The Card-Making Workshop

My friend, Jenny, is taking a bit of time off from her career to regroup and think about what comes next for her. She is an educator, but also an artist and explorer of visual horizons. I invited her to come to a retreat at our house and to choose a workshop for playing together. She chose card-making and I dragged out materials that had lain around the shanty for years, unused though beloved. We both had the idea that we would make a birthday card edition to use over the next year.

We worked over the span of three days, one of them rainy when we didn't even set foot outside. Jenny was at one end of the table and I was at the other, with all the materials piled between us. There were nature samples (pressed flowers, leaves and ferns), rubber stamps and stamp pads in a few colors, hand-painted fabric swatches, paint samples from Home Depot. Mixing and matching, gluing and stamping, we worked happily while conversing about life.
In the end, we were astonished that we BOTH had exactly 21 cards!
In 1968 I attended Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. In the weaving studio, I heard a woman say that crafts were just the background for her, while she accomplished her main goal of getting to know other women. That revelation has proved true for me to this day, these 43 years later.

Sugar Hill

Our anniversary came at the time of a family wedding this year, so we took ourselves on a late trip to the White Mountains. Sugar Hill to be exact. Sugar Hill is the center of maple sugaring country in New Hampshire. Every time I have been there, I've found it enchanting. I'll tell you that part of the charm is Polly's Pancake Parlor. There's no place like it and I didn't even take a photo! We indulged in breakfast AND lunch on Saturday, and did NOT skip the local bacon. Polly's pancakes are the best in the land, reputedly, and no one who reviews for Yelp questions this. They're whole grain with OF COURSE real maple syrup. Worth a trip JUST FOR POLLYS in my opinion. Check out their website and you may be planning a trip to NH soon!

Of course there are the mountains which are awesome and make for great hikes. Hikers are very friendly people; we felt like kindred spirits with everyone along the paths. Our ONLY hikes this year, we definitely felt out of shape. We did 10 miles in TWO days and should have been able to do that much in one day. As an excuse, I'll say that half of those miles were straight up, but let's face it: the other half were straight down.

We hiked the Kinsman Ridge Trail and Mt. Pemigewasset, both highly recommended by these oldsters.
Staying at the Sugar Hill Inn was a great treat too. Furnished simply with antiques and quilts, it is not fancy (our room, at least, which admittedly was the least expensive), it was very much to our liking. KATY, the resident Bassett Hound-Australian Shepherd was quite the character. The chef has won awards, but we didn't have dinner there. One of the snacks put out in the afternoon, however, was miso seared marlin and was that a treat! Imagine that as a snack. And I was expecting cookies!
On the Gale River we spied the tallest, largest Great Blue Heron we'd ever seen. She flew away before I could get a close-up.
Wildlife? I'm always hoping to see a bear, but I don't think I'd like it if I did. I imagined what we would do in the event of a sighting; stand tall together, wave our hands over our heads and make lots of loud noises. Instead I saw this log that reminded me of a crocodile!
We also saw a great movie, The Double Hour, at the Bethlehem Colonial Theatre, where they serve brewers yeast with popcorn, just like our theatre here in Waterville, ME, AND provide blankets to keep you warm as I assume there is no heat. The Double Hour was a romance, film noir AND thriller, that kept us on the edge of our seats from start to finish. in Italian with subtitles. I say Don't Miss It.