Lazy Day Drawings

We drove up to the high mountains northeast of Asheville this morning to spend the day with our friends K and B.  Their studio and house are a festival of wonderful things, and I drew some of them while we were lounging around eating an indoor picnic on the floor, talking, doing a couple of jigsaw puzzles they had made years ago for their kids, hiking from the studio to the house, talking a bunch more, looking at interesting things, adding to each other's necessary movies and books lists.  On the left above is a turmeric root, looking to me like a map of a small country, and some fresh ginger root.

From the left above  are one of K's small fuzzy animal dolls, old and velveteen- rabbity, with a sweet small pearl circlet around one ear; a small floppy china doll with cloth limbs and partially clothed body that belonged to K as a child; another cloth and china doll dressed in a homemade sack dress;  a very large desiccated beetle from a tiny drawer in one of K's cabinets of curiosities;  a net-like seed pod on the order of a Japanese lantern but shaped more like a sea creature.

These last two are two views of K's great-grandmother's small Hessian doll (maybe 5" tall), made of tin and cloth and with a large hat- bow on its head.  The loops of the bow are stuffed with ancient yellowed newspaper, apparently for the purpose of preventing it from flopping down.  K and B's collection rivals the Frederick Mares museum in Barcelona, which is one of my favorite places on earth.