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.

My god, I’ve used this title so many times now that my blogging software auto-fills it.

It’s sunny, 72 degrees with a light breeze at 8:26 a.m. in Greensboro, North Carolina. The moon is new. I have high hopes for this day.

Since I spent our real anniversary watching my great-nephew play with a new friend (yay! “This has been the best day EVER!”) at Lake Waccamaw, Sandy and I decided to make today our 22nd anniversary. This morning, he will sleep as usual, while I do my solitary stuff. I love weekend mornings. It’s surprising to me that I became such a morning person. I’m not one of those who gets up super early, but since I quit smoking 14 years ago, I don’t feel the need to sleep very late.

This morning I plan to go to the farmers’ market for the first time in weeks. I’ve been gone several weekends in the past several weeks and the weekends that I’ve been home it seems like I was either sick with allergies or I just didn’t have the extra money to spend. I still don’t have the extra money since I’m saving as much as I can for the Alaskan cruise, but I’ll try to just buy milk, beef, and chicken, if there is any. Ooh, and strawberries! Definitely strawberries.

Tonight Sandy and I are going to Riva’s Trattoria for dinner and then to see the new Star Trek movie. I told him that I needed some extra TLC this weekend so I hope that a long backrub is in his plans. He’s really good at that and he thought seriously about going to massage therapy school for a while.

As for myself, I have three main goals to accomplish this weekend.

1. Skirt and wash the two fleeces that Beverly generously gave me over a year ago. I have a friend who is going to help me card the wool next weekend, and then I will probably send it to a spinning mill to be spun into yarn for tapestry. My tendonitis prevents me from making the repetitive motion that spinning requires. I admire and envy spinners.

2. Plant the rest of my seeds. I lost all the Loudermilk lima beans, probably to the Critter, who I came face-to-face with the other day. But when I went to Pearce and Co. general store in Hallsboro, they had some black and white speckled beans that looked just like them, except they called them Florida pole beans. So I bought a few of them. I also have some sunflower seeds that CFSA sent me.

3. Clean out the refrigerator. Really, I have waited 100 times too long to do this. It is unbearable.

I also need to go on a shopping trip to Lowes’ or similar place because I finally burnt out the weed whacker, and I need some more mulch for the beds and the paths. I can do that on a weeknight if I don’t get to it, though. We have a reel push mower but it needs to be sharpened and some of the weedier places need more power.

I made paper last night from scraps that I have gleaned from the trash in the printing studio at school. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but the printmakers have to use expensive, quality paper for their projects and they trim their papers in there. I even retrieved some pieces big enough to make pages for my small books. Making paper in my sanctuary is a calming, cool experience on a warm evening.

I have become more attuned to the birds in the Back Forty since Mama Kitty and Miss Peanut died. There are some Carolina wrens that live near the gazebo that blow my mind. I watched a mama robin raise her babies over the rain barrel on the deck. A crazy mockingbird has taken up residence in the shed. Dove babies have flown up in my face, startling us all. The young cardinals chase each other and are nearly grown now. I love the sparrows that hop around in the brushy areas and along the fence with all the vines.

My vegetable growing success has definitely been spotty. I guess not being focused on gardening I have missed a lot. It’s been rainier than usual, and I think that the raccoons who ate the slugs have moved on, intentionally or not. I haven’t used Reemay and soda bottle covers like I have every year. I need to remember to put bottles over the young okra seedlings as they come up this weekend. The tomatoes, well, I don’t know where I went wrong with them. We’ve salvaged a few that seem very healthy, and several more that are struggling but will probably make it. Then there are the volunteers, who I love the most anyway.

I’ve been picking the red Nanking cherries and eating them for snacks. Now I’ve learned to wait until they are a very deep red to get the best flavor. There are enough that the birds don’t get them all, and they grow close to the branches where most of them are hidden.

Okay, the coffee is gone and I’d better get on with my day while it is still cool and lovely.

Deep dark depression, excessive misery
If it warn’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all
Doom, despair, and agony on me!

My luck is not really so bad but these are dark times around me. I’m having a tough time coping and I don’t blog much when I’m not feeling good. I feel exhausted and lonely in a strange way - not that I want to be around people but in the way that I feel that no one really understands me.

I wiggle back and forth between celebrating my strangeness and wondering WTF is wrong with me.

The main way I generally deal with stress is that I try to find things that I can let go. Lately, that means that I eat cereal for dinner. If I see something that “needs” to be done, I assess it and decide if it is necessary, and if it is not, I let it go. If it doesn’t need to be done, I say “It’s fine,” either to myself or to anyone else who is present, aloud or silently. It’s my way of reassuring myself that it is okay to let it go. Well, someone I love who copes with stress the polar opposite way took that personally this weekend and lost their temper with me, and it was a shock. I’m having a very hard time with that piled on top of everything else, because I don’t think that I can be around this person when I am tired and stressed out any more. I can’t be around constant worrying and activity and yelling when my nerves are shot.

And my nerves are shredded.

Thank god for this gazebo, where I am writing this right now. I’d almost forgotten that the reason I bought this was to give me a bug-free refuge similar to the screened porch at the lake house. Here I can look at the beauty of my garden and listen to all kinds of songbirds, watch the squirrels play and glimpse the occasional rabbit. I figure the only elements missing are the sounds of water and the breeze. I think that I’ll get a little fountain for in here and when it gets hot, I run an electric line out here for a fan, or I can go into the studio where I have an air conditioner.

I made paper out here last week and it was very pleasant. What’s great about this space is that I can work wet and sloppy and “it’s fine.” Yes, it is.

I’ll get through it but with the state budget crisis my nerves will likely be on edge for quite some time.

I honestly didn’t forget Mother’s Day. I just thought that it was next Sunday. I didn’t see last week’s Sunday paper, I don’t watch TV (at least, not on the television set), I don’t pay any attention to ads, and I’ve been so spacy that if anyone has talked about it in front of me I guess I missed it. I’ve always associated it with the same weekend as graduation.

Anyway, I made this card for Mama out of my handmade paper, mica, and a button. Hope that she will forgive me.

Made in Traci Bunkers’ “Revival: Restoration to a Visual Life; An Awakening” class at Art & Soul, Hampton, Virginia, May 3, 2009. This recycled book cover is filled with all kinds of groovy papers and stuff, including a pamphlet from the 1956 Pennsylvania Dutch Festival in Pottstown, PA, music from a 1923 gospel book, and a kid’s atlas. I love this book. I want to cuddle up and sleep with it.

I love Traci Bunkers’ style, and I admire how she puts herself out there. I can’t share that much of my personal life, but I like it when others show their humanity because it makes me feel better that others share my emotions.

She does some really interesting things with photography too…

Website: http://www.tracibunkers.com/

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tracibunkers/

I’ve also put the link to her blog in my ever-increasing “Idea Farm” on the sidebar.

This is the book that I made in Chrissie Hines’ “Longstitch Variations” class at Art & Soul in Hampton, Virginia on Monday. The cover is made from Scrabble boards that were joined with Tyvek and then painted, stamped, and stenciled. The inside is bound with nice cardstock, which I proceeded to muck up with my paint and ink-covered hands, but I hope that I’ll paint in it anyway. Chrissie was a real sweetheart and made me feel loved, even though I was a pain-in-the-ass because I worked through my lunch and ahead of the others because I wanted to leave before rush hour and get home early enough to get my woodcut portfolio finished. (Turned out it was due today, duh.)

Anyway, as much as I think that this book is beautiful, I have a problem with using stamps and stencils made commercially or by other people and calling the art mine. I mean, I realize that I’m making the choices to put this together in my own particular way, but it violates my obsessive compulsive rules. My very “one”-ness tut-tuts this away as “very nice, but it ain’t art.” This bugs me a bit, because I’ve really tried to loosen up. All my rules had me very tightly wound. If I let myself, I could really go to extremes - where could it end? Would I have to make the paper, the bookboard, spin the linen thread, make the glass beads? Grow the flax for the linen? Gather dyes and pigments for the paint?

Despite all the neurotic OC thoughts, I had fun with it and Chrissie’s method of binding will be extremely useful to me in recycling and binding old books in a new life as journals and sketchbooks.

The other class I took was from Traci Bunkers, whose style is closer to my own. But I want to save that for its own post, with photos of the cover of that book. First I want to pimp up the spine with some beads and stuff.

I am so excited over this new technique. It has helped me get over the funk that another instructor left me in. He was there. Do you remember that scene in Animal House when Boon and Otter go into the roadhouse and yell “Hey, Otis! My man!” at the band, and the singer gives him a look like WTF are you? Yeah. Whatever. There are other teachers, and he’ll get old one day like everybody else.

I went to Ed McKay’s both nights since I’ve been back and raided the free shelf, this time looking more for the condition and size of the covers as well as content inside. Tonight I scored a bunch of National Geographics for collage. I didn’t find as many maps as I’d hoped, but it’s enough to keep me really happy and busy for a long time.

I really should be packing, or making paper, or both. I have plenty of time, because I made plans to meet my Hampton roomie around 4:30 this afternoon, and it’s about a five hour drive with bathroom stops. Oh yeah, I’m going to Art & Soul today. Tomorrow, I’m taking “Revival: Restoration to a Visual Life; An Awakening,” which, in all honesty, I’d never take just looking at the title, but I’ve taken a short class from Traci Bunkers and she is more fun than the title implies. Basically it is about techniques in altering old books.

I’m considering taking a walk on the nearby beach on Sunday evening.

Monday, I’m taking “Longstitch Variations” from Chrissie Hines. This looks like it will be covered in Traci’s class too, so it will be interesting to compare the two instructor’s bookbinding techniques. Then I’m driving back Monday night. Not looking forward to driving in that area’s rush hour, having experienced it before, but at least today’s traffic should be better.

Anyway, I have some paper soaking that I need to at least blend into some pulp and refrigerate before I go, otherwise it will ferment by the time I get back. And I need to spend some time just listening to the birds on the deck. And get my portfolio ready to turn in on Tuesday morning for my woodcut class, since I just now realized that this will be my only chance to do it! Uh-oh.

Oh well, this is all fine. I’m just grateful that this week, during which I have been headachy, sleep-deprived, and extremely irritable, is over, and that I managed not to get a sinus infection before the retreat!

Better go now!