A bit of quiet

I took another drive into the hill country. I’m still not sure about the wine they make out there, but they certainly have empty roads.

I have lived in a city all my life. I believe most people do, really, I think the urban folks outnumber rural these days. I’m not sure if I’d like the quiet all of the time, but there are days, certainly, when I appreciate peace. Last Saturday I ventured out into the hill country in search of peaches to can - for they are currently in season - and found a lot of quiet.

The peaches were everything I’d hoped for, and more. Small, juicy, lovely peaches. The country store we were in smelled like nothing but peaches. It was sweet and delicate and overpowering all at once, with that sort of smell of the outdoors and growing things. I got a box and some tomatoes too.

I love going to fruit farms. I’m almost as much of a fan of fruit as I am of flowers, and it probably isn’t a coincidence that they are related. The smell of sweetness and sugar from fruit and flowers is incredible. You can imagine what a delight it was to sit in this fruit stand/store, smelling these peaches, eating homemade peach ice cream. Maybe it’s the experience I’m going for, that sort of sensory overload.

I headed into a town nearby afterward but … it was too crowded and I left. I was off to find quieter roads. Down a side road. Past a beer joint. Into rolling hills parched by drought and heat. But this is an area that can survive without water … the live oaks keep their green and the grasses become every lovely shade of gold.

But as it turned out, there was indeed water along my path.  It was a little river, with a dam small enough to walk over in a minute. It’s the only, er, well really the only WET river I’ve seen around here in a while. Most of the rivers are mere shadows of themselves, and the creeks have dried up to nothing but their rocky beds with a few enterprising plants growing amidst the rubble.

Down the road a bit more I came to a sleepy town, where I found antiques and barbeque. I was quite fond of the barbecue. It was all made properly. “This place is clearly what the barbecue places in Austin are going for in terms of ambiance,” I thought to myself as I sat there perspiring in front of a barely-working window AC unit. I sipped my iced tea and ate my jalapeno sausage quite happily.

Afterward there were antiques to gaze at … lamps made of ceramic jaguars, gorgeous old secretaries with concealed drawers, hobbit-looking salt and pepper shakers, heavy marble-and-ironwork tables, colors from every decade, and oh, yes, a bit of antique crochet in a trunk, hanging out with a dog sweater made from an old shirt front.

It was a lovely day, Saturday.

6 hours of canning later

Sometimes, one cannot post because one is literally up to one’s elbows in the actual craft, and cannot come to the computer.  Such was Sunday, when I spent three hours peeling peaches and feeling the sticky juice drip down my arms. But I will leave that story for later, because I just don’t have the energy to tell it yet.

Meanwhile, let me tell you about antique crochet.  I grant you the possibility that you may not love these as much as I do, but I hope you take a look at the exquisite detail and skill, and maybe appreciate them a bit.  I love them a lot - after all, I am both historian and crocheter, so I’m pretty much guaranteed to love these kinds  of things. Truly, though, my love of antique lace crochet goes farther than that.

Three doilies. The one on the left is unusual in that it is made of undyed linen.  The pattern of the square one is very “pleasing.  The skill of the bottom one takes my breath away.

I’m not sure if my mom’s possessions guided my passions or my passions guided my love of my mom’s possessions, but my very favorite pieces of art that my mother had while I was growing up were (1) 2 pieces of framed antique filet crochet, (2) a medieval grave rubbing and (3) a picture of a German castle.  I ask you, is it coincidence that I have two degrees in medieval history?  Is it coincidence I am a crocheter?  I do not know.

Two potholders and a granny square. The square is so incredibly regular in its tension it looks like it could have been crocheted in rows except for the center. If you have ever done knitting, crochet or needlework you probably know how hard it is to make your tension so impeccably even with an unforgiving light-colored medium like thread.  The potholders are both detailed and double-layered.

I will admit that I had crocheted doilies on my furniture while growing up. And I loved them, and in fact am still a fan of doilies.  I will now be drawn and quartered by all the modernists around here, but I cannot help it.  Those doilies were probably the only “girly” thing that I liked when I was a wee lass.  I disliked pink. I was a tomboy.  I disliked barbies.  I favored toy cars and building blocks.  But I loved my doilies.  Go figure.

The two doilies above both were part of a swap. Isn’t that interesting? In fact, these short messages were why I bought the whole lot - the proprietor of the antique store said the crochet all came from one woman, which means these two pieces date them all, and that date is 1948.  It’s fascinating that these came from women in such small towns in the midwest and ended up in a tiny little town in Texas, and were saved for all these 60 years.  They are hard to read, but as far as I can tell, here’s what they say.

The first one has two notes in different handwriting which tell me that they were a swap.  The top bit says “Mrs. John Puck, Guttenberg, Iowa” while the second says “Rec’d about June 10 - 48.  Sending aprons ( -unreadable) Feb 12.”

The second says “Mrs. Andrew Gangl, Salem, No. Dak.“  (that’s North Dakota, if you didn’t recognize the abbreviation. I didn’t, my mom clued me in.).

I took a picture of the detail of this doily because I was fascinated by the array of techniques used.  The center star and the webbing is (if you look closely) needlepoint woven ribbon. Yes, someone wove ribbon with cotton thread.  Endlessly.  I cannot even imagine the time this took.  The butterflies and some of the edging are filet crochet.  Other aspects are regular crochet.

I am in awe of the skill it took to make this, and am personally offended that it only cost me $3.50 to purchase it, while there were modern paintings in the same store that cost over $1000 and took much less time and effort.  I cannot help it if people don’t recognize art and labor when they see it, but the very least I can do is bring it home and make a blog post about it.  I hope one day the needle arts get more of the recognition they deserve for creating such exquisite, delicate things.

July 4 Weekend: Report

I have returned. It has been a busy four-day weekend. Since we had no work for the Fourth on Friday, I took Monday off too and had a nice mini-vacation. This wasn’t a big crafty-weekend.  They can’t all be, more’s the pity, although I did get in some good work on the two crochet kitties. They’re just waiting for the details!  I hope to finish them tonight.

I spent a good part of the weekend hiking.  One of the things I plan to do in the next few years is to hike the Virginia portion of the Appalachian Trail.  Madness, right?  When I was around 20 I decided I really wanted to do that after meeting someone who’d hiked the whole darn thing, all 2175 miles of it.  I never forgot, and now I’m working on doing just that. Lest you think I plan to wimp out by hiking “only” one state, the Virginia portion is a quarter of the trail, about 544 miles.  I imagine it will take me some time to get through, maybe about a month, a little less?  I’m not going to run the thing, after all.

A hike of such immense proportions requires gear (working on that), a love of the outdoors (got that), a love of camping (yep), a significant chunk of time in which to do it (hmmm) and of course, one very BIG, very important, time-consuming thing: training (argh!).  So, I’ve put a lot of time in at the gym, and this spring and summer has seen me start putting in time outside.  It’s been difficult - it seems like I spent my 20s getting out of shape, and now I’m spending my 30s getting back in shape.

It’s also difficult because it’s so hot here for so many months - going outside in July and August isn’t too great is sort of brutal.  As I’ve discovered quickly, there are special things to know about hiking in the hot sun and humidity.   It apparently takes a special toll on your body in terms of liquids and nutrients, and it seems kind of alarmingly easy to hurt yourself.

Due to the weather my hikes have been limited in duration, but I still managed to go 3 miles yesterday and around 6.5 miles today. For those of you who are familiar with Austin, that’s from the south 360/Mopac bridge to Zilker Park in the (very rocky) Barton Creek Greenbelt. I felt it. I worry - 6.5 miles is a long, long way from the number of miles I’ll need to complete the 544 mile goal.  But I guess you do what you can when you can, right?

So anyway, when I wander off from my sewing machine and crochet hook for days at a time, that’s a lot of what I’ve been doing.  Never say that I don’t challenge myself!