Local weekend

I knew this would happen, but it's always a surprise when my social life and life outside of the studio in a place that I've never lived starts to take over. Thursday night, I got to enjoy Kiki Smith's lecture in Ann Arbor with a bunch of new friends and colleagues. As she noted, the universe is so generous to us and it's often a matter of re-framing the way we see the gifts we are given.

Though I was exhausted, the next day I went back to Tim's and Pati's basement to beat my old duvet cover. It came down in 20 minutes (it took 20 minutes to clean up afterwards) and I ripped out a zipper the entire time while waiting. We shared lunch, chocolate, and then a beautiful walk that took us past related horses, milkweed patches, the woods, and their lovely garden. I got to go home with lettuce, peppers, beets, and basil, all gorgeous.

Finally, a chance to use the wove mould I had ordered from Germany so that I could pick it up in Vienna in February. It's great except that pulp gets under the deckle. Still happy with this in my collection.

I didn't bring sizing here, so these are all waterleaf. I was amazed by how the beater room (basement) and my studio smelled like me sleeping, but of course years of using bedding will embed a person into its fabric forever.

I finally started to beat milkweed yesterday, but only got a little over an hour in before I took a break to go downstairs for the artist reception for Angie Redmond's show (an Albion alumna) and enjoy the new faces that were converging on campus for homecoming. The extra treat was meeting Laura Beyer, another Albion alum who then went into the book arts world and now lives and works in the Detroit area—she vacations in Cleveland!

Then I enjoyed Walk the Beat with Kevin and Anne, somehow overcoming my afternoon naptime sleepiness and general lack of fitness to be on my feet all over town, hearing lots of music and running into lots of great people.

Transforming old spaces into new spaces has been on my mind for a while and now even more so, and it seems to be happening all over the place in this small town. This will be a new Albion Malleable Brewery, the name inherited from the old iron foundry that was in town. Once we used up all of our raffle tickets, we had dinner at the Dark Horse Brewery. I thought I'd catch up on work this morning, but instead got lots of goodies to eat in Battle Creek. But it's wonderful to have a fun weekend—the next stop is the library reference desk.