slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Critter report


    Long time no see, friends.

    It’s a good thing. When I haven’t been working on my book cover and scroll box projects for my ceramics class, I’ve been relaxing. That’s right. I can relax now. Although that crash that just came from the kitchen kind of nullified that for a minute.

    The kittens are between 4-5 months old and completely crazy and entertaining but they also require some training about scratching the furniture and jumping on forbidden places like the woodstove and the counter around the stove where I prepare food. Unfortunately, Theo is a nervous wreck and whenever he hears me say “No” to the kittens he freaks out and hides. This reminds me that I have no idea what happened to him during his first eight years, or why he was turned over to the animal shelter. So this situation is a bit of a challenge.

    Pablo Opie Blondie Fritz and Diego Wolf Winnie (we can’t settle on one name, and the latter ones are the ones the shelter gave them) are definitely in need of neutering and no one will do it until they are completely free of the ringworm. Pablo seems to be over it, and Diego is close – he has a spot near the end of his tail that has been there from the beginning which is really stubborn. Once we adopted them and turned them over to our vet’s care, they went on oral meds which has helped enormously. Their coats are beautiful now. We discovered that the shelter would euthanize them because of the ringworm even though we were committed to adopting them so we went ahead and paid the fee and signed a contract that we would take care of the rest of their vaccines and neutering. They are expensive little boogers. We saved their lives. They owe us, dammit.

    I think that Pablo will earn his keep. One night he sat on the floor hunched down and growling. I picked him up and he clearly had something in his mouth, but he was not letting go. I stuck my finger into his mouth between his teeth and he chomped down hard enough that I couldn’t get my finger out! So I walked him over to Sandy, Pablo still growling, and Sandy saw that he had a palmetto bug in his mouth. God, how I hate those things. This year is my first experience with them. I managed to get my finger out and Sandy asked if I wanted him to get the bug out of his mouth. Well, first off, I don’t think that Pablo would have allowed that. Secondly, if he wants to eat palmetto bugs, I say by all means let him.

    There has not been another bug incident that I am aware of, but it does bode well that Miss Lucy will have a hunting partner when the mice come back into the house for the winter. In the meantime, Pablo runs around with a butterbean in his mouth growling. That’s my boy.

    Lucy has adjusted well to the kittens and plays with them sometimes. She is fascinated with watching them and has a happy relaxed curled tail while she sits in the middle of the chaos. Poor Theo is the one I am worried about. He will occasionally lick their faces when they are calm but he doesn’t eat much. I give him as much attention as always and he sleeps beside me at night. I’m glad that he is overweight because mealtimes seem to be a source of stress and I have tried a lot of variations, including giving him a special treat before he eats to charge up his appetite. That seems to work best but not if he is running from me and hiding. It used to be that shaking the treat bag would bring him out of anywhere in the house anytime, but no more.

    Art report later.

  • Broomsedge bundle dyeing

    As much as I realized that I need to work on my ceramics class, I knew that it would be dumb to build a scroll box or stand without even beginning to make the scroll, so I devoted yesterday to dyeing with the broomsedge I’d collected.

    I made two dyepots for comparison. One was with the dried broomsedge that Dede Styles gave me in June. It was harvested about a year ago. The other was with broomsedge that I gathered two weeks ago from the farm. The colors of the two dyebaths were strikingly different, but the colors of the cloths coming out were not hugely different:

    Comparison of two alum-mordanted white cotton bundles, dyed in the separate dyebaths below. The biggest difference can be seen in the cotton twine wrapping the bundles.

    I have left the lighter bundle in the dyebath until later. It is not part of my farm-based project, and has plant material gathered from my front yard wrapped in cotton alum-mordanted fabric on sticks from the yoshina cherry trees (maple leaves, yoshina cherry leaves, yarrow, echinacea, rudbeckia blossoms, various weed leaves inside). The other fabrics are a long cotton t-shirt and a bamboo knit mock turtleneck that I keep overdyeing just for kicks.

    I unwrapped the other three bundles because I need to make some decisions on size based on their results. Everything about these bundles except the cotton fabric and the alum mordant on one include materials from the farm. They all included goldenrod stalks and blossoms, two different oak, sweet gum, and sassafras tree leaves, Spanish moss, and purslane.

    I unwrapped the bundle of pomegranate rind mordanted cotton fabric wrapped around the tobacco sticks (these were used to hang tobacco to dry in the barns to cure in the old days) first because I had the highest hopes for it. I had added a couple of corncobs to the center, hoping to get a textural print. The only good print I got from this bundle was a small print of the wood grain on the sticks and not much color at all. Very disappointing.

    So I unwrapped the bundle that had been previously dyed with goldenrod and washed and dried, but had no mordant. More color, but very few prints.

    The alum-mordanted cotton bundle ended up with the best prints, as I should have known. Next time I’ll use a protein-based mordant for the cotton fabrics, but I had hoped that the pomegranate rinds and the oak leaves would provide enough tannins to be effective. I was wrong. I’d like to find a plant based mordant for cotton that doesn’t dull the color that I can gather rather than buy. Maybe grind up dried beans? But that’s my seed stock for next year’s garden!

    Now I have all three bundles and the shirts in an afterbath of water, vinegar, and a piece of iron in the hopes that I might draw the color out a little more. Will post photos of the results later.

  • September was a wonderfully busy month. The first half was consumed by the planning and anticipation of seeing my relatives at our family reunion and my mother’s 90th birthday party. My aunt and first cousin came from Colorado to stay with my mother for ten days, during which time the bottom fell out (flooding) over their homes between Denver and Boulder. Fortunately, neither had damage but they went back to a mess. The reunion and party went really well, and once Mama got to the actual event her worrying fell away and she enjoyed it. She even showed her sense of humor by wearing the “birthday girl” tiara I crowned her with most of the day. Although she stayed on her feet for most of four hours, she came through it like a champ physically.

    The sad part was that the three of them went to see my uncle and aunt in South Carolina and they are not doing well at all and were getting ready to be moved to a facility that could provide more care for my aunt. My Aunt Louise is in the throes of Alzheimer’s and it has changed her personality from the sweet, easy-going, calm lady she has always been and her memory is wrecked. Alzheimer’s is such a cruel disease. It is my worst fear, having seen so much of it first hand.

    Now that I’m back, I have plunged into my ceramics class and I’m in the “present moment” zone. Even though my work is considerably less complex and technically proficient as the others in the class, I get inspiration and help from them instead of feeling overwhelmed and inadequate. Most of this is due to the professor’s kindness and encouragement. I had a bad day when my tendinitis spiked last week and I panicked that my surgery was all for nothing and it was back. I think that moving heavy stuff all month and then carrying the kittens in their cat carrier finally touched it off. My shelf for my supplies in the class was high up and I was struggling with moving things on and off it. The professor found a lower shelf for me, helped me move my things to it, and over the last week I gave away that heavy molding clay that I won’t use. I’ve moved on to creating book covers and once I started, I felt good about it. If I stick to small pieces and handling small amounts of clay, I’ll be fine. I still have my hand/wrist braces and my hands are back to normal.

    Sunday was a gorgeous day and I spent the afternoon making paper in Susanne’s back yard. She had a lot of leftover colored pulp from her class and I jumped on the chance to make some colored sheets for my clay covered books. It reminded me that papermaking might be my favorite art activity. It is so meditative and fun, once you get in the groove. I yakked my head off the whole time, but it CAN be meditative. I’m cooking the sheets a little at a time in the dry mount press this week, between work and classes.

    When I was home for the reunion and party I spent a lot of time at the farm and I gathered some dye materials there for a scroll about the farm. I dyed a strip of cotton with goldenrod and mordanted another with pomegranite rinds that I harvested from an old tree behind the Henley house. They provided a very light yellowish color on the cloth as well. I need to roll these cloths up with the oak, sassafras, and sweet gum leaves I brought back soon before it all rots away in the bucket. One of my projects in the ceramics class will be a stand to hold the scroll.

    The kittens are almost healed up from the ring”rash.” Their lesions have to be gone before we can let them into the rest of the house and get them neutered. Both of them had good check-ups at the vet last week and are growing well. Pablo’s ringworm seems to be gone, but Diego still has a stubborn lesion on his tail and is a little bit crusty on his shoulders, but most of his is gone. Other than that his health is back to normal.

    Pablo got out last night and when I picked him up I held his face down close to Theo, who was lounging sleepily on the sofa, and Theo licked Pablo’s face! I hope that means that there will be a smooth transition when the door opens between the sections of the house again.

  • Labor Play Day

    I’m busy busy busy with my Ceramics III class, but I have taken a little time to do some natural dyeing.

    Last Sunday, Sandy and I found a vacant lot with lots of goldenrod blooming. I tore blisters on my hands harvesting it so there’s a lesson for me, but I couldn’t wait to go home to get gloves and clippers. I did one dyepot with just the flowers and one with just the leaves. The flowers gave a bright goldenrod color and the leaves gave a nice green. I did a bit of overdyeing too.

    I got more dye out of these than I had time to use and the brew got pretty putrid. I mixed them together, and added black walnuts this weekend.

    Susanne came over yesterday and we tied up some bundles to go in the brew and a straight black walnut dyepot. (The smell of the brew improved after I boiled the black walnuts in it.) Susanne concentrated on dyeing paper and she was experimenting with trying to get prints off some small metal objects. She had some success but she and I were on different pages on what we were trying to accomplish. I think that she’ll do better with sun printing objects using this method.

    I was thrilled to get the red eucalyptus prints I’ve been wanting by steaming some fresh eucalyptus sprigs in a silk sleeve. Will definitely do more of this. As you can see, Susanne’s handmade corn husk paper took the dye beautifully. This one was folded and dipped in the black walnut dye and then bundled and steamed with some plant leaves tucked into the pages, including eucalyptus.

    Susanne’s big success was this luscious cotton paper, bundled and left in the black walnut dyepot overnight.

    Now she wants to do more cloth and I want to do more paper – we really do complement each other!

    Oh yeah, and I have a lot of really strong black walnut dye left, so I’ve poured some into jars and I’m putting them in the little fridge in the back. The silk yarn skein I dyed in the brew came out a gorgeous dark brown so I’m going to tie up some more skeins to dye in the rest. And I have three more cloth pieces coming out of the washer and dryer now that I’m very pleased with – but I’m tired of being on the computer and will post photos later.

  • Meet the Fosters

    This has been a full two weeks. Diego, the smaller foster kitten got sick, and I took him to the vet, where he was diagnosed with a variety of ailments including ringworm. Auuggghhh! So he and Pablo are quarantined into the back two rooms again, while I cleaned the rest of the house as well as I could. The rescue group arranged for them both to be dipped, once this past Saturday and again next Saturday, and we have ointment and a anti-fungal rinse that we have been mopping down all of them with. Now I’m glad that Theo and Lucy didn’t get too friendly with them right away. Diego has been on antibiotics and we have treated both of them for conjunctivitis, which is why they both are a little blinky in the photos. Believe me, they look much better today.

    Here’s a video that I took of them the second day we had them:

    I’ll post artwork separately.

  • Suddenly, this happened…The Fosters’ First Night

    Right now, these two one-month-old boys are known as “the fosters.” The only time I could get decent photos were when they stopped running long enough to explore and decimate Sandy’s bookshelf. They’ll spend a few days on their own behind closed doors (or as long as I can stop Sandy from letting them out) and then they get to terrorize Theo and Miss Lucy.

    Theo and Miss Lucy were cowering in the front room when I left the house this morning, and they haven’t even seen these two guys out of the cat carrier. What a couple of wussy pussies.

    We went by Petsmart last night to pick up some Pill Pockets and these two fellas had just come in from the animal shelter. They had not even made it to the crate. They were cleaned up and sent home with us in a lent carrier. This is a danger of being sleep-deprived – we had not intended for this to happen at all.

    However, when we do adopt them (as I’m sure will happen), their $25 adoption fee includes neutering and their first shots (which they’ve mostly had). My vet suggested that kittens from the shelter be kept separate from our other cats because she has seen a lot of upper respiratory problems in shelter kittens.

    As soon as I opened the door this morning, they spilled out and romped around my bedroom until I managed to catch them. Fearless. No crying. Just playing, pooping in the litterbox, and eating. I haven’t seen them sleep yet, but Sandy slept with them last night. I couldn’t do it, I had to catch up on my sleep.

  • Spirit and the Back Forty

    I can’t tell you just how freeing it has been to my spirit to not worry about making art for sale any more. I’ve definitely had some physical challenges, but they are nothing compared to the mental roadblocks I run into every time I start selling my work on a regular basis. I always think that it will be different this time, that I won’t let it happen, but it digs a pinhole under the current of my creative energy until I am drained.

    It was a lovely evening and now a pleasant rainy morning. North Carolina has been in a bizarre weather pattern all summer. We have had way too much rain. Right now it is downright cool. Highs in the low 70s are unheard of in August. Normally it would be averaging around 90, and we had a really bad triple-digit heat wave in August only a few years ago. I turned off the AC and opened our windows last night. This house is almost soundproof so I don’t usually hear the crickets and a soft steady rain with the windows closed.

    The mosquitoes, as you might guess, are horrendous. If we get a break in the rain, I’ll cover up with long sleeves and plants and try to pull some weeds while the ground is soft. My back is still healing up so I need to be careful. Yesterday I found two beautiful cucumbers that are almost too ripe because the weeds hid them so well. And I’ve been checking that plant every other day! I think that I’ll try to seed them and chop them up for a cream cheese and cucumber spread.

    Pulled up the squash and zucchini plants, except for one squash plant that got a late start and is confusing me because it is not what I thought that I planted. It has one green striped squash on it the shape and size of a butternut squash. The other squashes were ruined by powdery mildew.

    Lots of delicious figs, and I continue to pick a few butterbeans and a smattering of green beans from the couple of plants that survived the rabbit attack by mixing in with the butterbeans. Hardly enough for one portion, but a few are better than none! Tomatoes have been the biggest disappointment. We planted seven plants in half-barrels and have our usual volunteer Juliets, and we’ve gotten exactly one ripe tomato all summer. Maybe next year I will plant all peppers (they have done well) or lettuce and carrots.

    I’m very happy with the front garden, which is much more decorative and has several kinds of herbs. The potted Meyer lemon tree has two large green lemons on it for the first time ever. It has fruited before but the biggest they have gotten has been dime-sized before they fell off. It is in a fairly sunny place outside and has gotten the benefit of all this rain.

    Last night I played with painting Citrasolve on the pages of a National Geographic magazine. It was good, mindless fun and I got wonderful pages out of it. You can’t get much easier than this technique. My friend Diana Trout posted a video tutorial on her site. The interesting part was that while I was futzing around with the pages at the front of the magazine (after painting the pages with Citrasolve), the really cool effects were happening all by their little lonesomes on the back pages of the magazine. You can buy Citrasolve at Deep Roots Market here in Greensboro. I love it for cleaning – at last there is a scent in my house that I love and doesn’t make me sick!

    Today I need to do some cleaning but I’m also going to get my hair cut and play in my new studio space some.

  • Old Norwegian weaving films on O Tecelão

    I have not been able to figure out how to save these films or embed them here without going to a Brazilian Facebook site called # O Tecelão which is dedicated to weaving. I find these fascinating and want to refer back to them from time to time. This is one more major reason that I love Facebook – it has broadened my connection to the art world exponentially!

    “Rarity! Complete process of weaving on Low Heddle Primitive Loom from Scandinavia – Norway. Silent movie – 1947”

    “Rarity! Weaving in Scandinavia – Adversity of weaving – Norway (Silent movie)”

    Rarity! Weaving on Band Looms in Scandinavia – Norway (Silent movie)

  • Dyepot and bundle experiments

    My new studio. The lighting needs serious improvement, but other than that it is a much better use for this space. The aluminum foil draped over my weaving keeps the cats away from it – they are terrified of the sound of aluminum foil for some reason. Maybe it sounds like some predator coming for them.


    Saturday I pulled out some ornamental grapevines that are invasive in my yard and decided to try a dyepot with the leaves. Then I remembered the frozen avocado pits and peels my friend Leslie saved for me, and I decided to do two more dyepots – a crockpot with just the pits and a stainless steel pot with just the peels. I decided to overdye some of the silk and wool fabrics that I dyed in India’s class (ones which did not come out so great), and I had a bag of cotton fabrics that I had previously mordanted with alum and dried.

    This square was one of the earliest bundles from India’s class and it didn’t take up a lot of dye then. I stitched on it with silk thread, but I was never satisfied with it. I rolled it up with these plants from my front yard, which include crepe myrtle blossoms, plantain leaves, and yarrow. I didn’t include the maple or cherry leaf in the photo. The bottom bundle was an undyed strip of wool wrapped around a stick with grape leaves rolled inside. The grape and plantain leaves did not print, but the dyepot was a success. I got a very rich olive brown color with no mordants. The spots are from the crepe myrtle blossoms. I tossed several bundles into this grape leaf pot.

    A tiny silk bundle folded over yoshina cherry leaves and dyed in the grape leaf pot gave me delicate but definite prints.

    One of the squares that I did in India’s class was wool with a silk fabric stitched onto it, and for some reason it didn’t take up much dye. I cut it into quarters. One small bundle wrapped with silk thread and a yellow maple leaf on the wool side went into each dyepot, with one left out for comparison. Below are the pieces dyed in the avocado pit and avocado peel dyes. The pits produced a lighter, peachier color than the peels. I loved the silk thread color that came from the pits.

    What I learned: use a different variety of maple leaf, but in general this wool was not good for leaf prints.

    Here are some unbundled cotton fabrics mordanted with alum that I dyed in the avocado pots. The white on the bottom is the original fabric, shown for comparison. The peels produced a grayer color. I tossed a good-sized splash of white vinegar in the pots after I turned off the heat.

    Okay, that’s enough for now!

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    This is a coffee pot post, when I write whatever comes to mind until my last cup of coffee is empty. I use these to document the everyday details of my life, my thoughts, my plans, my dreams. Sweep out the crumbs in my brain.

    When Sandy drove me home from the airport, he had a suggestion for the house that I’d been thinking of for a long time, but I never mentioned it because I didn’t think he’d go for it at all. We have now moved my studio into the front room of the house, which is long and weird and didn’t work well as a living room, but works great as a studio space, other than inadequate lighting, which can be fixed.

    So instead of dyeing bundles, I have worked on moving heavy furniture, looms, bookshelves, etc. for two weeks. Well, not quite that long, since I pulled a muscle in my back when we moved the really heavy stuff, so many hours have been spent resting with cold packs and heating pads. Now that I am beginning to heal, Sandy has moved anything on the heavy side, and I have moved stacks of books and supplies a little at a time. It is frustrating to have this wonderful space set up and not be able to weave or tote water around for dyepots. But we are almost there.

    I love having the sofa and big comfy chair in the former dining area next to the kitchen. I’ve spent more time on this furniture in the last two weeks that I have in years.

    Theo is funny this morning. I took them both to the vet yesterday and he got his semi-annual depo shot for his allergies. It has him all charged up and playing. Lucy didn’t have a very good visit, so it is good that I finally took her in. She has a bad ear infection and a tooth problem, so she is going back on Wednesday for dental cleaning and probably surgery. Theo is scheduled for dental cleaning in September. They had blood work too. My expensive kitties. Sigh. After my experiences with Squirt, Jazz, and Guido I’m taking their dental health much more seriously than I used to.

    The Back Forty is a terrible mess. We have had one of the rainiest summers ever here in North Carolina, and it isn’t even due to hurricane activity. The critters took out my field pea and green bean plants early, but thank GOD they left my butterbeans alone, because I cooked a little pot of them yesterday, about two cups. One of my okra plants escaped the ravages, so I have a few okra pods. I got a few squash and zucchini but most of them were eaten when tiny, along with all blossoms, including my cantaloupes and even my black eyed susans and purple coneflowers. The rabbits pulled down the flower stalks and ate the flower heads. If I didn’t know better I’d think that a freakin’ deer is visiting my garden every night. What green tomatoes I had are completely gone. I got one Roma tomato this summer and that was IT. Now the tomato plants are dying, there is powdery mildew on the squash, and the mosquitoes are horrible. I am DONE until frost (except for my butterbeans and okra) when I’ll try to clean everything up and decide whether to keep trying. If I do, I’ll have to build some critterproof cages and I’m just not sure I want to do that. Who knows how I’ll feel during a nice warm spell this winter, though.

    The rest of my energy has gone to planning my mother’s 90th birthday party with my sister. Mama has been extremely anxious over it and driving us both crazy worrying over it and nitpicking our decisions. We have everything settled now and so hopefully she will stop now that she can’t do anything about it. I have been calling her (and vice versa) nearly every day and that is unusual for us. It will probably be the pattern for the future, and that’s okay. Mama was the one who got tired of daily phone calls when I initiated that a year ago, but now she wants to be checked on more often. I hope that she will be able to stay independent, but I know that it isn’t realistic given her spinal problems. She comes from a family of tough women, many of whom lived on their own well into their nineties, and she has good friends and neighbors as a support system. Better off than I’ll probably be, as one of the youngest in the family and without children. But let’s not think about that. I’ll be in Ireland or Vermont anyway!