Thanks for your support, as always, my readers rock.

I slept without my brace last night and slept well without numbness. Both hands were sore and stiff but quickly came back to normal this morning so I’m going to try to make a post of handmade paper this afternoon when it gets a little warmer outside.

Yesterday I put together three books with handmade paper and bound one. My plan this morning is to design and put together one book for each evening this week, so that I bind one book per night. Holding the needle is the main problem, and as long as I don’t spend all day making the same motion I think that I should be okay. That could be a problem with the papermaking, but I don’t want that beautiful thawed out pulp to go to waste, and it will only be for a few hours this afternoon.

The lump in my left hand is not sore any more so I think that I can put off rescheduling my orthopaedic appointment for a while.

I finished Corelli’s Mandolin and started Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. Have I mentioned lately my love for the free shelf at Ed McKay’s? Even if they do put big black marks on the cover artwork of beautiful old books? I had the audacity to ask them to put the marks, meant to signify that they are free, anywhere but on the center artwork of a cover. Sandy was mortified. But even if they are free, messing up the artwork will sometimes prevent a beautiful early-20th/late 19th century book cover from being given new life as an artist’s book or journal. Their response was that the book should have gone in the trash, so I think that my nicely-made point was totally unlistened to from the first word out of my mouth. I got some beautiful color plates of birds and animals from the book in question, though.

To the Back Forty I go.

I hope to have wonderful news to share later this afternoon.

Yesterday after a really lazy start to my day, I decided that I had to deal with the incredible mess that the “cat-free” second bedroom has become. This is where I keep my clothes (old houses generally are very short on closet space) and sleep when one of us is sick, or Sandy is snoring REALLY loud. I also tend to dump all my junk on the futon bed in here. I bring the houseplants that the cats like to chew on in here for the winter, and raise my seedlings on shelves beside the window, which faces south and gets a pretty good amount of sun. It’s a small room and it gets full quickly.

This is where Squirt spent the last week of his life - he loved this room and it was a forbidden pleasure for him to be in here. He didn’t have the energy to deal with the other cats, who didn’t understand that he was tired and sick, so he was happy to be alone in here. Keep this fact in mine for the announcement that I hope to make later.

Despite that memory, I love this room. Of all the rooms in the house, this one feels like mine.

Rearranging the room made it possible for me to put in a small worktable where I can paint and collage. I need to organize my art supplies now. The outside studio can still serve as storage, since the loom takes up a lot of room and yarn needs a truly cat hair free environment and when you get into mixed media, you end up with an enormous amount of stuff. I can work in here on non-weaving, non-papermaking projects in comfort, except for hearing Guido yowl outside the door.

Sandy and I are both on diets now. He had a physical this past week and has three months to get his numbers down before they will put him on meds. His glucose is high and my triglycerides were high the last time I had them checked and I have lots of diabetes on both sides of my family. Sandy has a huge sweet tooth and I have developed one. It’s hard when people bring so many delicious goodies to work, especially around holidays. I don’t keep sweets at home, but it still will be hard for both of us to get used to.

Maybe it helped to get those complaints out of my system, or maybe it helped that I spent the late afternoon with good friends, or maybe it helped that Sandy and I had a delicious meal at Fishbones, now a weekly event. At any rate, I feel much better.

My iris leaf and abaca pulp has thawed out, so I’ll spend the morning making paper and cooking corn shucks with soda ash to prepare them for making into paper pulp. Once I finish my coffee and the cats hunker down for their post-breakfast snooze, I’m going to try this in the dining room with cardboard on the floor to protect the floor and cushion my back.

I decided that part of my problem was that my studio has too many distractions and it was making me overwhelmed. So I cleaned the clutter that had been collecting on the dining room table for at least a couple of months (and in doing so, found a wedding invitation near the bottom that I’ll be sorry to miss), and brought in just enough from the studio to prepare signatures and bind books. That helped a little, but I still have monkey mind so maybe once I cook the corn shucks and make paper I’ll be able to focus better.

Laura came to my house for the first time, so I enjoyed the appreciation that she showed for my work, past and present, and her general presence, which is gentle and intelligent. She brought me a nice eggplant, which I’ll make either into parmesan or lasagna this week. I love eggplant and I have problems growing it. Anyway, she had a question about paper casting so I took her over to Susanne and John’s house, where John, a sculptor, gave her some ideas, and we hung out talking to Susanne, who was distributing type. The three of us have a lot in common so it was a good, relaxing time, and I think that we’ll probably repeat it.

Susanne and John gave me a drymount press to dry paper evenly and smoothly with heat. I don’t know exactly how it works yet but Susanne is going to help me set it up and show me how.

I found a couple of books at Ed McKay’s on Thursday night that will be sure to bring me much inspiration: al-pha-bet-i-ca, by Lynne Perrella, and 1000 Artist Journal Pages, compiled by Dawn Sokol. These were two that I’ve been tempted to buy online for quite some time, but I found them at less than half-price with no tax or shipping at Ed McKay’s. I feel good about actually buying something from them now and then because I take so much free stuff, but when I’ve mentioned it they say that other people take a whole lot more than I do.

The only bad thing about one of the books is that it smells a little like stale smoke. I never noticed that until I had stopped smoking for a couple of years. What a shame, because I love the smell of books. I saw a tip somewhere that putting a book that smells like smoke in the freezer will help remove the smell. I don’t know how long, because I tried it for a few days with one book and the smell came back. Maybe I need a freezer as a library for these kind of books!

The novel that I am reading is American Gods by Neil Gaiman. At first I didn’t like it so much. I’m not a Stephen King fan because I don’t like being reminded constantly of body fluids and decay and nastiness, and there was a lot of that. But now I’m rather fascinated with it. The plot line is unusual and makes you think. I can say that I’ve really never read a book remotely like it.

Okay, coffee is gone, cats are asleep. Time to get crackin’.

I decided what to do with the little bit of Italy money leftover after paying for Journalfest and airfare to Seattle. I bought a small upright freezer so that I can store pulp and papermaking fibers that I gather and cook for times when it is not possible for me to make paper right away. The rest went to supplies. Susanne gave me a paper press and some wooden boards to go with it. I need to buy a small hydraulic jack and…I guess my paper studio will be in good shape! Maybe I’ll get a good drill with a paint-mixing attachment.

Susanne is generously beating pulp for me in her equipment (Hollander beater) until the temperatures get too low to do it, which means I only have a few weeks left. I’ll do some more corn shucks and some cattail and bulrush trimmings from my hatmaking.

Then I’ll start putting more money toward paying off the Honda. I still have $100 a month deposited directly into a money market account that is used just for vacations and art trips. Sandy wants to do a Caribbean cruise - we’ll see!

My creative juices were really flowing in the studio today. Because I tend to work on several pieces at one time and it’s too dark to get good photographs, I’ll post photos later this week.

Finally watched Dirty Dancing last night. Yeah, it was better than I thought it would be. Sandy made a remark about it being a chick flick, and I told him that it wouldn’t hurt men to watch more “chick flicks” because most men could stand to learn a thing or two about romance. So he watched it with me.

Sitting out in the gazebo this morning. I’m telling you, when it is not muggy and warm this is my favorite place other than Lake Waccamaw. Which was kind of the point when I bought this contraption last summer - I needed a beautiful place to hang out that was screened to keep away the skeeters, and the only place that I had to go like that was three hours away at Lake Waccamaw. I was afraid at the time that I wouldn’t be able to go there much anymore, so to soothe myself I bought this 9X12 screened gazebo on clearance, and paved it with cardboard, landscape fabric, and then cement pavers. I think that it is one of the best purchases I have ever made.

Right now I am reading the news and getting ready to finish binding a book then do some more painting paper covers. I have some excellent old free books to play with too - also three record album binders that I’m mulling over how to alter them.

Yesterday’s yoga was interesting in two ways. One was that I made it through the whole time period because I am in terrible shape. I had a couple of times when I just had to take a breather because my arms wouldn’t hold me up any more or I couldn’t get balanced. The class used easy poses but we moved continuously from one pose to another to live music, so it was a mild work-out. I highly recommend it and I plan to go back. They need participants and it is by donation. Grow Yoga - Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. above the Green Bean in downtown Greensboro. I’ll probably go on Thursday nights because Saturday mornings are fairly sacred as Farmers Market and grocery shopping times.

The second interesting thing is that there is a small possibility of renting the place with them as a co-op of artists with the same kind of lifestyle interests. It is a beautiful space with a kitchen and hardwood floors with large windows facing the street. J and C said that it is possible that it will be rented to someone else and that they may only have use of it for the next few weeks. I told them that if they could get together a few more people I’d be interested in renting it with them for a studio/gallery space, if it doesn’t get rented to the other person.

This has been a dream of mine for a long time, but it seems to always fall through, or I’m not able to afford it at the time. I have rented and shared a studio before and I got an enormous amount of satisfaction and work out of it. Then it flooded and that pretty much settled that, since I lost a lot of supplies and early artwork to water damage and mildew.

I’m trying not to get TOO invested in this idea since there is more than a good chance that it won’t happen, but I have to wonder if this is falling into my lap because I called it to me. I have told others many times that I would love to have a space where I could not only work on my art but show and sell it and teach lessons. This place is close to my house and is perfect as far as I can tell. It’s just that it’s expensive and would have to be split by at least 5-6 people for me to begin to afford it.

Breaking in the new camera

Yesterday went fairly well; although I couldn’t find the energy to make paper, I got a lot of other things done.

The fabulous Zha K and I did a massive Greensboro Curb Farmer’s M arket trip. The seafood guy was there with sea scallops and large shrimp that he brought up from Harker’s Island. We bought a pound each and split them. When I cleaned the shrimp I found that they still had the heads on and so I ended up with very little shrimp, and that was disappointing. The scallops were wonderful though. Here’s what I did with them:

Marinate 1 pound of cleaned and dressed shrimp and scallops for at least an hour ( I marinated them for about 3 hours):

1/4 c olive oil
1/4 c lime juice
About 3 large minced cloves of garlic

Preheat oven to 450. Put the seafood in an oiled baking pan. Pour over marinade. Add fresh shredded parsley and basil, crumbled feta cheese, shredded parmigiano cheese and fresh ground pepper to taste. Bake for 5-7 minutes, until shrimp is pink. (You’ll notice that the marinade partially “cooks” the seafood.)

I usually serve this over pasta, but I didn’t last night. I use this basic marinade for all seafood, usually adding some hot pepper flakes and varying the herbs according to what I have in the garden. If I have fresh dill, that’s a plus.

We also had fresh corn on the cob and field peas and butterbeans. I bought 12 ears of corn, that same bicolor corn that was so good earlier this summer. I shucked it and cooked a few ears but I need to blanch the rest and cut it off the cob and freeze it today, along with the butterbeans and field peas that I just finished shelling.

Other farmers’ market buys: hamburger, milk, eggplants, red and yellow peppers, sweet onions, eggs, potatoes.

The buzz at the market is that the ownership and management is changing from Greensboro Parks and Recreation to the Department of Agriculture. No one yet knows what the implications of this change will be. There sure has been a lot of hoo-ha between the vendors who want to resell and the farmers who want a level playing field for selling their own produce. I’m on the farmers’ side, myself. If I want to buy from a reseller, I can go to any number of grocery stores in this area and find almost anything I want.

We hung out in the gazebo for a little while, where I am writing this right now, and then completed our shopping at Deep Roots Market. I heated up some fresh tomato sauce over cheese grits from yesterday for lunch, and man, was that good. But then I wore myself out and napped through the afternoon. Susanne was kind enough to come pick up my corn shucks and abaca and she will have the pulp beaten and ready for me to make paper over there today.

My lettuce and mustard seeds are beginning to germinate. That is going to be a very pretty bed if the rabbits and squirrels will leave it halfway alone.

By the way, I’ve been able to go longer and longer without pain medication and I feel pretty doggone good today. I even ate cereal on both sides of my mouth. I slept the whole night through last night.

Aw, I see rain to our northwest on the radar, but I doubt that we will get it. The weather forecast all week is “y’all might could git a few thunderstorms. If yore lucky, hit’ll git y’all a tiny little bit of rain. If you ain’t, hit’ll blow away yore trailer and flood yore crick.” That’s my interpretation, anyway. We need rain badly - Pat told me that it hasn’t rained for five weeks at her farm. I haven’t been counting but I know that it is terribly dry.

I did not get the artwork done that I meant to yesterday. And I probably won’t get it done today either, but I hope to at least get set up to make it easier during the week. I’m partially there. I have a workspace cleared and a few more covers ready for binding. I have to prepare signatures (the paper) and pierce some holes and do some beading.

I did get a little bit of Silver Queen corn blanched, cut off the cob, and frozen. It brought back a lot of childhood memories. In July, the main activity at my house was shucking corn and freezing it in one of the three large chest freezers we had. We ate corn and field peas or butterbeans almost every day of the year, so we froze a lot of it! We had to cut it off the cob because of my daddy’s false upper plate, but I tried freezing it on the cob and I didn’t like it, so I’ve gone back to cutting it off. It’s not that much more effort and it is a lot more convenient and tastier and easier to add to other recipes.

I have to say, though, that I am saving some freezer space for some Peaches and Cream type bicolor corn. When I see it, I’m going to buy a bunch of it. I’m also considering buying a bushel of butterbeans and a bushel of field peas to freeze, since it looks like I’ll never be able to grow enough of them myself.

In the Back Forty, I’ve harvested some of the Purple Pink Eye field peas and the Carolina Sieva butterbeans. (I think. They are interplanted with Willow because I mixed up the identical beans when I planted. So much for heirloom seed saving.) Because they got ripe suddenly when I was on vacation, I had enough for a good-sized pot. I only added Liquid Smoke and salt, and they are delicious!

I’ve also gathered enough dried Toscanelli and Jacob’s Cattle beans to plant next year’s crop, but I’ll have to weigh whether giving the space to them is worth it.

No ripe tomatoes yet. My green cotton has been flowering. And I could probably pull a few carrots.

I did weed-whack the front yard enough to keep the city and neighbors happy. I bought an electronic mouse repellent. I tried to take my camera back to Office Depot, but it turns out that the salesperson lied to me when I bought the warranty and they wouldn’t give me my money back. I have to do some bureaucratic BS and send the camera back in the mail to somebody and they are supposed to replace it. Except that it is discontinued, so now the line is that they will send me a better camera. I don’t want another Canon 500 series because I’ve had the same problem with both of mine. Granted, I worked the hell out of them. But I wanted to use the money to buy a better camera. It would have been a win-win situation for both Office Depot and me to refund my money.

Whether they handle this to my satisfaction or not will convince me whether buying the extended warranty was worth it and whether I want to do business with Office Depot or not. I don’t do business with Best Buy anymore because of the way their customer service department treated me when I returned a new defective PC years ago.

I’m not over my exhaustion from earlier this week, clearly. I did manage to go to sleep at 12:30 last night and sleep straight through the night, but I woke up at 10 a.m.! I think that part of the problem was that I got off my vitamin regimen so I started back on that this morning. I’ll try not to take a nap today, but it is the sabbath so I’m not promising. I’m going to bind books, make some paper, maybe weave, and organize so that I can come home from work and get crackin’ right away on a project. And cook some pork chops and spaghetti sauce, and do some laundry. And freeze some squash. Sheesh, I’d better shut down this laptop.

Yesterday was a wonderful day, all day long.

I restrained myself at the Farmers’ Market - bought a whole hen which took most of my money, milk, popcorn cornmeal, and strawberries. I’ll put the hen in the slow cooker today. The mulberries that grow along the creek there are huge, sweet, and extra delicious.

I constructed a tobacco stick trellis and planted all the Loudermilk butterbeans, this time poking holes in a paper mulched bed and then spreading compost on top. The trellis itself is very pleasing to my eye. It reminds me of the fun I had playing with tobacco sticks as a child. I took these from an old barn at the farm - my mother was using them for kindling. I went to a craft fair last year where someone was varnishing and selling them, and said that she had been featured in the magazine Southern Living! Funny how people see simple objects in different ways.

Sandy and I went to lunch at Fishbones (I ate lunch there Friday with JQ too - one of those places where I’d happily eat every day - corner of Walker and Elam, Greensboro), went to Lowes and picked up a few items, went to Ed McKays where I had much success with the free shelf. Found a book on British Columbia, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, an old Golden Guide to Flowers (love those little Golden Guides), an old Rand McNally atlas (love maps!), a Truman Capote paperback of The Grass Harp and short stories, an old children’s dictionary with lots of illustrations and color plates of butterflies and fish, and various old cloth-covered books I’ll recycled into altered books and collage.

Then we went to see Star Trek, which, as reported, was FANTASTIC. Makes me want to go back and watch all the old Star Trek episodes that I’ve already seen a zillion times again. They set it up very neatly for a totally new franchise.

And then to Riva’s Trattoria, a very small Italian restaurant in downtown Greensboro. Riva’s is a Slow Food place, and according to the owners they use local ingredients when possible. However, they don’t put their sources on the menu other than the ubitiquous Goat Lady Dairy cheese, which many restaurants use not only for the delicious quality and taste, but also to claim to be local food buyers. I would love to see the names of the other farms that they buy their ingredients from on the menus. I hope that will be a requirement to get the new Slow Food Piedmont Triad “Snail of Approval” for restaurants. But I am out of that scene now. Anyway, I hate feeling compelled to ask where ingredients come from, but there are certain foods I don’t generally eat if I don’t know that the source is sustainable and humane.

I had tilapia over linguini with a lemon and caper sauce that was wonderful and Sandy enjoyed his Giacomo’s sausage and peppers over penne. I know that Riva’s uses fresh tomatoes for their pomodoro sauce because that is on the menu. I suspect that they are local but it would be interesting to know the source(s).

So that pretty much covers my lovely day yesterday. Now I need to get on with my lovely day today. I hope that it will also include a little more planting (skeeters stopped me as soon as I began to sweat yesterday) and working on a mica covered book that I began noodling around with yesterday. Maybe some weaving to justify that new yarn purchase last week? But first, I need to study and get that wool skirted. I can do the rest in between changing the wash water on the fleeces.

Boy, I sure have gotten lazy with the titles of my posts. Maybe I should just not title them.

I’ve been working hard in the Back Forty, mainly weeding and mulching as much as I can before the hot weather and mosquitoes arrive. Sandy has requested to be in charge of the big tomatoes this year, so I gave him the primo spot and I just added compost and organic fertilizer to that area this morning. I want to get as much done this morning as I can since the rain will move in later.

We’re still having little cold spells, and I think that we’ve been particularly patient about planting the tomatoes this year. I see how slowly even the cold-tolerant plants are growing and that has informed me that the soil isn’t ready yet. Plus I’m following Pat and Brian’s advice. I’ll have to buy my pepper plants this year because my seedling trays were invaded by two slugs when I set them outside during a warm spell, and now it’s too late to start them. Bummer. I love saving seeds.

I’m very tempted to go ahead and plant my field peas and beans, but I think that the reason that I’ve avoided pests in the past with them is that I have planted them later than most people do. I think that I’ll plant my butterbeans next weekend and see what happens, since they have a long growing season before I get any pods. I always have a ton of butterbeans that are not filled out at the first frost and it pains me to see what might have been.

Anyway, most of my day is going to be devoted to making paper on the front porch. It will be a challenge to dry it, but I’ll press the stack until Wednesday when the sun should be back out.

I’ve been slogging through The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Well, I don’t know if the word “slogging” is deserved - let’s say “slogging” through certain philosophical theological parts. But I’m fascinated with the whole historical aspect of the library and the process of copying and illuminating and binding the books. I haven’t seen the movie so I’ll see if I can check it out from our library.

My trip to the Art and Soul retreat in Hampton is in two weeks! I’m looking so much forward to it. I’m not getting much art done at home, although I did a bit of weaving and some studio clean-up yesterday. My woodcut class has pretty much sucked up my artistic energy. I’m going to try to get my color print of the turnip woodcut done on Thursday. Our last class and critique will be right before Art & Soul so my brain will be clear for two days of creativity and new ways to bind books. Then I’ll concentrate on doing smaller woodcuts on my own that I can use in my little books.

I’m taking History of Photography late May to late June for one of my art history requirements. It is writing intensive so I’ll be writing a lot of papers I guess. That is a very slow time for me at work so my eyes won’t be so wiped out from being on the computer when I come home. I think that this will be a fascinating subject.

And in mid-July, ta-da! I booked the Alaskan cruise!

Now, back to the Back Forty for some more weeding and mulching.

Happy Eoster, all y’all li’l bunnies out there.

I went to see my mama on Friday, helped her plant about a third of her garden: cabbage, onions, tendergreens, spinach, beets, carrots, and corn. I talked her into letting me plant way more beets than she needs so that I might have some. As you can see, her garden is much different than mine, and much, much bigger. My brother plows it with a tractor. It’s right smack in the middle of beautiful downtown Marietta, N.C. I had three dogs run up to me for loving, and I only knew one of them. She fed me field peas and okra and chicken tetrazzini and squash casserole and blueberry muffins, and sent me home with pecan pie, more pecans, and venison from the freezer.

Thing is, my bursitis is back with a vengance, leaving me with the pain dilemma - do I work through the pain and make the whole thing worse, or let the garden go for a while longer. Last weekend I pulled out a lot of my rosemary and made a lot more room for my beans, but it was with a price. Anyway, I did plant some dill, parsley, carrots, spinach, and tendergreens today.

There’s a robin building a nest on top of the gutter next to the back door.

I’m very, very excited about our vacation plan for July. We have decided to take a cruise from Vancouver up along the Alaskan coast on Norwegian. I think that we found a very good deal and I’m going to call and arrange everything tomorrow. Most of this will be paid for with the money we got back when we refinanced and our tax refund.

I’ve been thinking about the Pacific Northwest for quite some time, especially since I met an artist from near Juneau and saw her work based on the landscapes around her. I hope that we can add one night in Vancouver before the cruise.

Tonight’s dinner is beef stew in the crock pot. It smells extremely delicious!