Return to Biscuitland

Robert and I just got back from a very relaxing trip to Nashville, which we loved so much when we visited in 2023 that we had to go back! 

Here are the best pictures from the trip!

The dogs needed the vacation the most, and they made every moment count.  Lots of places in Nashville are dog friendly, so they even got to do some holiday shopping with us.  If you don't like your holiday gift, it's probably because they picked it out!

On our way to Nashville (sort of) we visited my dad at the lake and then drove up to St. Louis to have lunch with one of my writing friends, Dale who moved there a few years ago.

Before lunch Robert and I explored the Missouri Botanical Garden, which we've never been to.  While November isn't the best month to enjoy everything the gardens have to offer, it was the very first day of the model train exhibit.  We were the first ones in the door too!  We also spent time in the climatron and arid house, where I took an ungodly amount of pictures for future art inspiration.  

Though I didn't get any pictures with Dale, he picked an excellent lunch spot, La Bonne Bouchée Patisserie & Cafe where I had the Salade niçoise, which had both anchovies and tuna!  Why haven't I made this salad before?  Every salad I make for a while is going to be some version of this.  It was a wonderful lunch and so great to catch up with Dale, who has some wild stories and is writing them down for his family.  Hint hint nudge nudge to my family!

The next day we drove to Nashville, and the very first thing we did was go to Guerilla Bizits, which has the best biscuits I've ever had in my life.  I will spare you from a deluge of biscuit pictures, but I did find a pillow that matched my philosophy about life. 

We spent the week eating biscuits, swimming at the hotel, and doing lots of holiday and book shopping.  We also took a tour of the Nissan factory in Smyrna (sorry no picture taking allowed, so no pictures), and it was surprisingly fascinating.  We recently added several factory tours to our list of places to see on our travel list, and if any of them are as interesting as Nissan, we might need to create a factory list!  We learned the employees do different things at Nissan every day, so our plan is to do two tours on different days when we go back to Nashville.  It was incredible to see how how all the different pieces of cars come together (I lost count of how many times they need to take doors off and on), learn about the history of the factory, and discover there are good robots who are programmed to shut down when they come in contact with a human and bad robots who are programmed to keep doing whatever it is they're supposed to do whether or not a human comes in contact with it.  I'm sure Robert is rolling his eyes at this, because he got more than killer robot stories out of the tour.  

How do I describe the food scene at Nashville?  I know, I know this sounds like the beginning of an ode.  In KC, if there are dairy-free options it's an afterthought and we only have a couple vegan restaurants who have stood the test of time.  Nashville has many vegan restaurants and also restaurants who offer vegan or dairy-free items that are thoughtful and delicious.  Nashville is passionate and creative about food, and I have yet to encounter another city that is better.  

Recently, I have become aware that there is such a thing as vegan parmesan and it can be done in different ways.  One of the coolest finds was discovering three kinds at a specialty store.  

I have been collecting stickers for a while and am going to make myself a sticker collage to frame for my office.  I couldn't turn down a potato slut sticker if I tried.  Who thought of a potato slut sticker btw?  How are we not best friends?

Nashville also has not one but two craft and art supply recycling stores.  I know what you're saying.  WHAT THE WHAT????

The first, Smart Art + Craft Supplies has a lot of yarn and fabric and more importantly, tubs and tubs of beads.  The second, Turnip Green Creative Reuse is incredibly sacred to my heart because it focuses on the most useless, funked up bits of shit that you think nobody wants.  Prescription bottles, piles of eraser nubs, shelves and shelves of fabric and paper swatch books.  Turnip Green isn't afraid to sell stacks of expensive paper with a few doodles on them.  There's so much you can do with castoffs and abandoned art.  We have a place in KC called Scraps, and they started out this way, but over the years they have gotten more choosy with the stuff they sell and I no longer see all the weird tiddly bits (though they did have a barrel of doll heads the last time I went).  One time, when Scraps was very new they had a huge paper box filled with castoff scraps of paper that were about the size of my palm.  The paper was the kind of paper you find at fancy stationary stores.  It was incredible luck for someone who makes collages with teeny tiny bits of leftover paper.  Turnip Green embraces this kind of junk.  They also don't have prices on anything.  You just pay what you think it's worth.  I was like ok, here's all my birthday money bitches.  Take it all because I love you.  Thankfully Robert was there to reign me in and remind me we needed room for the dogs to come back home with us.

Sadly, the piece of plane you see in one of the pictures is not for sale.  

We also ate some epic BBQ (to balance out all the "chkn" and "tofuroni" and "nutnog").  Peg Leg Porker does something interesting with their rub.  They put some on after it's been cooked.  Anyone else do this?

We also stumbled upon a combination glassblowing coffee shop place (Glasshaus) and enjoyed watching glass being made.  They were just starting to make cups and the plugs for decanters when we walked in, and one of the artists was creating a playlist for this.  I love artists.

We hiked some too.  We spent Thanksgiving letting the dogs spread their dog joy chaos throughout the woods.

And we "hibernated" a lot, which happens when we get tired very early (like 7 PM) and go back to the hotel and just let the dogs cuddle us to death.  We both were wondering why we don't do more of this kind of lounging when we're at home, and I think it can be tough to ignore chores and work and laundry.  This is what the dogs tell us anyway.  They just have too many responsibilities to become professional hibernators.  

If we weren't cuddling with the dogs, our dogs were quietly destroying the hotel room couch with their hair.  I'll have to share my lint roller escapades in another post so this one doesn't get too long, but we didn't just flip the cushions over when we left (though we thought about it).  

This blue couch is the reason Robert and I try to get everything in the Pantone color, Golden Retriever Splendor, which is the most luxurious of the wheat and camel colors.   

On the way back I was grousing about taking the dogs out for a poo in a strange field behind a gas station.  It was SO cold!  And then the entire field erupted around us and we were caught in the middle of a murmuration.  I am still trying to find the words to describe this.

Comfort

This collage was supposed to be spontaneous, but these two birds insisted on a plan.  As I was tearing up the pieces for this collage, the word, "comfort" kept coming up from multiple types of tea.  These birds are very serious about their job to bring comfort, but they are also mischievous birds, as birds made from painted paper plate scraps and tea materials usually are.  One had an angry eye for a while, and well, that wasn't very comforting, so they shopped the tea papers a bit more until a more comforting option was found.  

Though there are other papers in this piece, including hairy papers that were simply up to no good, this piece contains a lot of tea bags - Bigelow, Yogi, Pukka, Celestial Seasonings, Harney & Sons, Choice Organics, Organic India, Stash, and Tazo, which was mostly used to inform the pattern on the Comforting Chamomile bird.

Flowers in November

 These flowers grew at about the same time but in different places.  

I was in the mood to cut shapes, so that's what I did!  I used a flower picture from a long-ago hike outside of Salt Lake City.  I remember looking at the picture of the flower and thinking about how the background was stealing the show.  

I used many recycled papers - a silver and peach perfume box, unused pastry bags from Paris, an endpaper from a damaged book, a Starbucks gift card holder, tea packaging, and even some old thank you cards.  Included is one small piece of a print from a licorice box that completely jazzes me up.  I love the licorice print so much I would probably use it as wallpaper somewhere if it was possible.  Can you guess where the licorice print is? 

Also included is the last Kew Gardens coffee sleeve from our trip to London/Paris in 2019.  The coffee sleeves were not only this calming yellow, but the paper itself was buttery and crackled so beautifully when used.  Can you find the word, "Kew?"  How about, "Make a difference?"  Those are from my very last Kew coffee sleeve.  I will never feel uncomfortable asking for a few extra coffee sleeves or various papers from places again.

This embroidered flower was my sidekick for a couple months.  It went to Florida with Robert and me when we visited family.  It went to my first art show, so I could keep my hands busy and my anxiety muted.  I used up some leftover thread and let it grow how it wanted to.  I like to think it's one of those healing flowers. 

morphing

This collage grew from another rejected collage that was scraped and sanded down.  Interestingly enough, I went into the first collage with zero direction and the collage withered and died.  The second time I went into the collage, I knew only that I wanted green and purple to work together as a background.  Later, during a walk I saw the slime of a snail trail lit up in the purple dusk and I knew what the purple and green were going to support.  The original slime color wasn't going to stand out enough, so that is how snail slime morphed into blooms.  I didn't know all the steps going into this piece, and I think that was a bold place to live for someone who likes a plan or scheduled moments of spontaneity.  

This collage is made entirely of tea packaging (tags, bags, and boxes): Taylors, Yogi, Allegro, Stash, Bigelow, Pukka, Harney & Sons, English Tea Shop, Choice Organics, Teavana, and I'm sure some others I'm missing.    

Climbing

This collage was there for me during some tough moments when I was struggling to live outside my inner dialogue, and the inner dialogue sounded suspiciously like Judge Judy bouncing off multiple despairs.  

Thankfully, I clung to that electric green, which is both the smallest and strongest moment in the piece.  The green climbs through what can be anything, depending on what Judge Judy is yelling at you that day.  

Here is some of the progress.  It started as an abandoned nest collage that I eventually scraped and sanded down.  So underneath there are still bits of that nest drawing.  I like the metaphor of that.

big life wonkiness art things

Despite the small blip of turmoil and change in my life (calling it a blip because I know how good I have it in spite of job woes, but really it has felt tremendous), I have still been making things.  Though my construction of sentences isn't what it used to be!  

Naturally, when one goes through big life wonkiness, it's a good time to dramatically change other things too.  I have finally started transitioning to a different way of doing my pictures.  For a long time, I've been uploading chunks of pictures from Dropbox to iPhoto.  In Dropbox I have a folder that syncs with my phone pictures.  As I need the pictures, I move them from Dropbox to iPhoto.  I also sit down occasionally and move all the pictures to wherever they need to go, whether they go in iPhoto or not.  Confusing?

Well, I finally got organized enough to just sync my phone pictures with iPhoto, and now I'm realizing I'm not as organized as I thought I was.  Add to this small drama the fact that you can't upload pictures straight from iPhoto albums to really anything on the web - blogger, art show submission forms, social media.  The upload box only opens all 80,000 of your pictures rather than the albums you lovingly created for such online adventures.  So now I'm recreating some albums in Dropbox for easy access.  I love undoing and redoing work as much as the next person, so I'm simply glowing from the zen feelings I get from all this. 

So yes, I've been making things and there are pictures of these things...somewhere.  I am getting back to a place where I only have to deal with the complications of Blogger living in the dark ages when it comes to generating a post with pictures.  

Here is something I have made recently and it's for sale.  Check out my Etsy for prices, sizes, and additional info.  More art to come!

October moments

Some moments from the past few weeks:

Margo has been enjoying this gray bed recently, but it appears she doesn't know how to lay in it.

Another day, another 10+ cups of tea, especially now that there's a hint of cooler weather.  Just a heads up - Give a Tea is too weak and has a clear wrapper.  Yogi Chai Rooibos and Bhakti, on the other hand, are two staples.  Bhakti is a concentrate that unfortunately has added sugar, but it's really the only spicy chai I've found.  Other chais claiming to be spicy aren't even in the same league.   

Izzy is doing good.  She has two bunnies now, but she also has a foster bunny so to speak.  We recently went for a walk with her, and she is happy.  The dogs were very happy to see her and the bunnies too!

We have had a couple cool days and evenings, a few trees producing blinding radiance, and two exceptionally windy days.  Autumn is here.

A few leaves are so big!  Each time one smacks into me on the windy days it feels like I'm being attacked by a large bird.  I tried identifying this leaf on three identification apps and some googling.  No luck.  Every app says it's a maple leaf, but it doesn't even remotely look like a maple leaf.  I think the golden retriever modeling the leaf is perhaps throwing off the apps.  I'm surprised the apps aren't telling me it's a golden retriever tree.  Any guesses?    

flopping, walking, glaring, & despairing

September was a flurry of emotions, acceptance, soul searching, doctor appointments, and family.  There is still this profound grief that occasionally completely knocks me flat out.  I've been figuring out who I am and using all my imagination to take a deep look at whether there's anything left to me if I am no longer a library worker.  Every day I have a different answer to this.  It's really important to me to know I'm giving more than I'm taking from this world.  Right now I'm just existing and brainstorming and trying.  Having a messed up gut also isn't helping things.

Needless to say, I didn't do any blogging in September, so here are a few pictures from last month.

There are some who still don't believe me when I tell them these sweet dogs of mine can give the bitchiest looks.  Finally, I have a picture where there's absolutely no doubt.  Any time there is cleaning going on, I stack all the dog beds.  Sometimes I don't unstack them in time, and the dogs have to lay on several dog beds at once.  It's one of the worst crimes a human can commit.  I wasn't even in the same room when I felt Margo give me this look.  Her glare penetrated several walls and bored a hole of disgust deep into my soul.

There have been lovely moments too.  Josie is a pro fountain flopper.  She takes turns napping and attacking the jets.  September was pretty hot, so there was a lot more napping. 

Occasionally the dogs cuddle each other without noticing it.  They usually figure out they are touching each other by the time I take a picture.  Not this time!  I believe we have our second official cuddle picture.

My brother, Scott, and my niece, Savannah, came to visit, which was exhausting due to Savannah not feeling 100%, but it was also a lot of fun.  We visited my Dad, and Savannah loved all of his cats.  We also went for walks and enjoyed some play time at the playgrounds.