I finally forced myself to stop making books today and get out into the beautiful weather. I’ll finish uploading photos etc. when I get back home, which will be tomorrow afternoon.

We finished binding the spine of the wooden books today. We still have a lot of work to do to it tomorrow. Mine is named “Brasstown Book.” It looks a lot like an old celestial map.

I filled the mica window of the third book with sparkly beads. Oops, I thought that I was finished but I didn’t do a closure. Shoot. That will be a problem to solve tomorrow.

We learned how to make this “centipede” tonight, but my eyes were too tired to do the second one he taught us! I like this a lot, though.

Well, last night after I posted, I nearly ruined my first book with a green ink mishap. Today I think that I redeemed it and it will look better after I work on the inside at home. In a way it was a good thing, as accidents often are, because it gave me the idea to make it into an alphabet book using the stamps that Rice gave me and the ones that I carved.

I decided to start another book with the same basic class materials. This time I stopped when I started getting really tired!:

And the real show stopper and the focus of our class is well under way. We finished painting, distressing, and cutting the wooden book covers today. Tomorrow we start sewing the binding.

I’d love to make at least two more little books while I’m here. We’ll see. Tomorrow and Friday nights we’ll have things going on here and in beautiful downtown Brasstown, NC.

Last night I bound a book with the paper that included Squirt and Mama Kitty’s fur and the artichoke paper. Today I found a piece of mica that highlighted Squirt’s eyes - perfect!

I’m working on three books at once right now. The wooden covers for the main book of the workshop have been drilled, beveled, sanded, and banged and scratched. I’m working on futzing around with the first book’s cover. And Squirt’s book is nearly finished - I’ll put a bone bead (not his, I promise!) and a closure on it tonight.

I took lots of photos of Daniel Essig’s books and other books from his collection that he brought to show us. Most of these books are very small. They will be on my flickr site. I will edit and describe them when I get home, because I’m getting in all the work play I can here!

Here’s a shot of my workspace with Squirt’s book.

First book of the week - Greek binding, mostly finished.

Second book made tonight from my handmade paper, but I’m too tired to fight this Mac any more.

But I’m happy!

I’m trying to upload photos each day but I probably won’t blog unless my hands need a break. More photos at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/slowlysheturned/.

I did have to simmer the butterbeans a little more on the electric stove, but they cooked enough to be edible on the woodstove without me stoking it up beyond normal. I left the pot on the woodstove all night and most of the “pot liquor” evaporated and the beans had a bit of a strange taste. They didn’t seem burned, and they weren’t bad-tasting, but I wasn’t especially pleased.

I made a pot of meat sauce and a hamburger/potato casserole for my hubby so that he won’t spend all his money eating hot dogs and at Taco Bell. ::sigh:: That used up the rest of the ripe Amish Paste tomatoes and hot wax peppers on the counter.

This will be an interesting week. I may be doing more woodworking than bookbinding - I don’t know at this point. I bought a nifty little cordless Dremel Stylus, and I’ve spent too much time looking for the extra drill bits I bought. This is because my house continually stays in a state of chaos. When we “clean up,” we really move our stacks of crap from one room to another, until that room is cleaned up, then we move our stacks of crap back to the original room. I am just as much of a crap-stacker as Sandy, so I have no one to blame except Miss Jazz, who is our scapecat for all unjust accusations.

You should see my studio. Yikes.

Projected departure time: 10 a.m. That should give me time to have lunch somewhere between Black Mountain and Franklin or maybe I’ll just eat my extra-special snack of dry jack cheddar cheese I bought at Slow Food Nation and a seckel pear. I like to get there right at the beginning of registration so that I can claim the bed the furthest away from the hallway door and the bathroom. Placement is everything. I’ll share a room with 5-6 other women.

Sandy will be fine, we don’t see each other much during the week anyway, and I’ll be home Saturday night.

Anyway, enough blathering. I have a little more to do, and then I’m off. I’m so excited. This is something that I’ve looked forward to for months.

I am officially on vacation. I leave on Sunday morning for John C. Campbell Folk School to spend one glorious week in a beautiful place learning to make wooden covers for books and Coptic and Greek binding. There will be autumn leaves, music, good food, great birdwatching, and dancing.

This week I’ve made paper from the dried artichoke stalks in my garden. Susanne cooked them and beat the pulp with cotton and abaca fiber and brought it over to me, along with some delicious peppery macaroni and cheese. It’s almost dry now, it’s being pressed in the studio (under a pile of books, nothing technological going on here!). I only used a quarter of the pulp she brought me. When I expressed surprise at the enormous amount of pulp she made, she said, “I don’t play.” She says that a lot when it comes to making paper, but she is a playful person. Now that she sees that I’m really serious about making paper, she says that we will be working together a lot. I’m a very happy camper right now.

I made two dozen beautiful sheets and when I get back I’ll be making more. I signed up for my first swap on the papermaking list - origami boxes. I’ve been making little origami boxes from junk mail all year. Some of you may have received them since I’ve been using them for seed giveaways and jewelry. This is a swap that I’m looking forward to.

I picked the big green tomatoes left on my yellow Brandywine - man, I hated to do that. I’m not a green tomato fan at all, and they were HUGE. They’ll sit on the counter until ripe. We didn’t get a frost, but it sounds like it might happen when I’m gone. So I picked all the peppers too, and gave most of the hottest ones to my department head, who likes them hellishly hot.

Anne-Marie is planning to take a nutrition class to Spannocchia, and Susanne said that she got a call from them about repeating her paper/book class that she cancelled this summer. Auggh! I want to go so bad!

Anyway, tonight is for enjoying my time alone, and tomorrow is for time with Sandy and packing up. I will gather up my collection of magpie odds and ends in case I can find a use for them in class: worn starfish-etched shells, small pieces of driftwood, pieces of worn broken china, seeds and pods. I will be taking my laptop, but I’ll decide when I’m there whether to use it and how much.

Now I’m going to go put a pot of butterbeans and field pea snaps on the wood stove, which is cranking out a very cozy heat.

I’m very happy tonight, despite the passing of Miss Peanut earlier this week. She lived a good life, and now I’m seeing the bright side - when I heard a cat fight earlier tonight, I didn’t have to worry that it involved her. I can paint the front porch, and I dismantled and threw out the dirty trashy looking Peanut Shack. I don’t have to worry about rabies or her being too cold and my inability to care for her as I ordinarily would have. I will avoid getting involved with another feral cat colony in the future if I can help it, but I’ll adopt feral kittens for inside when the time comes. You have to earn their love, and once you have it, you’re in for a very satisfying and interesting animal-human relationship.

Miss Peanut had a sweet send-off last night. John and Susanne came by to see my garden and deliver some artichoke pulp she had cooked for me (we’re working together on making paper out of it). Upon hearing of Miss Peanut’s burial earlier that day, Susanne suggested that John sing a sad song. Without hesitation, he stepped up to her grave and sang in a sweet clear voice:

From, this valley they say you are going;
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile,
For they say you are taking the sunshine,
Which has brightened our pathway a while.

Come and sit by my side if you love me,
Do not hasten to bid me adieu,
But remember the Red River Valley
And the girl that has loved you so true.

Just lovely. I am so lucky to have such good friends. Thank you all for your kindness over the past year. You have made my losses bearable.

Miss Peanut passed away sometime this weekend - I’m guessing around Saturday night or Sunday morning since I found her body in an area where I had been working on Saturday. It’s possible that I missed her since her fur blended in perfect camoflage with the earth and oak log that she lay across, but I don’t think that she had been dead that long. I’m glad that she chose to die in the Back Forty, but I wish that I could have done something for her. We buried her under the fig tree, since that was a place that she liked.

I’d post a photo of her but I never could get a good one. She hated having her picture taken. I always wanted one of Mama Kitty and Miss Peanut walking away from me with tails entwined. I saw that many times. If I find one, I’ll post it, but she looked exactly like Mama Kitty except that she was fatter and had two brown back feet, her “peanut” feet.

So that is the end of the Feral Family story. Mama Kitty brought Miss Peanut and Ozzie to our back door about 12 years ago. Mama Kitty was not even full-grown herself. About ten months later, she brought us Squirt and Nick, which was when I knew that something had to be done. A feral cat catch and release program helped us spay, neuter, test, and vaccinate all five cats (and later a couple more!). We kept Nick inside only a day before releasing him, and we never saw him again. Ozzie died unexpectedly at age four - he was a sweetheart and I had just tamed him so that he would sit on my lap and let me brush him. He looked like a long lean version of Squirt. My readers know the story of Squirt - my heart is still broken at his and Mama Kitty’s deaths.

I never intended to end up feeding and caring for all these cats, but Miss Peanut was the one who was responsible for melting my heart. She would stretch way up and peep into our screen door while I was in the kitchen. One day I noticed that she had an extremely nasty scrape on the side of her face. I thought, “How will she survive that if she doesn’t get good nutrition?” That was the day I began feeding the feral cats.

Mama Kitty taught Miss Peanut to hunt. It drove me crazy. Before she was blinded in one eye, I often chased her yelling at her to drop the squirrel/rabbit/bird she had in her mouth. Once the rabbit she had was almost her size. That’s the only prey I ever saw get away from her, but she ran with it in her mouth for about 50 feet.

I loved Miss Peanut and I’ll miss her. But I began grieving for her when she lost her eye several years ago. She went through a lot of pain and misery, and she was never the same again. So in a way it is a relief for both of us.

We’re making our preparations for winter. Yesterday we bought a truckload of firewood from a different man who brought us twice as much for the same price as last year’s firewood guy. And the wood is good quality - last year’s was too green and I ended up using much of it for borders around my raised beds.

The plan is to put off turning on the heat for as long as possible by firing up the woodstove every night. With the fan pushing the heat to the back of the house, our thermostat went up five degrees last night and we didn’t use much wood. This morning the temp in the house is 66. Tonight the low is supposed to be around 38. We dress warmly in the house and make use of throws and quilts if we’re sitting on the couch or at the computer. So until we get into some serious cold, we’ll be able to put off turning on the gas heat. If it came down to it, we could move the futon into this room and shut off the right side of the house.

It’s important to plan for these things. I’m a lurker on several discussion lists where the people are very, very serious about it. I feel okay about my preparations, but I realize that I could do more. For example, I have stored water in gallon glass juice bottles in the studio, but I don’t have enough. If it really came down to an absolute crisis, I could boil water from my rain barrels on the woodstove, though.

I could improve my food storage. I have a lot of grains, beans, and dried foods, but water is always the key. I could do better on my canning if I would break down and buy that pressure canner - that way I could can anything that I grow or barter for.

Here’s the thing - I’m really an amateur in this area, mainly because like most people, I don’t want to dwell on the negative. So I piddle about with it enough to make me feel a little more empowered so that I feel better. But so many people have given this absolutely no thought at all, and don’t want to. Not only that, they have children! I don’t know, I think that if I had children I would be totally obsessed with peak oil.

Perhaps part of my concern stems from growing up with parents who grew up during the first Great Depression. My mother didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing, but she was lucky enough to have an college-educated agriculture teacher for a father and they produced all their own food. They got along better than most people in her area because they understood that food is the priority. I learned a lot from listening to my mother and grandmother.

I wish that either of our presidential candidates understood the food crisis. It’s about more than higher prices. It’s about power concentrated in the wrong places.