’t that window fabulous?) That is the only thing that I dislike about my Kindle. It does not play pretty with our Wifi at home or at Scuppernong Books. The bartender there explained that Kindles and indie bookstores don’t like each other, which makes sense, but we can’t figure out the problem at home since my laptop and my former Kindle connected just fine.

    I met some interesting new people and saw a few friends there which makes me feel like I may be in the right place for me after all – an unusual feeling for me. I introduced Anne P. to M’Coul’s after the reading and booksigning.

    Mama’s biopsy came back negative, but she still has to have the tumor removed because it is almost blocking her colon. Her surgery is not scheduled until May 2, and I’ll go down there for a week or so before and after the surgery. At age 90 any surgery is complicated and dangerous so we’ll play it by ear.

    This also means that Sandy and I will probably put off our May vacation to another week later in the year. We were going to drive to St. Louis and go to Cahokia, a place that Sandy has wanted to visit for a long time. At least I had not bought plane tickets or made any unrefundable deposits.

    A good friend’s position was lost to budget cuts at my place of work, due to our state government’s gutting of public education. I hope that they will find her another job in the university. Every freaking year since the GOP took over we have to worry about our staff co-workers losing their jobs, and every year the cuts get closer to the bone. I am weary of it.

    Coffee is gone, will take a break and then post about the felted book workshop!

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    This was one wild week.

    It ended on a very positive note, so I’ll start with that. Elizabeth Lanier organized a new weavers’ guild, the Handweavers and Spinners Guild of Rockingham County, which is about 20-30 minutes north of here. (Rockingham is also the county seat of Richmond County – just to make it clear that it is not the town of Rockingham.) She held the first meeting in her lovely house near Reidsville, and five people were in attendance. She set up a loom in her back yard for us to weave on, and we roasted marshmallows over a fire pit. I talked too much as usual. I also left several boxes of old Handwoven and Weavers magazines and weaving and fiber art related books to give away, which will still be there for the next meeting, so let me know if you are an area weaver or spinner or other kind of fiber artist and I’ll put you in contact with the group. I think that it will be a good one with weavers at all different levels of expertise, so if you are just beginning or even thinking about learning it will be a good experience for you.

    Once again, I misplaced my real camera, so I took this photo with my Kindle. Awkward, but at least I can send photos over the web from it.

    It’s interesting when you have an Internet presence for a long time and you run into someone who has followed you quietly. I’ve done this to other artists who have much bigger followings – introduced myself and then started talking about their life as I have been privy to it on their blog or Facebook page. It is a fabulous surprise and adrenalin rush, and before yesterday it had not happened to me in a long time, since the time when this blog was mostly about Slow Food and food politics and gardening. According to my stats (yes, I do check them now and then) I tend to believe that I have a handful of regular readers and the rest come by to leave spam comments. I lost a lot of readers when I switched to writing about my art and life other than food and Facebook got popular. I actually like this. I feel more open to say what I want to say when I stopped worrying about what others would like to read, and I’ve always used this blog and a website before it as my personal portal. Anyway, it feels great when you find out that you’ve influenced someone in a good way, which is why we bloggers LOVE comments.

    We’ve moved the “entertainment center” from the back building to my studio without hurting ourselves. That was a real achievement. Today I’m planning to fill it with all the stuff currently stacked on the floor and chairs, and maybe weave a little. It’s been beautiful weather but another cold front with rain turning to snow is expected to come in today.

    I paid my money for a small community garden plot at UNCG that gets good sun and I hope that I will have time to actually use it. I’m going to wait for this weather to roll through before I plant anything. I only had one indigo seed germinate, so I’ve replanted my seedling tray with golden marguerite, Roma and Cherokee Purple tomatoes, Hopi Red amaranth, and woad. I’ll plant some lettuce and spinach with protection from critters this time.

    At this point I figure that I’ve mostly lost everyone except a few stalwart readers so I’ll write briefly about the earlier part of my week. It most likely will bring a significant change to my life.

    My sweet mama, after a couple of major GI tests and a CT scan last month that indicated that she probably had nothing worse than a hemorrhoid, decided to see another GI specialist on Tuesday. She assured us that she would not have a colonoscopy, which at age 90 can do more harm than good, but somehow, that’s what she ended up doing. Her boyfriend went with her because her children didn’t know that it was going to be any big deal. Mama has set up a pattern of going to doctors often to be told again that nothing has changed. I figure that if it gives her peace of mind and Medicare pays for it, okay.

    So she comes out of anesthesia (which, by the way, can pop a 90 year old over the edge to dementia if they are close) and her boyfriend, who is mostly deaf is called in, she is groggy, and the nurse tells them that she has a large tumor and the biopsy results will probably be back next week.

    I don’t get her on the phone Tuesday night but I figure everything is okay and her phone is often out of order. The next night I get a voice message from her (I didn’t make it to the phone fast enough) saying that she has my brother’s cell phone, and by the way, the procedure went well and she has a large tumor down there but she wasn’t worried about it so I shouldn’t worry either.

    WOW. And that is all we know right now. I’ve talked to her a couple of times since and she honestly doesn’t seem to be very concerned. She isn’t in any more pain from this than she already is from sciatica and her terribly arthritic back. She’s looking forward to an art show in early April. And her phone line was eaten up by a nest of fire ants, and has been repaired.

    But here is the back story. The short version. My father died of colon cancer at age 64, and it was a horror show. We all were traumatized by it, but only my sister and I have had the sense to get regular colonoscopies. This was nearly 30 years ago and I am still haunted by it, although not as fearful, thank God.

    Mama doesn’t like for me to talk about her on Facebook, and I don’t think that anyone from home reads this blog, so I’m going to delete the post on Facebook (my blog posts automatically submit to the Slow Turn Studio FB page). If you do know Mama, I request that you not tell her that you read about this on the Internet, although it is no secret what she is going through in her circle of friends.

  • Affinity

    Before I move on with my day, let me post about this ongoing art project that began in September, 2013. Here’s what I wrote about it to send to India Flint for this project.

    Our family farm sits upon the site of a Native American village and mound site from around 900 years ago. In the 19th century the area was known as “Affinity.” Reflecting on and finding artifacts from the cultures that lived there before always fascinated me.

    In September 2013 I printed and dyed long strips of cotton fabric using plants and leaves I gathered from the farm with the intention of making a scroll. The dyestuff included goldenrod, broomsedge, oak and sweet gum leaves, and pomegranate rinds. The bundles were rolled around old tobacco sticks that were once used to hang tobacco leaves in barns to cure.

    I also was taking the last college art course of my degree, and created a ceramic box for the scroll. The lid of the box is a relief map of the farm from a satellite view. The bottom of the inside of the box is a relief map of what I imagine the same view might have been 900 years ago.

    During the making of this project (which is still in progress), my brother told me that he had banned hunting on the farm and is in the planning stages of constructing an observation platform and feeding station for wildlife overlooking a beaver pond. This made me consider the lives of the other inhabitants of the land that have always been there. I began stitching outlines of these creatures on the scroll with silk dyed with black walnut hulls from the farm.

    The cloth turned out to have a mystery coating on it, but it still took the dye and even retained the texture of the materials in the bundle after washing it, so the texture is part of the piece.

    Spaces were saved to stitch poetry on the scroll, probably from Wendell Berry’s “The Mad Farmer Poems.”

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post


    British encampment at Guilford Courthouse Battle reenactment

    I have the house to myself today while my husband goes target shooting with his friends. Ten or so years ago we would have been at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park doing the reenactment of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, one of the last battles of the American Revolution that weakened Cornwallis to the point that it led to his final defeat at Yorktown not long afterwards.

    It’s going on today and tomorrow, and it’s a great show if you’re in the Greensboro area.

    I enjoyed those days but I can’t say that I want to go back to them. It was a lot of exhausting work and my body doesn’t respond well to camping any more. I keep saying that the next time the GC reenactment rolls around I’ll take all my 18th century clothes and camp equipment out there to sell, but I have bursitis problems this weekend and that’s a long hike from the parking lot to the campsites with a bunch of stuff to carry. I should have done it yesterday but I wouldn’t have been able to do it because I had a major flare-up. Which leads me to this story that I posted on Facebook last night:

    I have a recurring hip problem that flared up today, and that always makes me feel old, even back when it started in my 20s. So I’m walking home from work, in my tweed coat and a big knitted cap, beside the daycare playground as usual, as normally as possible.

    I hear “Chase the old lady! Chase the old lady! The one in the glasses!” and three 4-5 year olds run up to their side of the fence.

    There’s no one else behind me, so I say, “Am I the old lady in the glasses?”

    “YES!” they shriek, “Chase the old lady!”

    “I should be pretty easy to catch if I’m an old lady,” I say as they pretend to run just behind me on the other side of the fence.

    “It’s okay,” the little girl assured me. “We like old ladies!”

    I do believe this is the first time I’ve been called an old lady, other than hippie slang. But as long as they like me, I guess I can handle it. Probably won’t ever forget it, just as I’ll never forget the first time I was ma’amed or called “Miss Laurie” by a young adult. I hope that I do become an old lady one day.

    It was a busy time workwise, but it is satisfying work.

    If I don’t have any more indigo seedlings (I only have one!) by the time I get back to the office on Monday, I’m going to plant other seeds in the peat pots. Maybe next time I’ll heed the suggestion to soak the seeds before planting. At least I know what the indigo seedlings look like in case any stragglers decide to come to life after I plant the other seeds.


    Thursday night I had the pleasure of listening to my grad school Slow Food mentor and friend Charlie Headington give a shelf talk about the books that have most inspired him at Scuppernong Books in downtown Greensboro. (The books were The Botany of Desire, A Pattern Language, and Introduction to Permaculture.) We had an amazing conversation afterwards in which he bolstered my spirits and boosted my ego, as usual. I have been lucky (and willing) to find the teachers that I’ve needed during the last fifteen years. Sometimes you just have to find a way to make it happen. I was extremely lucky that Charlie was nearby, bringing me to the subject of my Australian teacher and mentor…

    Today I’m going to work on getting some text and photos of my farm scroll and box to India Flint before her deadline of March 19 to self publish a book of her students’ work. I’ll post it here too. It’s not quite finished, but this is a slow project for me, very personal and I may be adding to it for some time. Here’s a taste of it. It’s quite hard to photograph this piece in its entirety!

  • Saturday coffee pot post


    Every now and then I feel the need to drink coffee and type whatever comes to mind until the feeling goes away. That’s a coffee pot post.

    I took a break from the visual journal posts. Partly because I kept forgetting to put the battery back in my camera but I realized that I needed a break. My blog passed the nine year mark in late February. Pretty amazing. 2005 seems so very long ago. I don’t know whether I’ll post every day again any time soon.

    Work has been busy and stressful. I had my feelings hurt pretty badly, but most of it was due to misunderstanding, and the rest I pretty much knew about the undercurrent anyway, and they probably don’t know that I know. It is a rare workplace that doesn’t have some kind of toxic personality trying to gain control by poisoning others with their own warped intentions. I’ve heard that one in ten people are sociopathic and you’ll never know about it. I still love my job and almost all of my co-workers, and the students just plain rock.

    As I told one person in the many conversations about this last week, I played dumb for about half my life (due to getting picked on for being smart in school and later from the haze of alcohol and depression) and I have no intention of ever doing that again. Passive aggression can be fun but it’s not my style. As much as I despise confrontation I despise gossip more. These days I own up to my mistakes and expect others to be honest instead of talking behind my back. I could have gone for my Ph.D. or M.F.A. but I chose not to because I don’t like writing for other people. I’m not saying that I’m the smartest person in my workplace – far from it – but I find it ironic that some of the most ardent feminists I know would be quite happy if I would sit down, take notes, and shut up.

    Okay, that had been bubbling up for a while.

    The weather has been quite dreadful this week. My county is under a state of emergency right now because of all the power outages and trees down from the ice storm yesterday. Fortunately, we never lost power and seem to have no damage. Sandy and I had a fun day and evening planned with Missy and Bob, but they have trees down and no power and they are way out in the country. The temperature is supposed to rise up into the 60s by tomorrow so my hope is that we will be able to finish up some of the yard clean-up we started two weeks ago.

    Today I’m going to make an effort to purge my bookshelf and studio. I need the room and I have to be honest with myself that I will never touch 90% of my books ever again. I have SO MANY BOOKS, and I loved collecting them, but I get most of my reference information from the Internet and I can check out almost anything from a fantastic library just across the street from my office. Heck, they will even DELIVER the book to my office!

    I’m considering having a porch sale/party and putting the books out there for my friends first. I’ll have a lot to give away and others to sell for less than $2, probably. My main problem likely will be my husband snatching the books back. He loves collecting books as much as I do.

    On March 22 I am traveling to Reidsville for the first meeting of the Handweavers and Spinners of Rockingham County. I have two boxes of back issues of Handwoven, Shuttle, Spindle, and Dyepot, and various beading magazines to give away at this meeting. Any fiber-related books that I cull today will go too.

    I need to lighten my load.

    I feel better already.

    Here’s a Meyer lemon on my tree, nearly ready to be picked.

  • Visual journal, February 28, 2014

    Thank God this week/month is over. I heard earlier this month that Mercury was in retrograde. I didn’t know what it meant then. I do now. I’m looking forward to the weekend, and I’m very grateful to the people who supported me this week.

    Yesterday I walked past one of my former classmates trying to stack these stones. They greeted me on the way to work this morning.

  • Visual journal, February 27, 2014


    I am attempting to germinate indigo seeds in my office. Two pots are actually planted with woad seeds. I planted them about two weeks ago and just found out that they take about a month to germinate.

    I am going to be quite ticked if they don’t germinate and I waste four weeks on watching and watering dirt.

    The plan is to rent space in the university community garden to grow these. I don’t have enough sunny space at home.