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A gorgeous lime cake was brought in early morning with the guys. Delicious! Then some very funny cards.

Good advice.

Some gifts of fudge, house plant, note book set, plant for out near the newly installed pergola, wind chimes, and more. A nice transition into the eighties. I hadn’t had a birthday cake with candles since my kids were little! Amy had two Ursula LeGuin books sent and Patrick is going to redo my garage with new storage units and a good clean out when he comes next month.

Also two friends from Australia surprised me with a video call at 7:30 in the morning. So good to see Jude and Toni plus what they are making in the Queensland studio. Both of them into their eighties and still doing exhibitions and work to sell at basket venues. They inspire me!

 

The day before being eighty my pergola was put in place.

It is very hot this week. I am getting my steps in by following the route of 250 steps through the air conditioned house. Boring but I am moving!

The cats just needed each other the other day.

And the morning trip to the gym followed by the walk back to tai chi.

And day before yesterday I lost my wallpaper picture on my computer. I can always dig through old Australia trips and find the one I misplaced, but decided maybe it was time to freshen the look when my computer comes on. It took over two hours to finally settle on something. This was a close up of the Eucalyptus leaves made from pages of Robert Hughes’ book, Fatal Shore. The piece I made these for was my last accepted entry to South Australia Museum’s Waterhouse Natural History Exhibition. All the leaves were colored with watercolors I made from Australian soils and had the edges burned to show the fragility and fatality of climate change in Australia. All the leaves were swept into a dust bin to complete my entry.  Most were given to friends down under and many put in favorite places as a going away gift to the land I was leaving behind.

So, what I have learned from turning eighty.

I am older, but not too terribly old.

I can do what I want with the time I have, just do it a bit slower.

I can say pretty much whatever I think is worth saying out loud, whether someone is listening or not.

I can cook some scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese, and call it a good meal.

I can drink wine at the neighbor’s, and think it is better than the same wine drunk alone at my house.

I can write words that my fellow poets think are amazing, and yet might get a shrug from others.

I have learned to ignore the shruggers, and expect nothing more.

I am comfortable in my skin, my shoes, my clothes, and not comfortable around some people.

 

Thank all of you for kind birthday wishes and encouragement to keep going.

 

So that is about all from here this time.

Til later….

 

 

 

Going back and forth to the gym for tai chi it was great to see they were letting the field grow back up. It did not last long…now it is mowed to bale up.

Waiting by a restaurant the other evening this caught my eye.  A place to pray in Hayesville.

I made a couple of books to save labels in this past week.

The one on the left is for a young friend who has said I will be invited to her next all girls party. I will be picked up and delivered home. Thoughtful of those girls. It also has the instructions for peeling labels inside the front cover. The one on the right is my latest, number 15, of what my kids call “alcohol consumption books”. They started in 2000 and have continued since…peel the label, attach to page, write what I thought of the alcohol and the company I shared it with. No label should be repeated and to be honest, some of the company should not be repeated…at the discretion and experience of the book keeper.

Another page in Philosophical Considerations

And speaking of books, I finally paid attention to my six way opening book today and got back to painting in the wildflowers section. I am thinking the one opposite should be ferns and grasses and fungi. There are soooo many pages in each section!!

I am using one of those handy stones to hold the pages open to photograph. The first thing I learned was that I need to do this more often!

Trout Lily

Rattlesnake Plantain and Chestnut

Fire Pink

This past week I wrote another short story.  A bit of a grim tale, but once thought about, I couldn’t keep the two characters quiet about who and what they are.

I am now back to another one I started about a woman starting a new life in a new place. It is not autobiographical. I keep myself out of these character’s business and lives. They simply need to be watched, listened to, recorded, and left alone.

My poetry is more autobiographical. Here is the one I will read this coming week.

 

The Smell of Rosemary

S. Webster

 

When nothing is left but the smell of rosemary,

I can forget about a meal gone wrong

and the guests too willing to tell me why.

 

Just clear the table and my mind.

Wash the dishes that will be put away

on shelves to wait for my next dinner party.

 

Then shut the cupboard with the same

not-so-gentle nudge as the front door

was closed less than an hour ago.

 

Pouring a second glass of cabernet,

I sit with the smell of rosemary

and thoughts of dining alone.

 

Tomorrow the pergola will be constructed and put in place. I love the smells and sounds of building.

And Tuesday is a big day. The boys I have coffee with on the corner reminded me that I was in the last week of not being eighty. I thought I had another week to get used to being the official number for “old”. Not so. Now it is just a couple days. I hate being told that it is just a number. I also hate being told it is just all about attitude. No, it’s not! I am about to be fucking old! And I would have realized it if I had looked in the mirror to see more than whether my eyeliner was crooked! I think after Tuesday, I am just going to let it be crooked! I have the excuse of “oldness”.

But I have to be honest here, the women in my area, down here in Riverwalk, are also up there in years. Some well into their eighties. They are setting a good example for me. I don’t remember ever having too many setting a good example for me. I just always filled in my own blanks.

Someone recently told me, “But look at all the places you have been and the things you have done!”  That really made me feel like I was at the exit door!

I will close this soon and go have a single malt. But first I found the following while sorting out three new short stories and twenty new poems for my next book.

 

Australia Longing

S. Webster

“What is it that causes this sudden sadness, or longing, or need? This time it is a recipe on the back of the Tasmanian Basketmakers Newsletter. Anna Lizotte’s family recipe for Tomato Spice Cake. How can “tomato” and “cake” be in the same context? And then it happens.

I miss Australia right now. At this very minute I want to be there. How do I care for this longing? Why is it so fierce? I can smell the soil, feel the air on my skin. I can taste it. Will it be like this later when I am too old to return? My eyes fill with tears at the thought of not being there. Why does it matter so much? Two glasses of wine that weren’t even Australian. What triggers these emotions?

It is the longing thing – that longing that we have no control over. It just comes sneaking in and takes hold. No words can explain it. My husband glances over and then away – no words are best. I look ridiculous or nuts right now. And I feel bereft. “Bereft” – that is the perfect word, and I am slightly better now I’ve defined it. I think it happens when too many memories of times in Australia pour into my consciousness and push everything else away. Only Australia is there – the people, the land, the tastes, the smells – the longing.”

 

I had to read about “Longing” in my graduate work about stepping over the threshold of the familiar, knowing where you belong. Much as I love Australia, I belong here. Here where other old ladies are setting examples for me, where my things of the familiar reside, where my mirror is.

Next week I will have a picture of the pergola in place.

Oh yes, one more funny age-reminder thing happened. Yesterday a thick envelope came from a neighbor and friend I have had since our kids were little. She wanted me to autograph a copy of Scrabble she bought for a grandchild. Her son asked her to ask me to do it. His little boy likes animals and was intrigued with the foreign animals in the story. Her son remembers me always inviting his chubby little self into my kitchen to lick the beaters when making cakes or cookies. It is so tempting to shove in some batter-laden beaters for this little boy’s father to lick on, as he reads to his son.

Okay, gotta go…..

Til later……when I am eighty!

 

 

I

I thought that I could use this blog as sort of a tutorial.  One on how I came to use favorite rocks and hides to make weights that feel lovely in the hand.

Gian Frontini spent a couple days in my studio in the fall of 2018 showing me how to stitch parchment onto a rock. He was lovely that way. Once he’d get an idea and perfect a process, he would come over to spend time in the studio showing me how it all went together.  Like the book that opens six different and individual books in one volume, and how original marbling was done with earth pigments, and making a leather bound box that looked just like an old book, this was one more thing he wanted to share with me.

The rock must be smooth. the covering is cut to size keeping in mind there is a top and bottom that must pull together tightly with stitching all the way around the rock.

The above images are the top and the bottom views. I made holes in the top piece before stitching. It takes very strong hands to pull the stitches tight and they can not be very far apart. My first attempt left gaps in the seam because I did not cut my pieces large enough. It took practice!

Once I got it in two more parchment covered stones, I went on to using some of my kangaroo hide but leaving most of the “top” open to expose a large rock that I textured with my Dremel tool.

Working like this in the stitching, I was able to leave the rock out until quite a bit of the stitching was completed.

Then I thought, “What about other skins?”…cane toad for example. I had already used cane toad to cover the spine of a book textured with earth pigments.

The book is on the left and to the right are four rocks going clockwise from upper left, one using strips of kangaroo hide,  next a fish skin from Iceland, cane toad with a last strip of parchment woven through and finally kangaroo hide with cane toad interwoven over the rock.

Here are some close ups of some of them.

The hide ends overlapped on the bottom and were stitched tightly with waxed linen and another small piece wrapped over the stitching to hide it. Here is another using a cane toad strip with its sides folded under.

All of the hides were brushed with a very hot corn flour paste. It soaked through and shrunk the hides to the form….somewhat.  After Gian was satisfied I had learned what to do, he left me unsupervised and my mind began to wonder how I could make the bonding tighter, make the separate pieces really, really marry together. I took one of my parchment stones, a relatively small one and thought why not just pop it in the hot paste solution for a bit…maybe even give it a bit of a boil.

I loved how tight the skin clung to the stone. So naturally I put each finished stone into the hot paste bath until the hide and the stone became so close, it would take some serious knife work to separate the two.

Once out of the pot and the paste dried off the stone, I let them dry completely before using a paste wax over the entire stone, hide and all. The next day I buffed them with a shoe polish brush to make them look a bit polished with the grain and pattern of the stone more exposed and looking like the reason I picked it up in the first place.

Now they sit in an old foundry mold piece on my work table.

I use them to hold down pattern pieces when I am cutting out fabric for clothing, holding down one end while I braid or twist shifu threads or grasses together, or just sit there quietly while I draw them.

I like the ones with the stone revealed more than the fully covered ones. They remind me of times hunting, picking up and holding the stones I could simply not put back. As for the parchment covered ones, they will never be the quality and perfection of Shanna Leino’s covered stones. I succumbed to buying two of hers at $85 each. I keep those to simply hold in my hand and admire her craftsmanship.

Likely someone will read this, pull out some smooth stones and bits of hide to give it a try. And before you know it, be teaching workshops. It is where we are now. But I like to think that I am sharing with the same enthusiasm as Gian Frontini…a very fine friend and mentor. Find a stone, a scrap of leather and give it a go.

I will leave you with pictures from yesterday’s annual car show on the square. Hard for me to resist old men with old cars.

This old truck would require a step stool for even the tallest of farmers.      And its backend…

A picture of Sadie resting a cloudy day away.

Last night I cooked dinner for a neighbor…lots of good old fashioned talking. And this evening I go over to the young couple’s house here in the neighborhood. Both in their early thirties, one being a doctor and the other a home care therapist. A good addition in this retirement village. Think I will take a bottle of red to replace whatever I have said yes to.

Til later….

My yard man found the tree we were looking for. The nursery only had two….a weeping blue aspen cedar. The one by the house is a blue aspen cedar.

Now well-planted in the front yard.

I am still in the tweaking mode and under the influence of Marla’s good eye. I pulled some cushions from the African chair I made in 1994, and still need to have in my living space, and put them in place of the old undergraduate felted work on my front hall chest.

It’s the little things rearranged that make you feel in control. This morning I spent extra time tilting pillows on the bed while putting clean sheets on. Still not sure they are right, and there are other things I could be doing, but still, why not?

The other evening company from out of state came for dinner. Claudia Lee, paper maker was in town teaching and her assistant brought along her husband. A very good visit that only happens once a year. Claudia had recently taught in Australia and we know many people in common there, so it was an evening filled with fond memories and stories of who all she met in classes and stays in touch with via zoom-like conversations about paper.

It was a beautiful morning to walk up to the corner for coffee. Even a bird joined me.

And my walk over to tai chi has gotten quite lovely filled with flowers and grasses.

I love the intensely purple crown vetch paired with daisies and yellow wildflowers. Hard to get them all in one picture.

More sewing this week. Now the machine is put away for awhile.

New Gingher sewing scissors came. After all these years my old ones have a nick in the cutting blade that makes it hard to get a clean cut. I keep the non-cutting hand well away from the scissors as they are so very much sharper than the old ones. Those old ones have to be 30 years old by now, so new ones seem a good idea.

A neighbor left town for several days in New York City.  Her cats see me and tend to go elsewhere. I thought I would take them treats and give them a bit of company. Socks ate her treats, gave me a side eye and left the room. Old hard-of-hearing, Mona, who rarely stays in the room, actually took a liking to me. I got to pet her head. Something about a cat’s expression can make you feel important. Dogs always look devoted, maybe because they can’t do critical thinking. But cats have to make a judgement….so one out of two is not bad. I will keep treats in my pocket when I go over for that late afternoon wine time. Just look at this face.

I am going to spend the rest of this Memorial three day weekend writing. The laundry is finished and put away, pillows fluffed, scones ready to go in the oven, and it is rather dreary out there.

One other thing…looking for an image of a wine bottle among my saved cards to put on a book I made for a young woman who asked me to make her a label holding book (for all her favorite wines and drinking friends) I found notes sent from older people I have met along the way.

From Arlyn who passed some years ago came this:

“Here is the quote I wrote to myself years ago and somehow still hang on to…”Concentrate on making decisions quicker. Criticize yourself. Take immediate responsibility for your position. No carping, poking, nagging. Be honest. Project only what can be backed up.”    Keep up your wonderful work and come back to visit.”

 

From an 80 year old Margaret in 2005:

“I do think that “higher” education does more than teach skills but what it does best is teach how to think and how to use what has been studied before……..”

 

And Velma:

“thank you. it helps me, working in such isolation, to see how others frame their life in their work.  you do that so well.”

 

They made me feel like I should be doing more than fluffing pillows. I will keep these newly found notes handy to remind me.

Now onto those scones and writing.

Til later….