Home again

We got back from Asheville, North Carolina yesterday evening. It was a great trip. We got to spend lots of time with my sister Shannon who has been living there for a month. She showed us all around the city on foot and by car. The most exciting part for me was the art, Asheville is a real artsy town, not at all like Ann Arbor. Seems like Ann Arbor is full of yuppies and real "out-there" artsy people. Asheville's art scene seems to be more normal, a lot of hand-crafts like weaving, knitting, sculpture and painting. I didn't see anything offensive or extremely modern in the retail galleries we perused.

Here is a random shot of the city, with the mountains in the distance.

The people in Asheville are great. Everywhere we went there were friendly people. Such a nice change from the awful northern attitudes we have around here. Probably about 50% of the people we talked to had moved there within the last 5 years or so. The workers in every shop or restaraunt we went into asked us where we are from and were genuinely interested in our answers. In Michigan, your waiter or salesperson doesn't care where you are from, they just want you to give them the money and get out as fast as possible.

The other exciting thing was a place called Earth Guild. it's a craft store that sells a lot of weaving equipment and yarn. They were having a sale over the weekend, so of course I spent more than I should have. I got some hand dyed slub wool to weave with and a cone of 8/2 cotton slub to dye. The dyed cotton will be available on my website.

Now starts the busiest time of year for me, Fall. Tonight I am going to dye a bunch of fabric for a commissioned wall hanging. Thursday I start school again, so I'll be in school Tuesday and Thursday nights from the time I get off work at 5 until at least 8. Hopefully Wednesday night I will have time to start getting the website loaded to Yahoo's server. If not Wednesday, this weekend, definitely. Then starts the work of promoting the site.

Here we are, I'm in the middle with my little sister Shannon and my boyfriend Ryan. We are in her apartment, as you can see, the wall above the futon is bare... the wheels are already turning on how I can fill that spot! The Sponge Bob sheets are there because that is where we slept, but the red and purple pillows were made by me.