Pennsylvania was supposed to be a brief stretch of road on
my way to Lake Chautauqua in New York, but there was an accident ahead of
me. I was parked on the freeway for
hours. I guess that's one way of giving
me quiet time?
They closed the freeway and I had to find my way to the next
exit through Erie, PA. Erie is fond of
4-way stop signs, which is nothing compared to the 6-way stop. 2 of those ways were going about 65 mph from
around blind corners too. I'm not
loving cities.
Sue loaned me her house on the lake this week. (Thanks Sue!) I just wanted to get away from my life and hit reset. I took my dog and she just laid down and
went to sleep through our traffic problems.
Once we actually got to the lake she was thrilled with our escape. I was less thrilled to walk the dog in the
arctic wind. Winter is coming! Brrr.
I suppose I'm not the first artist to go to upstate NY for
an artist's retreat. I packed a LOT of
art supplies because you never know exactly what you're going to need, and I
still forgot a ruler. I made my own out
of a piece of cardboard. And then I
painted. And painted. It felt great. Hours of freeway fumes and city traffic fell away while I
listened to the sloshing waves. Late at
night I read a book with my puppy curled up at my feet.
I wandered around Sue's house thinking "how can she do
projects?!" because there's a lot of seating and ambiance, but not a whole
lot in the way of work stations. My
house is full of work stations and very little ambiance. It reminds me of a guy my mom told me about
whose entire furniture consisted of one folding chair because he didn't want
company. Okay, I'm not as bad as that,
but I could definitely do better?
I recovered the seats of my dining room chairs with some
pretty tapestry fabric I'd gotten from a garage sale at some point. One of the seats was in pretty bad shape, so
I took it apart again, reconfigured the seat, and covered it again. It wasn't until all the chairs were back in
place that I really considered whether or not the chairs go with their
surroundings.
They look okay, but I don't know if they look intentional,
and that's the way of it throughout my house.
Somebody called me "eclectic". Yeah, that's one way of putting it. I think I'd say I have diverse tastes and dump them all into a
small house without a plan -- but I'm handy enough to fix a chair.
When I was little, my grandpa fixed my chair. It had seen generations of little butts on
it before me, and Grandpa decided the best way to prevent future repair was to
mend the seat with industrial strength white clothes line which he expertly
wove around the rungs. I'm sure that
chair will never need reseated unless someone else has better taste and less
utility. I think I'll blame Grandpa for
my frugality, practicality, and deficits in interior decorating genes.
 |
| Roots of a downed tree in the woods |
 |
| Bro standing by a giant oak tree |
