Endless Rain, Damp Paper

Today began with rain and is ending with rain, and in between it has never stopped raining.  My sketchbook feels soft and cool and slightly damp.  At the top is a drawing of my Vermont weasther stick, which points up if sun is predicted and down if rain is coming.  It has been stuck in the down position for so long that I wonder if it is even capable of turning up any more.  Since the rain was relentless, I decided to ignore it and went outside to pick breakfast blueberries.  The berries were dripping wet and plentiful.

This afternoon my grandson Jacob and I went to work out at the Y and then over to Dobra for post-workout bubble tea and pita bread, goat cheese, olives, and tomato plus two powerful round balls called Chocolate Medicine.  Jacob ordered those because they promised to deliver a buzz of some kind.  He quizzed the server about the hemp seeds, cacao nibs, cacao powder, bee pollen, shredded coconut, various other kinds of seeds, pau d'arco (?) and a few other unusual ingredients.  The balls were about the size of table tennis balls and he said they tasted mainly of chocolate.
At Dobra you can choose to sit at a table or on a bench with a low table, or you can go into the beaded curtain area and lounge without shoes on pillows while you eat and drink your tea.  We always choose the lounge room.  Sketch 103 is of someone lounging in the area next to us.

Back at home, the rain still falling, I wrapped up the day's drawing with some desk objects-- one of my favorite new pens, a Pilot V-Ball that I got in Paris and that is truly every bit as good as the old V-Balls I used to get but that have become inferior and leaky as Pilot has fiddled with the design.  I think they've finally hit on one as good as the original.  I'm glad I bought a bunch because I haven't seen them in the US yet.  I've had the claw foot for a while, don't remember where I got it.  And the stone knife Jacob's father found a dozen years ago when we were walking in a cornfield that was adjacent to an archaeological dig that I was working on as a volunteer that summer.  David reached down and pulled this lovely little stone blade out of the soil.  I took it to the archaeologist the next day, and he said it wasn't useful to him because it had been found out of context and I could keep it.  He said he would informally date it at around 8000 years old.  David gave it to me and I treasure it.

Cake Pops on Sky Mall Look-Alike!

I was standing in line at the fabric store this afternoon waiting to pay for some velcro.  As there were several people in front of me with multiple items in their baskets,  I took out my journal and pen and began to sketch the quite amazing things that were on offer in the region of the cash register.  As I sketched the Lint Lizard, I half expected someone to announce in a casual drawl that we were leveling off at 30,000 feet and it was okay to move around the cabin now.  Sky Mall!  My favorite reading material while flying!  This collection of amazing objects was straight from the pages of Sky Mall. 

I drew like mad, trying to get down as much as I could before I had to leave.  Unfortunately, the checker was a speedy guy, and I was in the middle of the gyro bowl when it was my turn.  But I kept my eye on the display, and when I finished checking out, I sidled on over and stood off to the side where I could still see the most wonderful item of all:  A kit for baking--- Cake Pops!  I loitered long enough to draw the box with the Bake Pop Baking Pan & Accessories and to go back and put finishing touches on the Clip-on Mock Camisole and the Trendy Top.  I have to admit that I felt a little odd standing there drawing these things and trying to look like I was doing important market research or something.

A few notes on process:  The Lint Lizard caught my eye first because I had fixed my son's clothes dryer last March when an enormous nest of lint was blocking the vent, and I could have used a Lint Lizard that day.  There was a photograph of it on its box, so I didn't actually draw from the real thing.  The Clip-On Mock Camisole and Trendy Top were in cardboard packages that were sealed for your safety, so once again I had to draw from the photographs.  Luckily they were good, clear shots! It felt more and more creepily Sky Mallish!

The Gyro Bowl was packaged in clear plastic so I got to see it.  I can't imagine how it works, but the copy promised that a child could fling it across the room and nothing would spill.  A lid automatically slides over the flying cereal thanks to centrifugal motion or something.  And the box of Cake Pop stuff was such a serendipitous find after yesterday's sighting of REAL cake pops at the bakery!  I wonder if the bakery bought this kit and used it to make its cake pops.  I longed to open it and check out the accessories (sticks?  little vials of sprinkles?  a plastic bag of cones?  and how wonderfully odd:  ice cream cones with ice cream that's made out of cake...  perfect if you like cones but not ice cream) but of course the whole box was sealed in plastic.

Sky Mall couldn't have done it better.

Cake Pops, Tapioca Pearls, and Other Exotic Foods

I saw my first cake pops today while waiting in line at the bakery for a take-out sandwich.  The bakery case was full of the usual cupcakes and brownies, but it also featured three frosted balls with sticks coming out of them and lots of sprinkles.  The sign said "Cake Pops - Lemon."

Later in the afternoon I stopped by Dobra tea room down on Lexington Street for some Vietnamese bubble tea.  I first tasted this tea in Brooklyn a few years ago while visiting my son and his wife and baby.  One afternoon when I was pushing my then-nine month old grandson Nate in his stroller and we passed a Vietnamese sandwich shop where we had ordered take out from the night before.  I had to have some more bubble tea, so Nate and I went in and got some.  It's a cold, milky tea served with giant chewy tapioca balls that you drink through a very wide straw.  Nate was at the age of wanting to try everything anyone around him was eating or drinking, so I gave him a sip of my tea.  He loved it and didn't want to give it back.  The greatest fun for him was when a ball would glug through the straw and surprise him.  It's my favorite part of the bubble tea experience too.

I searched and searched for bubble tea when I got back to Asheville and finally found it at Dobra.  The version that Dobra makes is so excellent:  the tea can be of your own choosing from among their literally hundreds of teas and tisanes.  The milk can be regular milk, soy milk, or sunflower seed milk (my choice since I don't like milk and sunflower milk is somehow less offensively milky than milk).  The tapioca pearls (I have learned they are called) are not sugary but very subtly flavored and of a perfect consistency.  They put tiny ice cubes in the glass, and sometimes a bit of ice travels up the fat straw with a few pearls. 

 As I was finishing up my tea after I got home, I was really curious about how tapioca pearls are made, so I googled it and found the recipe.  I learned that tapioca is made from the tuber of the manioc or cassava root (remember  your geography book in the fifties and the native people who pounded manioc root?) It's really simple to make, and the pearls are shaped by hand, not by some mysterious process of bubble-creation that I was imagining.  I copies the recipe and illustrated it here in case anyone needs some bubble tea in a pinch and can't find it in her or his home town.

Jesse's Collectibles

Once a  month when our house gets a good cleaning, our cleaner finds all of Jesse's toy mousies and lines them up on the cedar chest in the dining room.  We then put them all around the house for Jesse, and within a day or two he's lost all of them again except for the Pristine Mousie and Least Favorite Mousie.  These two look like they looked the day we brought them home from the pet supply store.  We usually leave them out though, thinking that they might grow in allure in the absence of the more-favored mousies, but they never do.  It's easy to tell which is his Number 1 favorite-- it no longer looks like a mouse but more like a wad of lint wrapped around a plastic egg.  The second tier of mousies look more like Velveteen Rabbits, all chewed on and scuffed up but still recognizable.

Saturday

Early morning-- Jesse sleeping in the window plus two details done trying to get his face right.  Then, in preparation for helping my friend Margaret Couch Cogswell at her book signing in the afternoon, I deconstructed an Origami pocket booklet in order to figure out how to make it.   I drew each step of the unfolding so that I would remember how it was folded.  My job would be to walk around and help people fold their booklets while another friend, Michelle, gave the demo.  A couple of weeks ago Margaret had asked those of us in her critique group to help out with this demo, and Michelle had taught all of us how to fold the booklet.  I had had trouble folding mine, but deconstructing it and drawing made the process clear to me.  I sometimes have to draw things to understand how they work.

This page is all about Margaret and her wonderful artwork, which her book is about.  Margaret makes, among many other things, strange and darkly playful crowns, which she considers to be books.  I liked what she said about her idea when she first started making crowns.  She wondered What if we wore our stories [about ourselves and our lives] on our heads [where everybody could see them]?  And What if we wore our judgments about other people on our heads [right up there where everyone could see what we were thinking]? 

The crown at the top of the right hand side of the page has a papier mache bird with an egg balanced on its back nestled inside the leaves of the crown.  The middle one is called "Village Idiot."  And at bottom left is a sketch of a sculptural piece called Tessie.  Check out Margaret's book, which is called Book Play (New York: Sterling/Lark Publishing, 2013) and her blog at http://margaretcouchcogswell.blogspot.com/    You can order her book from Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville at http://www.malaprops.com/ or if you're lucky enough to be in Asheville, drop in and pick up a signed copy from the bookstore.

A Day that Starts and Ends with Tobacco Barn

My husband sat on the edge of the bed to put his shoes on this morning, and I grabbed my sketchbook and started drawing him.  He always frets a little when I say I'm going to go to the Tobacco Barn, hence the conversation in drawing #73.  Since he always says we can't fit any more stuff in our house, but then he ends up liking the things I drag in, I don't always tell him when I'm going poking around there.  And at the bottom of the page, a tiny bit of the morning garden.  On the right, a salt shaker that was on the table at the place my friend and I ate lunch after doing well at Tobacco Barn. (I told her she is my Tobacco Barn Spirit Guide because she's a great shopper while I am not good at digging through things to find the gold and so I give up before I find what I'm looking for.)

After lunch I went to my grand daughter's theater camp performance.  While I was sitting in the theater lobby waiting for my husband to turn up, I sketched the happy daddy holding a bouquet of flowers for each of his little girls.

On the left is a drawing I did in the semi-dark of Maya in her costume next to a piece of the stage set for Mars.  I especially liked her mustache, which she stroked frequently in between dancing, singing, doing cartwheels and acting out her part. 

And on the right:  the door I bought at Tobacco Barn!  It seems to be either a panel from an old folding screen or an old shutter or one of a pair of narrow doors.  Whatever it is, someone did a very sweet painting of what is described on the tag as "An Italian Countryside Scene" on it.  The moon is cut out of the wood, reminding me a bit of an old outhouse door, but I think it's too narrow for that, and the cut looks fairly recent anyway, so I'm guessing it's part of the countryside scene.  It funks up the back porch perfectly, and Phil likes it fine, especially since he didn't have to carry it to the car or from the car to the house.

I saw the most astonishing and beautiful thing this morning.  My friend Brad has made a moss chair in his side yard.  The strange green object on the top right hand side of this page is my drawing of it, but it doesn't begin to do it justice.  Picture a shady, leafy area of a secluded yard, and under the tree in the center of the area a full-sized lounge chair,  only it's made of live moss and a few delicate little fern plants.  It's like something you'd find in Middle Earth.  Near the chair but in a different section of the yard is a strawberry planter, also made by Brad.  The planter is constructed of small paving stones stacked up, also looking like some kind of living, breathing furniture.

 On the left side of this page are directions for making a moss chair.  This idea reminds me of Medieval turf benches only the moss chair has an armature instead of being carved from a hillside or berm.  Brad began with an old aluminum lounge chair, under which he piled wood and earth.  Next he covered the chair with chicken wire to make an armature.  The next step was covering the chicken wire with wet burlap as well as strips of wet newspaper.  As a final step he placed sod-like sections of moss all over the burlap and paper mush until it was completely covered.  The ferns were planted after the moss was in place.  I love this chair, and am picturing one of my own out in the woods behind our house.

At the top of the right hand side of the page is a mud puddle that my husband and I came across in the woods while we were walking this afternoon.  It's a semi-permanent puddle and has several resident tadpoles, which we were able to see today.  The drawing to the right of the puddle is of an insignificant but very pretty little mushroom that had pushed up a leaf as it was growing.  And underneath is a view of the trail that I drew WHILE walking and hurrying to get down the mountain before the rain came.

At the very bottom of the page is sewing machine part that I ordered from eBay to replace the hose-section tire on my grand daughter's treadle machine.  It arrived late this afternoon, and it slid right in place, and now the machine works perfectly!  This tire is a fat shiny rubber one that makes good contact with the hand wheel and turns the bobbin winder.  I drew it with a Pilot V-Ball pen.