Category: yearly wrap-ups

I’m post-dating this blog to December 31, 2022, but I’m writing it on January 8, 2023. I had some heavy grief at the end of 2022 and ongoing…so I wasn’t up for writing much then. So I’m going to try to focus this morning on the past year.

Looking over the 2022 blog posts today, I realize that the majority of the year was quite boring until May-July. Beginning in January, I was working on finishing “Cathedral” and doing some collage work. I was fretting over work more than usual and obsessing over planning our trip to Portugal.

In March, we were beginning to venture out to eat and drink, but we were mostly avoiding indoor places. The yard guy planted my asparagus bed in the womb garden in the Back Forty. I still had hopes at that time that he would be reliable help, but I ended up letting him go later when he raised his prices and then started not showing up. Sandy got some bad “news” about his heart. I took Leighanna Light’s Vintage Metal Deck class again, this time on Zoom, and enjoyed that a lot!

We were celebrating in April because Tim had a great scan and it appears that the chemo had worked wonders on his cancer. We spent our usual Easter weekend in Lake Waccamaw and I was concentrated on our upcoming trip to Portugal as well as going to Focus on Book Arts in Oregon in July.

In May we made an epic journey to Portugal, in which we learned just how disabled Sandy has become. In hindsight, it was a lovely trip even though we had to make some changes on the way. I could see myself living in Tomar or Tavira if we ever made the leap. However, we have a lot more of that country to explore in the future. We made new friends there so possibly we will visit them in Braga and travel around northern and central Portugal.

I was dismayed during this time when I was informed that Focus on Book Arts had been canceled. I had bought non-refundable plane tickets thinking that our travel insurance would make that a safe bet, but it didn’t cover event cancellation. In June, I used the money refunded from FOBA to go to Pocosin Arts School of Fine Craft and take a week-long wooden book class from Dan Essig. This was another retake for me, but I don’t work with tools enough that I needed the refresher, and I always learn something new from Dan. I am still reworking this book.

I needed that workshop to recover from the news that Tim’s cancer was back and that Sandy didn’t want to move to Portugal anymore. Back to therapy!!!

In July, Susan and I decided to go to Portland anyway. We had a great time and got to cuddle with a Boston terrier puppy on the plane from Chicago to Portland. We ate well, went to the Japanese Gardens and Powell’s, and took a paste paper art class from Jill Berry at her home.

I also made some great leaf printed papers with Susanne in July!

In August we went back to the lake with some friends and we played with cyanotype printing. I asked our friends to make pages for me for a book I’d like to make about the lake one day.

In September, I cut “Cathedral” off the loom, we rescued a baby squirrel when its nest fell down our chimney, and went back to Lake Waccamaw where we got to see a much diminished Hurricane Ian up close. It was still scary enough that I can’t imagine what it must have been like in Florida. I rescued a little yellow slider turtle.

October brought  two lovely weekend trips: first, the Tapestry Weavers South retreat in Elkin where we had a relaxed time in Leslie Fesperman’s new space for the Yadkin Valley Fiber Center and dyed yarns and cloth in indigo.

Then, I took another book workshop with Leslie Marsh. A couple of friends I’ve made from her other workshops and I stayed at the Breezeway Motel on the soundside and saw some gorgeous sunsets.

Sandy turned 70 in November so of course we had to celebrate that! On his actual birthday we had dinner with friends and the restaurant’s owner offered him a shot, but he had to take it straight from the bottle. My husband is a bad-ass, y’all.

Then on the weekend, we decided to take Amtrak to Charlotte, stay in an uptown hotel and go to the Mint Museum and Bechter Museum. We left early to go back to Greensboro, and the train hit a tree trunk that had been put on the tracks and our car decoupled from the rest of the train! Sandy was about to open this door between the cars when he changed his mind about two seconds before it happened.

Thanksgiving at Lake Waccamaw began well, then Tim got really sick again. We did have a good time for a couple of days…watched football, had drinks around the firepit.

December was a swift downhill slope for Tim when he stopped being able to eat at all. He died on Christmas morning.

This is a photo from about ten years ago when Tim was playing pirate ship with his grandson on the hammock. I love this photo because it captures the moment when Tim just said something outrageous to Jake and has that wry smile waiting for Jake to respond to it.

We are devastated – a world without Tim is a much emptier place. He was loved by so many people.

 

According to WordPress, this is my 1600th published post. While that is a bit hard to believe, the number is actually higher because I deleted a lot of posts when I transferred the blog from GoDaddy to WordPress.com. How long can I keep going? I guess we’ll see.

Reading over my blog posts from the past year was an excellent sleep aid. Normally I go month by month in these annual wrap-up posts. This year I’m going to begin with a summary of January through May.

Everybody knows about the political situation on January 6 that is still scaring the majority of Americans to death nearly one year later. I don’t need to go into that. In January we were still trying to get a diagnosis of my husband’s mysterious muscle weakness, which had become severe around late November and caused him to fall several times and even have a hard time getting out of bed or a chair. He would get out of breath walking from the car to the house. In February, he was diagnosed with shingles, and he was in terrible, terrible pain, but it did not explain why he could barely lift his feet for the prior three months. And I turned 60 years old, and unusually, I had a very hard time with this birthday. We were focused on getting vaccinations for Covid-19. Amazingly, I was able to get one on March 13 because I work in education. Sandy got his in May.

This period of time was dominated by a struggle with getting a firm diagnosis of Sandy’s underlying disease and my deepening depression. I wrote a lot about weaving on Cathedral but in fact, I got very little artwork done. I was extremely unhappy with the administration at work and came to hate Zoom meetings with a fiery passion, but I did prefer working from home, which I did Monday-Thursday. Sandy had a muscle biopsy on April 1 and it revealed a diagnosis of polymyositis, but due to a communication fiasco between different technology systems, we couldn’t get the results until May 15. By that time, Sandy had starting feeling better and began water exercise classes and getting massage therapy. He was prescribed heavy doses of steroids. I started seeing my therapist again in May.

April 2021: Liz the parakeet died in January, and an amazing thing happened a couple of months later. A farmer friend discovered a small green parakeet in her chicken coop! We didn’t want to get into the cycle of having parakeets since we plan to emigrate in a couple of years, but Bernie needed a friend. So we adopted Freda. Who also hates us now that she lives with Bernie.

Gardening: I gave up gardening and yard work in general because of a worsening foot problem, and hired someone to clean up the pile of logs and the overgrown vines and shrubs in the back yard. Best money that I spent this year! The foot problem ended up to be a bone spur aggravating my Achilles tendon. Unfortunately, not an easy fix at all. The cyst that I worried about on the other foot that didn’t cause me pain is no worry at all. I couldn’t get the yard guy to keep coming back to maintain the yard, so eventually I found someone else, although lately he has disappeared. My gardening was done in containers this year, and I got very good tomatoes and peppers.

Lake Waccamaw days: Because I was still able to work remotely until the end of June, I got in some lake time. In April, I spent a cold week with my sister in the lake house while she was getting her house renovated. I went back in June with a few friends and we had a lovely time, then did it again in July with the ones who couldn’t make the trip in June and then with one of my friends of 50-some years in September.

I didn’t take photos or write much about the July trip. We were reeling about a devastating cancer diagnosis for my brother-in-law but we still did the lake party. I took a bad tumble into the lake and cracked the top of my foot, same foot with the bone spur. It swelled up and turned an amazing number of dark colors from purple to green to yellow to rust red. But I could walk on it so it seemed like it would heal up. A couple of weeks later in early August I went to the beach and was on my feet a lot with topless sandals on (I couldn’t bear shoes yet) and walked in the sand. A few days later I was getting x-rayed again. They put me in a tall boot and suggested that I probably had a stress fracture that would not show on the x-ray, and told me that I might want to re-think that European trip in September. The one that I had obsessed over all year.

 

I could only take that boot for about ten days. It was supposed to be on for 5-6 weeks. God help me if I ever have to do it again. It was agonizing to my hip and back. But my foot healed anyway. I rebooked the September Ireland/Portugal trip for May 2022, this time only to Portugal. Given the Delta variant and the possibility of Europe closing down again on top of a foot injury, it seemed like the best decision.

And, by the way, since I am not writing in a linear way and I’m jumping all over the place, my brother-in-law’s chemo treatment has reduced his tumors and he is very much better, although he will have to continue chemo for the rest of his life. He is on a lower dose now. And Sandy’s latest blood work showed a normal range on his inflammation (CK) score and so he will go on a lower dose of meds now too. His lungs are still messed up and his joints and muscles hurt but he moves much better now. We are both trying to get more exercise.

So, back to the summer, when I had two lovely workshops before the euphoria of us thinking that the vaccinations would probably get us all back to normal and protect us ended.

In early June, I went to the Tapestry Weavers South retreat and annual members’ exhibit opening in Elkin, NC, right up the road about an hour’s drive west. I didn’t have a weaving in this show because I couldn’t get the lake tapestry finished in time, but it was a beautiful small show in the gallery at the Foothills Arts Center. Upstairs in the Yadkin Valley Fiber Arts Center, where we gathered and I was able to take that tapestry design workshop with Tommye Scanlin that I had tried to take a couple of times before.

Then in early August, the Dan Essig workshop that had been cancelled in 2020 took place at Leslie Marsh’s lovely Topsail Beach home. Dan is one of my favorite and most influential teachers – the first bookbinding workshop I ever took was from him. And honestly that was supposed to be a fling into something different for one time, but it sent me on a long journey that I am still enjoying thoroughly. I have taken more classes from Dan than any other art teacher.

Sandy went with me on this trip, and we stayed in a very inexpensive AirBnB in Surf City which turned out to have two of the kindest hosts I’ve ever experienced. Since our Honda Fit mostly sat during 2020-21, we had gotten used to driving the “Mom” car, the 1996 Chevy Lumina everywhere. It was a much more comfortable ride, and I thought that it was in better shape than the Honda. Boy, was I wrong. The old girl died the night that we arrived at Surf City, and we couldn’t even get anyone to look at it until that Monday morning. When they did, the damage was so bad and expensive that we ended up leaving her there for junk. Then there was the problem of our getting around for the weekend. My workshop was about 7 miles away on the other end of the island. Sandy couldn’t walk long distances and there wasn’t much around to interest him. There were no rental cars available anywhere. On the first morning, Leslie drove to pick me up for the workshop. Then our hosts lent us their car for the weekend. Then my sister and brother-in-law, GOD HOW I LOVE THEM, had just bought a new car and both of them drove down to the beach and brought us one of their old cars to borrow. An old car that was nicer than any car we ever owned. We ended up driving it back to Greensboro.

Then my sister and brother-in-law GAVE us the 2007 Volvo that they had planned to donate or sell.

It still makes me want to cry in gratitude. Buying a used car right now would be a nightmare. We found a reputable auto shop with a Volvo certified mechanic instead of the assholes that I used to take our cars to, and told them to do everything that needed to be done to it to get it in good shape and running well. Now they have our Honda Fit in the shop doing the same thing. It has cost us a few thousand dollars, but it is still much better than trying to buy a car for a reasonable price right now and then making car payments.

Some good news came out of my foot injury – the orthopedic PA put me on 5000 mg of Vitamin D daily, and my depression lifted. I had been Vitamin D deficient for quite some time and then had recently gotten it to normal levels, but I honestly think that this higher dose may have made the difference in my brain chemistry. My therapist had even recommended that I consider transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy but I kept getting better and I was set free in October. (I think that I need to go back now, but it is still way better.)

Another beautiful weekend trip in October: in a house on the sound at Oak Island with some of the friends who had gone to the lake with us and a couple of new friends that we liked very, very much. With a deck that looked out over the sound and great food and games. We both hope that we will be invited back.

Also, just before the first of October, Sandy sold the condo. Not for a lot, and the whole process was much longer and unnecessarily stressful and almost ended with him pressing charges against the buyer, but it happened. That is a huge monkey off our backs. The rent was honestly not worth the hassle.

We both took a pinhole photography class in October, but we haven’t done anything with it. I had hoped that Sandy may have found a hobby that he enjoyed.

I went to an artist get-together at a print co-op at the downtown Arts Center and ended up joining it. For 40 bucks a month it is worth it to have a big work table and storage for my art supplies. Mostly I have been doing collage and painted papers for collage.

We went back to the lake a final time in 2021 for Thanksgiving with my sister and brother-in-law.

As for the end of this year, and it has been a doozy, I am pretty down about December, a month when not much good happened: shitty politics, my cat is sick, I’m anxious and agoraphobic about the Omicron variant, the crazy wildfires in Colorado close to my cousin’s house, and since Sandy just told me that Betty White died, I’m going to go process that, although I know that she had an amazing and wonderful life.

Tomorrow will be a better day. It will. I know it will.

2019 – the slowing of the slow. Just as it went last year, I have spent a lot of time in and out of major depression. So some things went to the wayside that I had big plans for, like this blog. I won’t say that they won’t still happen though. I did manage to post at least once a month, so yay, me! Hopefully I will get a laptop soon and won’t have to rely on this Kindle.

Anyway, my aspirations for 2020 will have to wait for tomorrow’s post. Right now I am looking back at 2019 after a wonderful week spent at home, mostly by myself. What an introvert I am. And it was actually a pretty great year.

In January, we fulfilled a life goal and installed 12 solar panels on our roof.

In February, I learned Tunisian crochet and began a weather scarf that used the high temperatures of each day in 2018 to determine the color of each row. It was a lot of fun and I have started a 2019 one. I continued weaving a big twill gamp project on the Macomber loom.

We lost my Aunt DeLaine in March. She was absolutely my favorite aunt and I miss her terribly. Her last year was dreadful, with dementia and failing body, so I prefer to remember the adventuress who traveled the world and went ziplining with us (well, not me, I chickened out) at age 87.

Susanne and I took a wonderful book workshop with Leslie Marsh and Kim Beller at Topsail Beach again, this time with plaster covered books and an amazing array of natural dyepots.

It is good to look back at April posts to see the lovely photos of my gardening. We went to Lake Waccamaw where my sister and brother-in-law had finished the repairs to their house from the hurricane in September 2018.

We traditionally take a big trip in May, and this year we met my cousin Cherie in Denver for a road trip to New Mexico. There are many photos. It was a grand time.

Bernie and Liz, two parakeets who hate us, joined our household in June. They belonged to a family member who was not able to take care of them properly and had them crammed into a little cage. Now they have a cage big enough for them to play and flutter around a bit and they still hate us, but they are Sandy’s birds and I just walk into his man cave and make noises at them now and then.

Susanne and I made our biennial trek to Oregon for the Focus on Book Arts conference in Forest Grove, a town where I would love to live. This time I took two classes from Leighanna Light, who has become one of my favorite art teachers, and we stayed in a lovely AirBNB apartment that we shared with another FOBA friend. We spent a few days in Portland first and I got to see Cat, another person I really miss but we have managed to see each other every few years when I go to the west coast.

In July and August I took a break from traveling and caught up on some online classes and took a day class in sakiori weaving in Durham from a saori weaver, Dawn Hummer. I harvested tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, and figs.

Labor Day weekend was the Tapestry Weavers South retreat in Elkin, NC, this time only about an hour’s drive away! Sandy went with me and we stayed in a cabin outside of town. I ended up taking a wedge weave class with Connie Lippert which really opened up my mind to what I might do with all this wool I have in bins in the studio.

September brought the beginning of the Greensboro chapter of the Tiny Pricks Project. It was a lot of fun and I made some new friends. And I got to see BERNIE! Oh how I love Bernie.

I wrote about the Tiny Pricks Project and posted a lot of photos of it in October. My friend Leslie Millsaps passed away in a tragic car crash and many people are still mourning her.

A cancellation in Leslie Marsh’s Nature Bound workshop and a very wise impulse led me back to Topsail Beach for another round with Leslie’s patient and excellent teaching, this time a book with metal covers. I left with one of the most beautiful books I have ever made.

About ten of our Tiny Pricks embroideries were hung at Scuppernong Books for a few weeks around Thanksgiving until Lisa sent them off to join the big exhibition in New York.

We went to Lake Waccamaw for Thanksgiving, where, SURPRISE! we stayed at Fred’s house because Weezer managed to clean it up, fix it, replace the furniture, and make it livable again. Lisa and Tim left their rental house and moved back into their house down the road again, nearly a year after Hurricane Florence’s eye decimated the houses and piers along that shoreline.

And December. Well. I have mostly nested and cocooned but I did spend the past week doing a major purge of my studio. I squeezed a lot of stuff into my little bedroom and the plan is to repair the plaster and paint the front room, then move the living room furniture and TV into there, and my studio will move into what would properly be the dining room in a normal household, an open room next to the kitchen with much better light.

Sandy’s last day at work, ever, is today. A big shift is happening in our lives with the new decade. Good things are happening. I will spend some time writing about this tomorrow. And I will insert links back to posts later this week when I have access to a computer.

2018 had its charms. I was in much much better physical shape than in 2017 but spent about six months in a serious depression. I am starting out 2019 with much less physical and mental pain, and I have regained some lost hope.

In January I decided to weave a tapestry diary and I was really into it for about three months. It was bitter cold at this time last year and we got a lot of snow. I had to consolidate my two studios and focused on squeezing the stuff from my little corner in the Wharton St. house into my already overflowing living room studio at home. Also went to the Women’s March in Raleigh with my family. I thought a lot about this, which I’m thinking about again now.

February was a very creative month. I participated in India Flint’s first online class, Bag Stories, which was a real joy. My WandRbeutel bag is falling apart now, but I can mend it and maybe I will make another. It is a great portable project. Seth Apter came to Greensboro and I took his 52 Card Pickup class – great fun. My books “Flow” and “First the Seed” were in an impressive Triangle Book Arts show called “Re(f)use” at Artspace in Raleigh.

I stitched a LOT in March. Rather obsessively, as I recall. Started India Flint’s Alchemist’s Apron class. Got serious about gardening again, transplanting my perennials from the Wharton St. garden and putting up a small greenhouse.

I got smart and lucky and hired a guy I met in the permaculture guild to redo my main garden area and dig up some unwanted shrubs and dig a hugelkultur bed at the end of my driveway in April. We went to Lake Waccamaw, where I gathered plant material to print and dye my apron and silk threads.

Tapestry was the focus in May, when Sandy and I went to see the Tapestry Weavers South exhibition at the Folk Art Center in Asheville. We took the opportunity to go to a cheese festival too, YUM. Later that month I went to St. Simon’s Island in Georgia for a Tapestry Weavers South retreat. Groundhog woes in the garden.

Susanne and I took an incredibly fun workshop from Leslie Marsh and Kim Beller at Topsail Beach in early June that combined botanical printing and natural dyeing on paper with the Zhen Xian Bao book structure. I took a week’s staycation to purge and organize the studio. Groundhog family wreaked havoc.

July is bittersweet in retrospect. I spent the last week at Fred’s house at Lake Waccamaw. It was beautiful and we had a few friends visit. I stitched my hands into numbness so I got out the sewing machine and started working on the t-shirt quilt again.

In August, we spent the money to cut down the silver maple, and much of it is in the same place the arborist left it to this day. I picked and dehydrated tomatoes every few days, and paid close attention to what the groundhogs ate and avoided in order to plan for this year.

September – OY. What a big month. Sandy and I took a big wonderful trip to Idaho and Wyoming. We went to Shoshone Falls, Minidoka National Historic Site, Craters of the Moon National Monument, Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone National Park and Fossil Butte National Monument. Judy met us in Yellowstone and was our tour guide. While we were there, Hurricane Florence rolled in and flooded both family houses at Lake Waccamaw.

In October I went to Talk Story in Connecticut for a long weekend to take a class from Sharon Payne Bolton and made a bunch of new friends. I also realized that I needed some help at home with my deepening depression and started seeing a therapist. I focused on mental healing and the t=shirt quilt, wove the last entry on the tapestry diary and let it go.

Election and work anxiety made November tough. I got out my mother’s sewing machine and did what I could. Thanksgiving was spent at my sister’s rental house at Lake Waccamaw.

In December my depression lifted, this time for more than a week! Winter Storm Diego dumped a foot of snow on us. Work was better, politics became more optimistic, and we went to my sister’s rental house at the lake for Festivus. We have been at home since then and I finished the t-shirt quilt.

One great thing about writing these wrapups is that I always see that the previous year was busier than I thought, or better than I thought. I did manage to write at least one post every month. I tried to stay away from political commentary, just because I am so sick of it and there are plenty of other places to go for that. This year was tough for everybody with brains and heart. In the end, this blog serves me and me only. My first post of 2017 explains my thinking pretty well. I don’t dwell on it because I have friends with children. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

In January, I had moved my studio into my friend Susanne’s rental house, occupying the little area of the kitchen where the dining table would have been. I enjoyed a lot of sewing there, and good company. Soon I will be moving out as Susanne looks for new digs in the coming year, so I’m consolidating it into my home studio slowly. It’s working out.

On January 21, I participated in the amazing Women’s March on Washington along with about half a million other people. What a rush!

In February, this blanket woven and stitched from Sandy’s discarded shirts was well under way. I need to get back to that. The cats were loving our newly screened in front porch. However, Miss Penny from across the street had a much different opinion.

March was mostly about thinking about upcoming trips. The depression was starting to sink in. Theo obviously didn’t have much more time to spend in this world. I made a book from the denim paper I made the previous year and had hopes for gardening in the back yard of the studio house. I tried to ignore growing physical pain because my chiropractor moved away and I was in denial.

In April, I worked hard on the front yard garden, spent a lot of time on the front porch, and went to Lake Waccamaw for Easter. Apparently I didn’t write about going to the People’s Climate March in late April! Wow. I’ll have to go back and do that.

May was bittersweet. We let my sweet Theo go on May 5. He spent a day at home on the front porch eating all the treats he wanted and accepting last visits from friends. He was quite emaciated so I posted a photo of him from when he was healthy. I will probably never have another cat as loving and needy of attention as Theo. Everybody was in love with him.

Ten days later Sandy and I left for a two week trip to Ireland, London, Devon, and Cornwall for our 30th anniversary. I wrote it up in June. It would take all day to pick out one photo, so I made a quick decision about one photo from Trebarwith Strand on the Cornwall coast, since I think that was probably my happiest day of the trip, walking on the Coast Path. Afterwards we hiked the opposite direction and climbed a bazillion steps to visit Tintagel Castle.

I’d barely caught my breath in June before Susanne, Joseph, and I got on a plane for Oregon where Susanne and I went to Focus on Book Arts and Joseph visited family. I was thrilled with my classes with Jennie Hinchcliff and Leighanna Light! I then spent a day on my own in Portland, visiting Powell’s City of Books and the Japanese Gardens.

Above, from Jennie’s class “Collecting & Keeping: Chinese Thread Books.”

Above, pages in progress from Leighanna Light’s “Lily’s Book” class.

Above, Japanese Gardens, Portland

July brought a trip to Lake Waccamaw again and lettuce and tomatoes from my new container garden in the front yard. The woodchuck came back and decimated a lot of the back garden. I was sick and in pain and frustrated.

In August, I found out that my gallbladder was a mess, but I found a massage therapist who, although she made me cry on the table, fixed my neck and shoulder pain with trigger point therapy. I lost a couple of friends. Sandy and I went to see Lyle Lovett and His Large Band at the Carolina Theater. Lots of figs.

A trip to Colorado has become a tradition in September. This time we stayed in an AirBNB in Boulder for one night before joining my cousin and aunt on a weekend trip to Cripple Creek to celebrate my cousin’s birthday. There are donkeys that roam freely through the town and they were spoiled rotten! I would love to move to Colorado.

My gallbladder was removed in early October and I learned a lesson about pain management and trying to be tough. I worked on an accordion book to hang in the Triangle Book Arts show coming up in January.

Deep depression came down like a dark cloud in late October and November, although you wouldn’t know it from the photos. I had a good time that night, although I won’t be playing the bongos again, because Sandy bought us bodhrans for Christmas! The whole #metoo thing got to me really bad. We spent Thanksgiving with my sister at Lake Waccamaw and got to see my brother and nephew. It pulled me out of my funk.

December was better. I took a lot of good photos in the winter storm and began weaving on Cathedral again. I missed having Christmas with my family because of a stomach virus, but over all I feel better than I have in months. My friend Jackie and I went to the Asheville area for a couple of days to deliver “98% Water” to the Folk Art Center for a Tapestry Weavers South show. Tonight Sandy and I are going to a steampunk ball at the Haw River Ballroom with friends. This is very out of character for me to go out on New Year’s Eve, but we are looking forward to dressing up.

Here’s the progress I made from early January to yesterday on “Cathedral.” Not much, but at least it’s growing again!

A lot of people are happy to see 2016 go. Yes, it was a very stressful year for almost everyone, but I am quite fearful of the next few years so I’m not ready to let 2016 go yet. However, I don’t have much choice, do I? So here’s my annual wrap-up blog post.

“Save our State,” a postcard tapestry I sent to an exhibition in Oaxaca, Mexico this year

I marked a couple of things off my bucket list this year. One event that might have made my bucket list but didn’t was voting for my man Bernie in the presidential election. It wasn’t on my list because I never ever expected him to get so close to the goal. Bernie Sanders has been my political hero for years, and it filled my heart with gladness to vote for him in the primary. At least our guys won in the N.C. governor and attorney general elections, which can only help, although the legislature has a controlling majority and is hellbent on taking away the powers of the governor’s office now that their party lost it. UGH.

My heart ached all year about the sale of my mother’s house in Marietta in late 2015. Although I’m glad that we don’t have to deal with its upkeep, it will always be home to me. I didn’t expect its loss to hurt so much.

In January, a big bucket list item was fulfilled when my tapestry, “98% Water,” was accepted into the American Tapestry Alliance Biennial exhibition. Right now I think it is still in Kansas at the Mulvane Art Museum. and will be traveling to its final venue at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. I also rented a small room at my church around the corner as a studio space, which I enjoyed for most of the year. My grand-nephew lost his father who was only in his mid-thirties, which had a huge impact on our family. This post wrapped up that month pretty well.

Pocosin Arts Center in Columbia, North Carolina was the location of a workshop Susanne and I took from Daniel Essig. It’s a sweet little town that most people breeze through on their way to the Outer Banks without a second look, but it is also the home to the headquarters of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, which I took as the theme of my wood covered mica book.

In March, my cousin Fred Adams died. He had Type 1 diabetes and a stroke and was in kidney failure for a long time. His house at Lake Waccamaw is the place that I have written about and photographed so much here over the years. He was a dearly loved family member and we all miss him very much. Everyone who knew Fred loved him. He was one of those kind of people – funny, intelligent, and friendly.

During the spring, I dived into weaving and sewing cloth strips, mostly from my worn-out jeans that I collected over the years. I learned a lot about what my little sewing machine is and is not capable of! I owe this cloth party to Jude Hill at Spirit Cloth.

Then in April I used the diced up denim trimmings to make paper!

Which was really fun until my back and hips said uh-uh.

Tapestry Weavers South had an impressive 20th Anniversary exhibition at Yadkin Arts Center in May. I’m so glad that I became more involved with this group.

May 2016 also brought the second bucket list item to fruition – we took a train ride on a sleeper car. It was during a big beautiful trip to Montana and Washington and Oregon, and there are too many gorgeous photos to choose from so you’ll have to travel back in time to my link above if you want to see them. We flew to Minneapolis, boarded Amtrak in Saint Paul, got off at Glacier National Park for three days, took the train again to Seattle where we only spent a couple of hours near the depot, then took the train to Portland. There we rented a car and drove to Mount St. Helens National Monument, the Astoria and Cannon Beach area, up the Columbia Gorge, to John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (Painted Hills) in central Oregon, to Bend and Sisters, and back to Portland for the last two days, where we flew back east.

It was absolutely one of the greatest trips I’ve ever taken, but I will not be riding in a sleeper car again! It also reinforced the idea that Sandy and I really should go west if we are ever able to retire.

June and July brought me back to the studio and growing field peas and butterbeans in my garden, which is much reduced in size now due to my chronic physical problems. I spent July 4th weekend at the lake at my sister’s house for the first time. She has kittens!

In August I finished up the denim blanket, which I learned was too large, bulky, and heavy to use as I intended, so I cut it in half and now it is two rugs on my bedroom floor. When I need picnic blankets, I’ll roll them up and take them along. I started on a new blanket project with a bunch of my husband’s old cotton and linen shirts.



On Labor Day weekend I traveled to South Bend, Indiana via Chicago to attend the opening reception of the ATA Biennial at the South Bend Museum of Art. I flew through Chicago, took Amtrak to South Bend with the points I earned from the May trip, stayed in an AirBNB (which has made me a convert!). On the way back I spent a few hours at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Only a couple of weeks later I took what seems to be turning into an annual trip to see my Aunt Delaine and cousin Cherie near Denver, Colorado. Hey, you can’t tell we’re related, can you? This time I was there to go to a class with paper collage artist Elizabeth St. Hilaire at the Art Makers Denver retreat. As usual the entire time with my family was lovely.

After the disastrous owners’ meeting in July I had written off Deep Roots. When I came back in September I got involved with a group of Deep Roots owners with the purpose of changing the direction of the cooperative, whose management and majority of the board got way off track in trying to deal with the financial problems. I spoke before the board about communication – my speech is in the minutes here. The good news is that we did prevail. The general manager was gone by November and most of the board members who supported him serve their last day on the board today.

I didn’t write on my blog at all in October or November. My nerves were shot and I was angry or shellshocked all the time. But once I was able to, I did a catch-up post here. The good news: I met and drank with Ben Harper. We screened in our front porch. We went to Savannah, Georgia for a long weekend for Sandy’s birthday.

My favorite place in Savannah was Bonaventure Cemetery. I’ve got it in my head now to do a angel tapestry after the “Cathedral” tapestry is finished.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend with my sister, brother-in-law, brother, and cousin-in-law (Fred’s wife) at Lake Waccamaw. I didn’t blog it.

Then I took Susanne’s offer to move the church studio into her house. We are having a great time! I’m working on a travel themed t-shirt quilt. I’ll write more about that tomorrow.

Goodbye, 2016.

And so, I grieved and got on with the job of renovating the house. Now, because of Mama’s life insurance, I would have enough money to do the needed repairs and a few extras without going further into debt. Thanks, Mom!

I was so glad that I had already designed a tapestry and was ready to weave before all this happened. The tapestry and the anticipation of my trips to Oregon, Colorado, and California sustained me.

We made a second bathroom out of an odd existing space in the house and are still working on renovating the original one that had (HAD, that wonderful past tense!) a serious foundation problem.

I spent a lot of time at Lake Waccamaw with my sister and brother-in-law. They rented a house for six months and it was close to Mama’s – now our – house.

But the thing that brought me the most joy was the Cannon Beach tapestry retreat, where Pam Patrie took me under her loving wing and welcomed me to the Divines.

Okay, this is where the words fail me. I cannot gush enough over the gratitude I feel toward Pam. She is a fairy godmother to me, in all honesty. She is on that level. How can I describe the magic? How can I describe the bliss of joining a group of companions on my same path, who get me and share my passion? How can I describe the stunning beauty of the landscape, the breeze blowing through the cliffside trees, the sound of the waves below?

I knew I would be back as often as my finances and job would allow, until I could make the transition to living there.

In September, I visited my family in Colorado, then went on to the Art-is-You retreat in Petaluma, California. Both incredible trips in their own rights, but quite frankly blogging this on my Kindle is just about used up all my patience so I’ll attempt to finish this with a photo from each and one of the latest photos of the “98% Water” tapestry, which I intend to finish before midnight tonight.

The Overlap

It is very hard for me to write about this part because of the strange joy I feel about it.

Just before Mama’s passing, I joined the American Tapestry Alliance, created a design and cartoon for my next tapestry, and talked to Pam about her tapestry retreats. At first I was inquiring about her ad in the ATA newsletter because I felt sure that there had to be a typo – how could this incredible opportunity be affordable? Weaving tapestry with other tapestry weavers in an Oregon cabin on a Pacific sea cliff?

I hardly had a chance to talk to Mama about it, but I mentioned how passionate I felt about going to live on the West Coast because I feel that I belong there. “What’s keeping you from going? Me?” she asked.

“Well, yeah,” I answered, in a tone that implied obviousness. Then I felt the awkwardness of the answer and made a joke, as I often did, about her outliving me. Seriously, I always thought that she might well live into her 100s. She had the toughness and the genes for it. I added that of course, also I am married and I have a job that I love, but yes, I would not want to leave her.

A few days later that conversation would haunt me for weeks when I heard from all sides that the widely held opinion that my mother had chosen her time to die. That she didn’t want to be a burden. That she had discussed many things with my sister concerning her final wishes that very week of our conversation, during what we now know was her last week with us.

I don’t think that my mother chose to die but I do think that she was willing to let go of her life once it became time. I hope that I will feel the same.

Now my life would turn toward looking at my future without her. Becoming an adult at age 53. Feeling no need to get her approval concerning my choices, which was always a problem between us. We are all very critical personalities in my family. I loved her, but her passing brought me a certain freedom that I can’t deny if I am to be honest about it. I was always caught in the stress of trying to please her and trying to please my soul. It was an impossible situation. I don’t have to justify my life to anyone but my Self now. Wow.

I still grieve, but life will always be different now. I feel that if my mother’s spirit is still watching, she would be pleased with me, mistakes and all. She finally understands.