Revolving Island

So something has been brewing under the surface...something made of tumult, violent evolution, & well, change.  Oh, & there's also a submarine volcano with a ridiculous name that has people a little concerned.  Not to be flippant in a potentially serious moment, but the volcano, Kick 'em Jenny isn't the only oddly named thing around Grenada.  The man they're trusting for instruction in this time of concern is their leader, Prime Minister Nimrod.  I'm just sayin'.
 
But that's not the upheaval I'm thinking about tonight.
 
Twenty-three years here in the perpetually transient culture that is island life, & I'm no longer shocked when singles, couples or families with one, five, or even ten years of St. Croix life under their belts pack up & head back to what so many call 'the real world.' Part of life this far away is goodbye, good luck, & begin again.  The first few times it happens startle you, the next few may dismay, and occasionally you have the sensation that everybody is bugging out, but if you have chosen this as your life you shake it off & plug on.   

My island life (to date) has been assembled from a lot of inconsistencies--five rentals before I bought, the same number of vehicles, ranging from island beaters to a fancy hybrid & back to basic transport again, for want of a better term, 'love interests' that were fairly equally divided between wonderful & horrible but either they or I knew weren't in it for the duration, a spate of jobs & entrepreneurial ventures with a similar arc to my vehicle purchases.  And by all these, I've been transported to this place I can best describe by cribbing from the Amish: 'to come right 'round to where I ought to be.' It seems I fall in love with, & am far more fiercely attached to places than I have been to people. Maybe that comes from my Grandfather, the farmer on a heart-stoppingly beautiful & isolated bit of land in West Virginia, so many years ago. 

Love of place might be genetic or learned, but however it happened, I've got it & I wouldn't relinquish it for love nor...oh wait, we just covered that.

That said, some people are so much a part of your daily island life that you don't know how to think of this place without them, if you're lucky.  I've been that lucky for seventeen years. 

The revolving door spins again on Tuesday, and we begin again.

 

On Inspiration, Perspiration, Consternation...& Storage

Home Depot 'Oops' paint mixes--one man's mismatch is my blue heaven...at a huge discount!  And the one on the left turned out to have been a complete stranger to the paint dot on its lid, but it's true color was a perfect uplift for my bathroom.

Timing can be a real biatch, or so the saying should go.  For 3/4 of the year I don't sleep much, feeling compelled to work at my craft through the cooler night hours.

 The other three or four months I pretty much sleep through.  The analogy in my head is a sponge.  During the summer months, I'm soaking it all up--all the sensory input that will rattle around, divide, separate & recombine like some cellular mutation into new designs, colors, laughs, all to be squeezed out into fresh new production the rest of the year.  

Fabric.com design board, one of my summer obsessions 

Summer is also project catch-up for all things peripheral to the world of wire bending.  This year's ambitious  list includes having the entire interior of the house painted (all creamy fresh white plus three WOW walls in varying shades of coastal blue), new ceiling fans & pendant lights installed (CHECK! All this is done), rehabbing & replanting the pineapple beds with the juvenile delinquents I've been rooting (ok, ignoring) beside the stone wall, sorting & culling the sedimentary layers of 'potential' in my studio, disassembling, cleaning, & either stowing or rehabbing & moving my loom (see post 'She's Come Undone ' for more on that), reconfiguring my studio to optimize workspace, natural light,

This window & view were wasted on the sofaloaf, but are perfect for the desk

& storage efficiency, yet again, and removing the blinds & replacing them with some new version of window treatments (for 15/17 windows...how crazy am I?).  

So bright without all those slats to block the view

To that end, I have 2 huge rolls of fabric & a third on the way (none of the swatches above, despite the wasted time spent obsessing over them).  

One is already cut into curtain panels for the living room & hall, though I may make Roman shades instead, making all that cutting & measuring a bit hasty.  An aside here about inspiration; fabric has always inspired me.  Sales on fabric inspire me to buy more upholstery fabric than I could use in a lifetime & hoard it in a closet.  

So that covers the inspiration/perspiration aspect, but not what I was thinking about.  The poorly timed inspiration was that I decided to order the PBS series 'Craft in America ' on DVD.  So I have been reveling in all these depictions of fine craftsmen & women, their back stories & their meltingly gorgeous work (sometimes literally--glass blowers), & despite the tools in my hand & the anvil I'm next to, I hear my loom, all in pieces & hollering at me like a left-behind child, all rowdy & raucous from its hiding place in the back of my closets.  It screams about what we're supposed to create, completely oblivious to the over $2k (after shipping is added) replacement parts estimate, the wonderful space created in my small house when I finally succumbed to logic & took the loom apart, to the new yarns that I'd have to purchase & have shipped here, to the sweatshop atmosphere created by weaving itchy fibers in tropical heat, & to the fundamental illogic of laboriously doing by hand that which the industrial revolution has rendered pointless..

I figure I'm about one more viewing of the 'Threads' episode away from biting the bullet & ordering the replacement parts.  

Next Summer's project:  building a weaving room addition to my house!  :)

Complicated pulley systems I'll have to recreate if I take the plunge & rehab the loom

Paper Snow

The closest thing to snow here in STX-Seaglass snow pines. 

Ok.  I'll get this pun out of the way right up front so you can have a good groan & then we'll be able to move on. Don't think by this title that I am 'pining ' for snow.  Done groaning yet?  Good.  

Frankly, 23 years without is almost long enough.  Almost.  Instead, I'm referring to flurries of scraps of paper, covered in my wretched handwriting, & stuck in every imaginable space in my house.  I'll probably never commit to a book.  Short stories or a blog, OK.  A book is much scarier.  But I like to write.  Granted, a lot would fall into the category of post-breakup angst-driven prose, but there's a lot of bliss in there too.

My poor bloated (Siri, you can stop bitching about being overloaded with pics anytime now.  I'm working on it.) iPhone even holds a couple of scribbles I didn't want to disappear from my sieve-like brain.  I stumbled on one cyber-scrap yesterday when I was looking for my window dimensions (roman shades can't be that hard to make; right?).  From September, 2014, post-Post Office encounter:

"On Continuity & Mr F

I ran into a great old friend today, someone I hadn't seen in years but that I've known for all 22 that I've lived here. He spoke, as always in his slightly Irie lilt and as always said something that confused and pleased me simultaneously.  "You have always been such a humble lady," he said.  While I was puzzling on that and smiling as I do, with my eyes closed, I somehow realized he was thrusting a hand forward to be clasped as he bestowed blessings on me.  And so I told him the truth--that I considered the blessings had already come in the form of running into him again. The best part:  his hand was covered in pen markings--Numbers, fractions, scratches--all from recording information needed for precision cabinetmaking, his line of work. He's just fine. And after seeing him, so am I."

Re-reading, i'm reminded it isn't just the beaches I'm here for. Happy weekend!

The Only Anniversary I Celebrate

Today is my TWENTY-THIRD anniversary of living on St Croix. 

Let me put that in perspective:

1.  I've been living on this island three years longer than Amazon.com has existed.

2.  I have lived here 44% of my ENTIRE life.  Not my adult life, but my entire life. 

If you distill that down to the other yardstick mentioned & only count years after I reached the age of majority...

3.  I have lived here TWO-THIRDS of my adult life (which is not to say I've behaved as an adult all that time--just been classified as one).

Sure, there are some latent 'tells' after inhabiting an island for that long:

I'm over the discomfort initially felt when live , extremely free-range chickens (aka 'yard fowl') roam around at our outdoor restaurants that are serving, you guessed it, chicken.

I expect & am fully prepared for the veritable parade of funny-looking animals that will cross my path every day.  From ridiculously short mutts with satellite dish-sized ears to goats, piglets, iguanas, mongoose--even my dear Mu,tracing her lineage to proud wombat/taz devil/border collie stock.  To my vehicle, all these & more have, as we term it, the 'right away.'  Instead of the traditional 'I brake for...' bumper sticker listing the myriad things I do brake for, it would be much faster to list the 1/4 mile of relatively uninhabited road where I CAN in fact accelerate.  

Also, I talk to produce.  It would be more accurate to say that I upbraid produce, specifically red cabbage & portobello mushrooms, in full view of the public, at the supermarket.  Like so many sage older local women before me with their permanent-brow scowls, I implore the battered redhead of cabbage to detail what travel experience, what travail & angst-ridden journey could possibly have brought it to me in such a piteous condition. And to the blueberries I'm compelled to inquire 'what makes you believe it is already sweater weather (as they are sporting fluffy white mold coats)?'

But then I go home & speak lovingly to what came directly from my yard,

& I look at Mu's clown pants,

at the pile of Seaglass on my desk, waiting to be whatever I make of it.

 Happy 23rd, dear little oddball island!  And here's to 23 more!! 

It Takes a Village to Craze a House

Last night, relaxing with friends after the ceremonial shoving about of furniture. We all have different ways of unwinding. Try not to judge. 

Philip, reprising his role as Sheik Ali Decor-Rhum-Baba

When my friend & lovely realtor Emma Sun showed me this house, it was approached more as an afterthought & an apology (...since we're in this neighborhood...just came on the market...doesn't exactly meet your criteria...two bedrooms instead of three & one bath instead of two...want to look anyway?) than as a perfect dream home. That's ok. If I have any strong suit at all it involves the will & vision to turn something into something else entirely (for better or for worse).

So we looked. And we stopped talking. We had been chattering through houses for a few months at that point, & our talking points were rarely good. (Why would they do THAT??  Ugh, so dark/small/dingy/dirty, & generally disappointing). 

Fatigue & the lovely yard--those were the swing votes that got me out of my car & into this ill-suited on paper house. 

I don't think Emma had been  into the house at this point, so we both stepped in & looked around with wonder at the airy quality, the high ceilings, the light, the warm & sunny paint tone, & she knew from experience the look on my face meant it would be mine. 

It was the first house we had seen that didn't NEED anything. It wasn't big or fancy, but it had been updated & cared for because it wasn't a stop-over for the family who sold it to me. It was their home. The home inspector confirmed this, & the deal-sealer was walking around the yard with the owner, looking at & talking about plants.  He kept a binder with pencilled notes re every plant variety (99.9% fruit bearing as decor was not a priority for the young family) he tried.  His toddler yanked up a passionfruit vine and presented it to me as we walked and talked. I think their decision to accept my offer, despite it being a bit under asking, was in whole or part based on the fascination I had with what he had planted & his equal enthusiasm as I described moving my then-fledgling, now-burgeoning (a healthy addiction, as described by David) orchid collection to the huge porch. 

Fast forward seven years and here I am, firmly believing the accurate description of the property should have been 'one bedroom/one bath/one transformer.'  At least that is how it has been for me.  Close friends would say my inability to stop tweaking things is exceeded only by my inability to finish sorting and cleaning surfaces. The piles on my desk are legendary and completely characteristic of my personality, and evidently I don't have the sense to find shame in that fact.  I think I am the home decor  equivalent of a shark. If I don't continually move forward, I cease to exist. Eclectic is a kind word, coined by people who couldn't understand what the hell I was thinking when I put seven Wood Tones in one room.  Occasionally something might match, but that is usually just due to odds, certainly not to plan.  To date, the transformer room has been a guest bedroom, a workroom, a home-office, half guestroom/half office, a full studio, and as of yesterday, it is manifesting as a loungey, sometimes work/ sometimes play area, ready to watch movies and do laundry.  My huge desk is now surrounded by three windows, providing fabulous natural light and making Seaglass sorting a joy. Those windows also face the orange flamboyant tree, One of the few purely decorative touches I am so grateful for in my yard.  

The best part of having a transformer room is the friends who help transform, whether they share or question my vision.  Love & back braces to them all!!!

Erma, Martha, & How My Independence is Kicking My Butt

I was just diligently washing windows, watering plants, & scrubbing screens...in total darkness...while most people are getting situated somewhere to watch fireworks. Predictably, when I turned on a light, most panes had varying degrees of a scuz halo. And instead of being upset, or going back in with corrective measures, I stood back, squinted, & thought, 'why is that vaguely familiar...?'  Aha!  It looks like frost!  And I decided (like there was any doubt) to leave them just as is in a tribute to winter in colder climes.

And that made me think of columnist Erma Bombeck. Rarely does a house chore pass without reminding me of her description of how to clean your oven. She said she would turn off all but one dim light & even wear sunglasses, & if anybody mouthed off about her methodology, she'd immediately turn the task over to them.  

Not that I was slacking today. And I had a whole crew here to help. My favorite friend/handy-couple was here from before 7am, painting walls, installing lights, shelves, fans, & they even brought her mom to help. As a team, they accomplish more in a day, without injury, without complaint, without breaking anything in the mountains of my weird stuff they move to accommodate scaffolding, than I could in a month...or EVER.

(A peek at my new studio color-- more when I reassemble it)

While they do what they do so well, Mu & I stay on the porch & make jewelry. We did that (with one errand thrown in) from 7am until they left after 4:30 this afternoon.

(My huge light, swinging at last)

(John bravely going where no ladder has before)

That's when I started my chores...& started thinking about Martha Stewart's motives. Somewhere between mulching fresh landscaping in an attempt to help it survive our current drought, washing windows (despite the quantity over quality factor as I mentioned, & finishing some earrings for tomorrow's vending by the ship (wherein I try to flip that script to quality over quantity), I thought about Martha...& prison.  Back in the day before HMOs, PPOs, & take 2 aspirin & get the hell out of this hospital medicine, some women looked forward to the hospital stay & few days of bed rest they had when they gave birth. 

I'm whupped tonight, as badly as if I was the one climbing scaffolding & wiping down louvres.  Even though we all know Martha has a ton of help in any project she takes on, there's no denying that many irons, in that many Omnimedia fires, must have exhausted her. Perhaps her trip to prison was to her what the hospital stay was to the birth mothers--painful, traumatic, but when you come right to the point. A needed rest?

And so today, July Fourth for just three more hours, I will pay tribute to independence, both inner & outer, by yeilding to the call of my bed at a decent hour instead of my normal 2 or 3 am.

It's either that or prison.  

She's Come Undone

(My hulking 8 harness floor loom, before recent dissection)

Twenty three years ago I committed to changing my life & my location, both rather drastically. From a type A+ job in Maryland to momentarily unemployed in the Caribbean, that's how we rolled back then.  

We weren't relying on some carefully amassed pile of assets either. Instead, we took the leap with the hope that our diverse-bordering-on-bizarre catalog of 'skills' would save us from what I'm sure most viewed as a foolhardy bout of arrested development.  

Plan would be too strong a word to describe the warm fuzzy dreamy images I had of the new life ahead. You might be conjuring images of some tourism-related idyllic pursuit such as captaining a sailboat or maybe producing underwater documentaries, or something similar. Not me. I was setting my sights on something much, much weirder. 

I wanted a career as a professional weaver...in paradise. I'll let that sink in a moment. 

I started weaving before I turned 13, & I've had two looms in all those years. I ordered the one above in kit form when we decided to move to St Croix. It came in five huge boxes & although I'm not mechanical, I am determined, & that gave me the steam to get through several days of sanding & oiling parts, counting pieces, studying instructions, & eventually successfully building the loom. 

The little house we rented was surrounded by bush & could be pretty sweltery.    Weaving on a floor loom is a fully aerobic process--throwing the shuttle & stomping on the treadles. No sugarcoating it, it was just so blame HOT. Too hot, in fact. I stuck it out for a year or so, ordering custom labels to sew into the wearables & upholstery I created under the 'Caribbean Handwovens' moniker. I sold the home decor items I wove & stitched through an interior design shop, & the wearables through another shop. One of my tapestries, a close up of a cactus bloom, was displayed prominently at Government House during a show for the local environmental association. After a couple years had passed, I was forced to face facts--that the gap between the income & effort was too great to warrant continuing. 

The loom was still the centerpiece (read 'pain in the arse') of every move from rental to rental. Each time a different friend would draw the short straw & be chosen to ride in the open truck with the loom, ensuring it would stay put around tight corners or through sudden stops. Risking life & limb for loom, they survived the twists & turns around the goat hills of the north shore, being squashed going up & down steep inclines...you get the picture. They did it because they were my friends & knew how much the loom meant to me. I've been weaving since I was 12, after all. Oh, & generally there was some food or liquor bribe involved. 

When I bought my happy little house in 2008, a big deciding factor was the big 2nd bedroom with lots of windows showcasing green or blue views, & a vaulted ceiling--the perfect venue for the loom I thought...until closing & moving day, when the final 'loom nanny' friend helped carry the loom from the moving truck, only to realize the bedroom doors were narrower than normal & the loom wouldn't go through. So from May 27, 2008 until now, gigantor the loom lived in the living room, taking up space, forcing awkward furniture arrangements & radiating the reflected guilt that comes when you abandon one life's avocation for another. 

Last week when I started dismantling & cleaning it, supposedly in prep for the move to the originally targeted sunny corner of the 2nd bedroom, I remembered how it felt, those first weeks after we moved to St Croix.  The satiny feel of the cloth beam, worn perfectly smooth by all the yardage that had passed over it reminded me that it wasn't always so.  I had departed from my normal state of rushing to complete whatever I was excited about to slow, deliberate sanding & oiling of the raw wood parts. I remember watching hummingbirds & bananaquits harassing the red hibiscus the landlord had planted around the cottage. I remembered carefully placing all the parts in order on the terrazzo floor so I would have a better chance of remembering them all. I remembered reading, rereading, & then reading the instructions again, just to be sure I was assembling the massive machine correctly (and to procrastinate just a little longer about the overwhelming task). And I remember the absolute shock of joy when, after a couple of weeks' work, I saw the finally assembled, fully working machine I had evidently built, despite myself.