Vacation, all I ever wanted

Pardon the disappearance,we made it to the beach and had a lovely vacation. In fact, we came back so well rested we spent the past couple days doing some intense cleaning including, but not limited to: the refrigerator and steam cleaning all the rugs in the house.

Cleaning is not a normal pre-vacation activity, but I knew I'd be much happier coming home to a clean house than a messy one. Then spending a week in a house without stacks of papers and clutter made it hard to come home to a clean yet cluttered space.

With clean spaces all around and a well rested body and spirit, I'm finally ready to really tackle a few personal goals: really digging into Beautiful You, a book introduced to me by Amber Karnes. I meant to do the book club but didn't get my book until too late and excuses and more excuses.

Now I feel ready. What about you? Do you feel as beautiful as you actually are?

Seeing

I can barely open my eyes this morning after a long weekend at the lake, seeing family I haven't seen in a long time, and endlessly chasing Mabel. There was a lot of cake. And today I have my first fitness assessment at Fitness Together. Things are not looking good. I've been tracking my food for Weight Watchers as well as doing a serious workout twice a week, but have been on a plateau since August of last year. I have gained a few pounds (3, grrr) back, but feel pretty confident I have exchanged those few pounds for lean muscle weight.

Me in August of 2010, but I pretty much look the same now

I had an assessment the first time I tried FT, but at that time work was slow and we just couldn't afford the cost.  Luckily (?) I'll have the old assessment to compare to today's results.

So  this is where I am {again}:

I know I need to increase my activity levels, so all this has left me wondering, do the Charlotte Roller Girls need another Renee?

Anyone have any secrets to share about resisting the junk food when it presents itself in abundance? Favorite exercise activities? Lay 'em on me! I hope you had a happy, healthy, and safe Fourth of July!

Then and now references

I've been reading all the twitter updates by friends at the National Stationery Show and Surtex (Go Team LPP!), sounds exciting! Good luck kids!

We spent the weekend outside working on projects, dined with a dear friend from high school,  and took lots of naps.  Here are some pictures of 2 of our mulch beds, the first one is new as of this year, the second was new last year. The difference in soil under all the mulch is amazing: it went from hard, compacted and a light gray color to dark brown, soft and easily trowel-able.

The new keyhole mulch bed on April 3, 2011.

And then there's the ol' poison ivy. It doesn't itch so badly anymore. I'm doing quick rundown of what I've used on it and what I think seemed to work in case anyone wants a future reference.


Hydro cortisone cream--eased the itch, but didn't heal. Aspirin cream: eased the itch, didn't heal (in fact, both of these creams seemed to leave a thick residue that made the itch worse over time, I think). I feel like zinc was the same way, but maybe I didn't give it a fair chance. Rhus tox gave me a 10 minute headache at first then the headache went away; it seemed to help the itch a bit but for 3 hours at most.

The Keyhole Bed on May 15, 2011.

Allergy tablets (like a generic Benadryl) helped me sleep through the night without itch, but it makes me drowsy, so daytime use wasn't an option.

Not scratching also seemed to keep the itch level down.

What is now the Perennial Edibles bed soon after I started it, May 9, 2010.

The best solution was running the rash under water just on this side of the bearable threshold until the sting goes away. That sting hurts so good and when it and the itch go away you'll want to cry tears of joy. The hot water in combo with Tecnu Extreme scrub and Tecnu itch spray are the best of the best. No itch all night long.

The Perennial Edibles bed May 15, 2011. The big patch of grass front and center is grass
I trimmed from around the bed, layered on top to add a bit of nitrogen.

My arm is still swollen and blistered, dried out from the hot water/Tecnu combo; not pleasant to look at, but I can handle the ulgy. Ugly + itch = not so much.

Did you have a good weekend? What did you do?

Wooden Love

Thought I'd take a little break from the heaviness of copyright issues and talk about life around WatS-ville. The Mr. and I just celebrated our 5 anniversary. . . well, "celebrate" is kind of an exaggeration. We went to dinner then watched Feed the Fish on netflix at home. We don't really do much for anniversaries or Valentine's Day, we just kind of spend the whole month being extra mushy.

Had we exchanged gifts, this year's traditional theme would've been really fun to find. Wood. I mean, how easy is that? I'm swooning over Off Cut Studio's vintage styled wooden clock and bike fenders (via Decor8).

A few other wooden cuties that caught my eye: Wooden Pulley from Romp; Singgih Kartono Toys for the Soul from Fawn and Forest; Roofline Blocks and Love Tokens from Twine are cute little gifts to show the love.


Do you exchange gifts for anniversaries? Do you follow the anniversary gift themes?

validation and one big knit jumper

There is always a struggle inside, to find the balance between art and living.

I sometimes feel guilty not writing more about art here, although this blog was intended to be about settling into married life.

Art is the hardest thing to write about: it's hard to write about what you pour your soul into and how much soul was poured into it. It's hard to share and wait for critique, or find enough balance to not need the positive feedback. It's hard to keep making things without needing the public validation.

It's hard to know the difference in sharing and bragging.

So sometimes there's no visible proof of art, and I feel like (with having this blog) I'm not a true artist if there is no sign of art making. But I'm making stuff--I'm making memories. I'm making plans. Right now other interests are holding hostage of the output of my hands.

Right now I'm cooking as a direct connection with my community and the earth. Finding the salt of the earth in the most literal of ways. Figuring out how my thread connects to others and the metaphorical technique of a well-knit community. And just how far and how much stretch there is in that community.

* * * *
Cell phones are apparently a hot topic! As are lunch boxes! It will be a strange experience to disconnect in that way, but I think it will be a good one. Reclaim those few seconds I spend looking for it daily. As for the lunch box, still no word from my mom.

This blog is beautiful, the words are poetic and moving. (via Aesthetic Outburst)

here's a little sneak peek (hmmm, not so much a peek as a full on unveiling?) of the pieces for the Songcatcher show.

Something similar is in the works for the Uppercase's Old School show. If you're interested in purchasing the catalog for the show, they are now available here.

We're getting geared up (haha, bike humor) for another car free weekend. An experience that has taught me the luxury of not driving.

Some of my weekend plans will be posted to Modish later (and don't forget! the Modish shop is closing soon, so buy up and save--and get entered in the great giveaway she's got goin' on!)

If I can talk Charlie into it, we just might make it out to tonight's Critical Mass ride (meet up is at the Common Market in Plaza Midwood).

And to risk sounding like an extrovert, tomorrow I'm going to meet the lady that spearheads the Matthews Farmer's Market and check into some volunteering.

If I preach so much on community but stay well-hidden in my comfort zone, what will I learn? So wish me luck and the absence of panic attacks and I'll see you on the flip side!

Ahhh, lovely long weekends that never last long enough. Taunting me with mindless TV, bicycle rides, eating picnics and gardening on a whim, then throwing me back into the work world with sore muscles while interrupting the newly felt, luxurious sleep pattern of three days of sleeping in.

Yesterday a quick trip to World Market to buy tahini turned into a $40 spending spree, which, admittedly isn't too bad considering I didn't even look at the wines they had. I left with a 6-pack of beer, wind chimes, tahini, chile paste, and a 3-tiered tiffin tin to leave in the car for eating out or getting take out. The styrofoam take out containers must cease and desist.

Now, as Hi-C put it, we need to work it into our habits.

This little shopping spree was started in a circuitous manner--soaking dried chick peas to make hummus, baking crackers from Gayla's recipe for the hummus-to-be, realizing we were out of tahini (after a trip to the grocery store earlier in the day) so another trip back to the store.

I'm growing increasingly disappointed in the grocery stores--paying a lot of money for crap quality food, that pays farmers and farm hands poorly while padding the wallets of the corporate grocery chains. Not to mention all the weird additives (and subtractives?), and preservatives.

In order to avoid the general annoyance of said grocery stores, I opted for another corporate giant-- World Market, where me and my main man spent nearly an hour playing with everything, and leaving with way more than the original intention.

We forked over the cash and left, ready for a simple meal, when Hi-C's phone rang; one of his long time buddies asking if we wanted to carpool to a party. They explained they were leaving for it in 15 minutes.

A party, you wonder? Was that why you were making fancy crackers and hummus from scratch, to take to a party later in the afternoon? Why'd you wait so long to get the tahini if the party started at 5??

Ha ha ha, you silly goon. Of course not! I'd not heard the slightest whisper of party plans up until that moment. So then, after all the planning, cooking, prepping, sweating, and general disarray of a day with nothing in particular to do, we went straight to the party and spent time chatting and meeting new people. Catching up with others, grilling out and rolling down grassy hills (not me, I wasn't about to spill my beer).

And it was perfect.

Now, I'm ready for another 3 day weekend.

resume normalcy with hope

Ah, new beginnings and the beautification of old ghosts.

We had a lose-my-faith-in-humanity experience several days ago, which left me feeling very disrupted. Faith is a difficult concept, not one I talk about, and especially not a concept for this blog, BUT I will say that I need to believe in the innate goodness of humankind.

So after this disruption, which actually left me feeling better about people (hooray!), I painted on this beast of a painting. It hangs in all of it's 4' x 5' glory in the living room, has been there for 5 years now (wow!) and has been reincarnated many many times. With each new face a new story. The angel-figure is not really an interesting subject, the content isn't very challenging, so perhaps it is the meditative act of working on such a large surface, but the latest appointment with this piece left me crying on Charlie's shoulder.
But boy, did I feel better, and the painting seems to be enjoying it's newest coat.

Today I am the Bermuda Traingle

Okay, weird, I'm not getting the notifications of comments from Blogger. Also, after a bit of checking, I'm not getting notifications of packages from the post office. I am the Bermuda Triangle.

To make a long story short, I purchased the wrong tickets from Priceline, immediately realized and called and they basically said, "Sucks for you. Thanks for the $$."
Ditto for the airline.
That equates to me taking the money for driving up there and back and, well, throwing it in the fire.

It will be a good weekend, though. I slept until 10 AM! I also had a dream that I was at BBB and Tess, Ileana, Neesy, Sappymoosetree, boygirlparty, one good bumblebee, well, okay, everyone I've ever met in internet land was there. I took a job at Starbucks to pay for the trip AND the economy rental car was actually a Barbie remote control car that I used to get to/from work. Let's not read into it too much, okay?
There was a dance competition, not like the kind in 1960s movies, but choreographed group dancing. I think BBB should do that next year. I'd like to sponsor it.

I sold all of the calendars I had available! Hooray! Of course (warning, self asserting plug) I still have lots of other goodies in the shop!
If you're still looking for one,
Modishoppe
IndieNC
the Indie Fixx Shop
have them!

The first image is from the Modish Guest Blog post I did on Bazaar Bizaare.
The second image is from a post I did about La Superette this weekend. Check 'em out!

Company is coming!

Hooray! I love having people over, but this time it meant the end of an
era of finely honed excuses allowing me to keep making messes and not cleaning up after myself. So here is the reality of being out of town every weekend for a month.
But Sloane, if you're reading this, it looks much better now.
And Mary, if you're reading this, I'm finally ready for a studio visit!

I think I had the equivalent weight in scrap paper of a 4 year old tree. It's off to the recycling center today, since I tore myself away from the "but I'll use that one day" philosophy.
Let's all make a collective "phew" and celebrate the weight lifted off my shoulders by doing a big purge, shall we??

They say apathy is worse than either extreme, when politics is concerned, right?
I love to see homemade signs and signals of people coming together, whether I agree or not. On our way home from Handmade Parade, we passed countless cotton farms, many of which had signs at the highway stating "No OLF". So I checked it out, and guess what I learned?

Later I'll post some pics of the drive and the adventure! What a great show, thanks Norfolk Craft Mafia for having us! Now I'm back to work while Mr. Mr. stays home and cleans house.

And even though it was really only 2 days away from home, I'm looking forward to getting some quality time in with the kids, getting my face licked all over and cuddling up on the couch. The kitties stayed home by themselves and last night as I melted into the couch under blankets and quilts, they found satisfactory nooks and curled up on me, keeping me snug and happy. My parents watched Wolfgang and Murray, and said they wouldn't eat much while we were gone, I guess they really do love us! Oh happy days!

while on the other coast. . .

The wildfires are spreading.
We all need to do what we can, and now is the right time to start thinking about ways to help.
Marie Rounsavell (aka Marimello) has started a collective to accept donations of goodies. The details are here.
Lemme break it down for you:
You can donate, you can purchase, or you can share your relief-giving experience. There will be oodles of goodies for sale for under $10, and each purchase or donation (including if you just share a fire-relief-giving experience on the blog) will enter you to win a big ol' goodie basket.
It's easy, it's fun, and you get to feel good. Now. Git to gittin'.

Seriously. Or I'll start a long list of the people I know who have been or will be directly affected by these fires. That's a pretty hefty burden to bear.

Man oh man! I had 3 doorprizes and only 2 takers?? If anyone else out there wants to take a shot for the third one, leave a comment on my last post about a connection you've made! If there's one comment, it'll be yours; if there are multiples I'll do a drawing for who gets it.
Heather and Jessica: email me your address [ nobiting at gmail dot com ] and I'll send your package out this week!

In other news, today I have formally stepped into my 30s. Woo hoo!!

another meandering down the trail of life

I am still fairly in shock about Vince and Jeff. Vince's funeral is today, as is the first trial for the shooter. He was mad because he was fired.

He. was. mad. because. he. was. fired. from. a. $7.50 an hour. job.
The reality is still just sinking in, I was a "regular" at the restaurant. I joked around with those guys. Vince knew my name. He knew random bits of things about me.
We weren't close friends, but we were more than acquaintances. And this guy, this guy that for whatever reason was fired, just couldn't handle that?!? It doesn't even begin to make sense.
That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

The weekend was full of quite times, working on drawings and sewing. Probably a little too much thinking time. But I worked, I absorbed this experience that was just that much closer to home than I'd like. I tried to fathom. Fathoming won't happen.
These pics are all from the last week, this creative storm that takes over as the fall shows start. Again, that particular storm prohibits house work. So the house. . .it's messier, if anything. Still telling myself I'll get to it one day.

Being so busy makes for a relatively boring blog, huh?
For all of you fellow gardeners, we are on mandatory water restrictions now, which means no alternating watering days or any of that mess. No watering (with a sprinkler) at all right now.
I have watered occasionally with gray water, but not much more than that.
I'm sorry, it doesn't allow for any pretty plant pictures.
But here's a new drawing (does the flower count as a pretty plant pic?)

Oh those lazy, lazy weekends. This one started off with me having some sort of inkling a wedding was coming up. One of C's coworkers was getting married, although I was under the impression it would be sometime in October.

Friday Mr. C told me the wedding was Saturday night. Out of town. And me? Well, I haven't had a proper haircut in several months because my stylist was pregnant (and now is on maternity leave) so I've been cutting my own hair. I can't stand thick, lumpy, frumpy, unwieldy hair, which is what my hair is 90% of the time, excluding the week following a cut. So that's me on the left, with super dork hair that I've been chopping away at sporadically for the past several months in an effort to avoid exactly what I've ended up with. In order to compensate, I spent Friday night shopping with my sister for a dress to wear. Seems all I wear these days are my work clothes. When did that happen?? $100 in hand, I set out on a mission for a dress and the appropriate undergarments, should the need arise (and it did). I got a dress on sale at Anthropologie ($69.95), a slip-style dress($19.99) because the matching color slip that came with the dress was too blah, opaque black tights ($5.99) and a strapless bra ($5.00!!!) all from Marshalls. Total=Just under $108.00 + 5 hours of shopping. Considering the 1 day notice, I think I came out alright. And the dress? A beautiful lacy sweater knit in one of my favorite colors!
I'm sure that was too much info about me. I feel the need to write a bit, I've been busy with so many other things lately, the blog has been ignored. Once again, I'm buried beneath the sewing machine, this time preparing for a Winter/Holiday show while the weather outside seems content to say in the 90s. Not inspirational. Last week I was getting together 200 samples to go out, before that I had a Sampler Select to prepare (October, not yet on sale), and before that another commission! All the while, I'm waiting for responses from not 1, not 2, but 3 shows to know where, when, or if I will travel to sell my wares this winter.


Saturday afternoon four of us (the three in the pic + Mr. C) piled into the car and off we went. The wedding was relatively small and very beautiful. Turned out the now-married couple started dating in high school (something like 10+ years ago). Amazing.

Love. True and simple.

Evacuated

Vacation was lovely, though not entire relaxing.
I worked a little more on the bathroom - just a couple paint touch ups and it's done!! (That is, until we do the floor, if we redo the floor!!)

Did 2 freelance jobs, one of which involved hot glue guns in a bar on a Friday night. Oh the stories I could tell. . .

At the end of the week, we went to the beach for 2 days, and though the time there was limited, we caught up with my family (some immediate and some extended) and it was a wonderful opportunity to evacuate my brain of the stresses of daily living.

The trip down and home both include a lot of time driving through rural NC, and some day I would love to take that drive without concern for time, to stop and take pictures or simply absorb the air from soybean, peanut, tobacco and cotton fields. There seemed to be a limitless supply of simple farmhouses, complete with barns, fields of cows and horses, and tractors abandoned in the field after a day of harvest. The drive was just as serene as the time at the beach.

I also opened a sister shop on etsy called Wolfie Digs. It's for the vintage goods I have hoarded for just a little too long, precious little thrift store items that seemed like I just had to have them at the time, but now I feel like someone out there will really appreciate them that much more than I do, so in an effort to make that clear and calm simplicity my own, I am purging (with reasonable prices) through this new shop. It's not so much a venture to make money as it is one to make back what I've put into it. Perhaps you'll find something you love there, too?

Today: Relish

First off, thank you for the kind comments to yesterday's post. I hope I didn't sound hopeless, it's just a very reflective period for me to grow inside...sometimes (well, really most of the time) it's uncomfortable, but growth is always important and essential. If you can tell from my painting storm yesterday, I love the way growth is marked in natural elements: tree rings, shells, geodes. How minor imperfections create the most interesting and beautiful asymmetry.

To get back on track with the point of this blog, this site has a great list of how to rejuvenate the home. I think home rejuvenation is very similar to personal rejuvenation.


Slightly relevant to the last post is a vow to stop holding on to the things that aren't uplifting, and obviously the antithesis to that statement: releasing the layers. Both of these showed up yesterday in a painting storm of quiet tones and a somber mood. After a 6 year battle, my dad's cousin Jean died of cancer. Although I wasn't close to her, she's been a constant in my life as long back as I can remember.

Her death brought out my dad's memories of my own MeMa's (my mom's mom) battle with cancer. I live in her house now, I tend her plants. I was 3 when she died from breast cancer, she lived with it for 3 years. My 30 year old mom had a 10 year old, a 2 year old, a 1 year old and a newborn (me!) when her mom's cancer was diagnosed. She switched roles with her own mom at that point and became caregiver to her mom, along with being mother to 4. My dad said she would get my brother off to school, feed us all, bathe her mother, clothe her mother, feed her, begin the process of feeding the three of us toddlers all over again, pick my brother up from school. . . and so on.

(This is a painting my mom did some time ago. I'm not sure when, but I see this man as a shaman. I find hope in his kind and wrinkly face.)

These are things I never knew, a daily ritual of which I was unaware, but incredibly eye opening. Cancer isn't a battle for one person, it's a battle for many, and for 6 years, Jean and her loved ones won.

skip this one.

Lately the funk seems to be deepening rather than lifting. . . if you believe in astrology, it is my Saturn Return. If you don't believe in astrology, it's just called growth, right?

Whatever you opt to call it, it makes for a grumpy me with ill-fitting skin. Paired with the heat, perhaps it explains my moodiness in general and the growing complexity of my work.
Ghosts from the past pop up and haunt me, not literally ghosts, but their presence is certainly haunting. You see, before I met my Mr., there was a long history of men-who-were-the-one-for-me. Some of them were easy to get over, some deeply riveted me and propelled me to grow and gain independence. A few, mostly the ones that weren't really "love" but were fleeting interests have remained arms-length friends, but other than that I'm no good on the "lets stay friends" plan.

One relationship in particular was deeply meaningful. It was the talk about anything, passionate, well into the night discussions, quiet moments reading together, enmeshed experiences. The dizzying kisses, weak in the knees moments of anticipation, expectation and hope. It was 4 months together in the same city, a year and 5 months apart in separate countries. I took him to the airport the day he moved to Japan, where he was going to live for 2 years. This was where we'd discussed I, too, would move after he got settled in. The last thing he said to me before going through security was, "You're it for me." We didn't last that long in separate countries, sometime into it he said it was just too difficult. That was around the time I was supposed to go to stay. We remained friends, talking on the phone and staying in touch. Towards the end of his stay he told me he loved me, and that things had never been so clear. Throughout his waxing and waning emotions, I held on dearly and tenderly for the ride. It didn't seem so bad at the time. Before he came home to live stateside again, he said it wouldn't work out and it was all to complicated. Somehow I missed all the signs that he would break my heart again, somehow I never ceased to believe what we had was real.

I was working on healing when I met Charlie. It was the hardest process, one that I'm still working on. . . gaining openness and trust back. When I met Charlie I wouldn't date him because I had to keep working on that healing. Charlie was patient and strong; he didn't need me, but he wanted me. He supported me and waited for me, with no promises of what I could offer, no definite, he was my friend. Don't get me wrong, he was dating other people, he was living his own life, but he let me know he valued me.

This ex-emotional yo yo lives all over the world these days, most recently living in Spain. I still, fairly recently, believed we could maintain our friendship, trying to be "adult" or "mature" about things. I realized I couldn't, that I didn't have the answers I needed, that I could never know if all the things he told me were true or not. At that point I let him know that we just couldn't be friends and to leave me alone. I was surprised last week, when he got in touch with me to let me know he was back in town, and that he wanted to remain on friendly terms. I need to grown into a really strong person to do that, to give friendship to someone I feel is emotionally irresponsible, dishonest, and escapist. But I have mixed guilt, because maybe I just feel that way because he hurt me, and I am the one being escapist, after all. In the end I told him to leave me alone. He was like a dog that kept biting, drawing blood, and not understanding why I didn't want to play with him. Or so I feel.

I doubt anyone has read this far into my openly personal regurgitation of past affairs. What's the point in all these meanderings of loves lost and gained? Why here? Beyond the need to purge, beyond the need to grasp those feelings, the discomfort of growth is one that affects all aspects of life. From this experience, one that has lasted 5 years, I hope to grow. Foremost, I hope it propels my work back into a more conceptual, meaningful realm. One of my favorite pieces, One million words never spoken to those that need to hear them most, was a literal purging of thoughts on paper, shredded to prevent embarrassment or hurt feelings. A blanket of words, one much more poetic than an impromptu blog entry.

Perhaps all of this is why Megan Canning's work (found via Design*Sponge) speaks to me so profoundly. But also explains why the blog entry is so long...the need to express through word the challenges of emotional connection and residual growth.

insight. ghosts. maps. sounds like johnny depp has a new movie coming out!

Dear Willie, I love you. Love, Me.

(PS, my husband and I are going to hear you, Merle and Ray play next week.
Pay him no mind, please. He means nothing to me, I swear.)

Long before I ever thought I would get married, I had an imaginary list of future husbands, including, but not limited to: Ethan Hawke, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Steve Albini. . .hmmm, I'll think of several more that are escaping me right now.
However, then I met my schmoopsie poopsie, who has replaced all of them in my heart, and yesterday that little dear bought us tickets to see Willie live! I think that cow poke just lassoed my heart all over again.