Fine Craft

It has been a bittersweet journey home–the drudgery of packing up years of stuff from one boat, then riding around in an overstuffed van for 10 days before unpacking it all onto another boat.  In the middle of the 10 days between one boat and the other we were driving south–inland to Columbia, South Carolina–to attend the wedding of a very dear friend.

It was one of the sweetest/saddest things I’ve ever participated in.  My younger son, now 29, became friends with groom in kindergarten, when they were both five.  They went all the way through high school together, and I have lots of photos of them–mostly predating digital images.   I have vivid memories of playdates from those early school years when the two of them had a massive collection of mutant ninja turtles.  Either one of them would arrive at the other’s house with a black garbage bag full of action figures.  I remember the yearly man hunt game on New Year’s Eve which always ended with sparklers at midnight, preceded by wonderful dinners together for the parents.  I remember hearing all that wonky music from the various Nintendo games–Mario ad infinitum, Donkey Kong, Dungeons and Dragons.  These games led to more complicated computer games and more geeky science and computer interests as the boys grew.  When they were young many people thought they were brothers.  They each had a brother, but it seemed they looked more like each other than their real brothers.

Now both boys have grown into handsome men–refined, even elegant.  Seeing them together as adults makes me wonder where the boys have gone.  Chris’ friend is tall and lean, and very handsome.  He is articulate and moves with grace.  He was recently ordained a Lutheran minister so he is comfortable in crowds and is surely a good public speaker.  He looked perfectly comfortable with his stunning bride who made us all think of Kate Middleton.

In this photo Chris (on the left) is standing with his two oldest friends– the groom is in the middle. I took almost the same photo 11 years ago when these three graduated from high school.  They were so awkward and youthful then–so comfortable and confident now.

The saddest thing about the wedding day was that the groom’s mother and father could not be there. The father was in the hospital at the end of a long 18 months of trying to stop the cancer that had been spreading for over a year.  He lost that battle only 3 days after his son got married.  It was heartbreaking to be there without the presence the parents who have been such good friends to us for 25 years.  It will probably be one of the happiest/saddest events of my life.  I would not have missed it.  In fact, Bob and Chris and I jumped through more than a few hurdles to get there.  It breaks my heart that the hurdles for getting to this wedding were bigger than humanly possible for the parents of the groom. (yes, I am wearing the sweater I had hoped to finish in time for this occasion.)

After the wedding we had a couple of days with Chris as we continued south, back to Florida, with a destination at our new boat.  Chris flew back to San Francisco; Bob and I began unloading that van into the new (improved!) Pandora.  Bob and I had barely gotten all the boxes onboard when it was time for me to fly home.

Now I’m back in Connecticut, in the blinding yellow of daffodils and forsythia and the deep blue of the Connecticut River that glints like a sapphire in the silver setting of last year’s marsh grasses glowing in the late afternoon light.

Today I bought pansies for the window boxes on the front of our house.  I’m waiting for the trees to leaf out.  I’m going to start weaving the projects that I left on my looms in December.  Right now there is a pot of carrot tops simmering on the stove and a hank of silk waiting to be dyed.

Life goes round and round–until it doesn’t.

 

Let’s start with ridiculous.  This is day 1 of unpacking Pandora–utter chaos, and NO fun!

It’s hard to pack things when you don’t even have room to move….

I thought packing up a boat would be a piece of cake compared to the three houses we have packed up in the past few years…..but in some ways this is harder!

Bob put boxes in the rented van while I tried to straighten up the main salon so we could have dinner without too much clutter.  The van is now 2/3 full, with the back seats folded down, and we still have a long way to go!

At the end of the day we decided to go for a walk.  First we passed this other example of living small.  I bet it wouldn’t take any time at all to pack up your belongings from this little abode–but I wonder how many people think that about our boat!  I guess there is always something smaller!

And always something larger….

Of course, if I lived here–Tryon Palace– I certainly wouldn’t be doing my own packing, would I?

Tryon Palace was the Governor’s Palace of provincial North Carolina in the 18th c. before the American Revolution.  After independence it burned to the ground just before the end of the century.  This reproduction was built in the 1950s and is now a museum.  I thought I was done taking photos of gardens, but I guess I just never will be!

Walking through the gardens at Tryon Palace is rather difficult on a Sunday afternoon at the height of spring.  I can’t speak for other times–but it would not surprise me if this place is popular all year ’round.  There were two brides, each with her own camera crew, and a newly engaged couple with a crew of camera toting family.  Everywhere we moved we heard sighs and saw gestures–frustrated gestures, not rude!–that we were invading someone’s Kodak moment.  In trying to get out of the way of one bride we were always moving into the way of the other!–or the engaged couple!

But I would not have missed a walk through these gardens for anything!  What surprised me most were the anemones and batchelor buttons.  You expect to see tulips and daffodils, but anemones are such a happy surprise!  This is not a great photo, but I love these iris which were in gardens all over town–mixed with batchelor buttons.

Tryon Palace is in a residential part of town that has houses from all the architectural periods since this town was settled in the early 18th c.   Since each house has a formal garden I wonder if you have to prove your gardening skills before you can move here.

The daffodils, tulips and wisteria are already past their prime…but en masse they still have a vivid impact!  I have been seeing tiny yellow rose like flowers on a climbing vine everywhere, even along the highway climbing up trees.  I just learned it is a climbing rose named Rosa Parks.

I can just imagine these homeowners picking their colors to coordinate with the azaleas.

Now it’s the morning of day 2.  I am going to have some coffee, or rather Bob’s amazing latte, and get back to packing. We hope to end each day around 4pm this week so we can take a walk through this pretty town!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mother Nature has been pretty good to us as we head to our final destination for Pandora, in New Bern, North Carolina.  We stopped for two days in Oriental, where we enjoyed a free dock with easy access to town.  On the dock with us was a boat from Colchester, England.  The older captain sailed alone across the Atlantic about a year ago.  At some point along the way he was adopted by a small black kitten he decided to name Mogs.

At each port Mogs goes visiting.  Maybe one day he’ll decide to stow away on a new boat.  At least that’s what Bob and I hoped when Mogs made himself very comfortable on Pandora. We began to think he might stay with us…. but as the English boat made ready to depart Mogs headed quickly back to his familiar digs.  Ah, well….

Friday was our final sail on this Pandora.  I could have wished for a bit less wind, but perhaps it’s for the best.  There is nothing like a couple hours of seasickness to make one willing to say goodbye to a boat!

In a little over a week we’ll be commissioning a new Pandora in Ft. Pierce.  As you can see, she’ll need a name change!

New Bern is a pretty city.  We are on a dock at the New Bern Grand Marina, where once you walk up the ramp you find yourself in the heart of the historic district!  Lovely! We had dinner at the Harvey Mansion on Friday evening, our first night in town.

Saturday morning we went to the well attended Farmer’s Market, and then headed out to Raleigh Durham airport to pick up a mini van to load up with all our gear and provisions from Pandora. Unfortunately that was the most economical place for a car rental, but it was a long day with 5 hours of driving round trip.

It’s Sunday morning and I must wrap this up to begin the decommissioning.  Hopefully we’ll get a bit more sight seeing in this week, during breaks from packing and cleaning. I know there is a weaving shop in town because I visited it a year and a half ago by car on my drive home from Beaufort! I cannot pass up a chance to see that again!

We have to be out of here on Friday morning!  There is LOTS to do before then!

 

This exhibit opens today at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, CT.  It will run until Saturday, April 26.  There is an awards ceremony on April 11, and a day of weaving desmonstrations on April 18th.  The museum is closed on Easter and Easter Monday.

I am thrilled to have two pieces in this show, and I hope to visit the show on the very last day it is open.  I’ll be skidding into town just in time!

The chairwoman of the show wrote me earlier this week to say that “Sunet on Wilson Cove” has received two awards!  2nd Place for Wall Hangings, and a special award for Best Use of Color!  She made my day!  The jurors were Sarah Saulson and Anita Thompson.

“Thread of Life”

We are passing through an area of abandoned rice paddies.  The colonists worked very hard to cut down miles and miles of bald cypress swamp—and that has to be a hard job (wonder if they had slaves to do it then)—and now it has all returned to bald cypress swamp once again.  Hard to tell man ever tamed this area.

I have learned a little of why rice is no longer grown in South Carolina.  It turns out that the process of growing rice the traditional way, which means flooding the fields at some point in the growing season, can only be done by hand.  Because the fields are so marshy and at times underwater, everything from sowing seed to harvesting the rice has to be done manually.  In other rice growing states (Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and California) a hybrid type of rice is grown that requires irrigation, but is not grown in marsh conditions.  Mechanized equipment can be used for the whole process so the cost of growing rice is much less.  That pretty much put Carolina rice out of business.  There are still a few farms, but they do not export the rice and it is only available in small boutique type shops.  We bought some gold rice (not polished to white) from nearby Palmetto Plantation at the museum shop in Georgetown.  I made it last night, and I do wonder if some of the dark particles I found were just pieces of chaff or if they were critters.  I really to had to cull the rice before cooking it, just in case of the latter!  It has sort of put me off to making it again….

Since leaving Georgetown we have been traveling through the cypress marshes.  It’s always nice to be alone again….at least for a bit.  I never like being alone on holidays, and we are rapidly approaching Easter (tomorrow, in fact).  It would be nice to find an acquaintance we know when we arrive in Wrightsville later today.

Here are some scenes from the marsh. An abandoned rice paddy where cypress are coming back.

An osprey on the nest watching us as we pass.

Traveling through a landscape that has returned to unspoiled marsh.

And turtles sunning themselves on a cypress root.  I just had to include it even though it’s blurry! (So….what do you call a collection of turles?  A bale or a turn.  I’m going with bale since we are in cotton country!)