The Avant Garden

It's the southern in me, I reckon ... can't stop taking pictures of things with Snow on them. But Snow makes some things cooler than they really are.

For example, I have had a twisted piece of lead (Pb, for the Scientists among us) balancing atop a falling-apart rock for several years now, and many-a-time I have walked by it and wondered ... "Why is that litter standing here among all these Stone creations?" Today that question was answered:

It stands there just so that on this one particular day at this one particular time, it makes that shadow. That's reason enough.

It was about 10:30 Sunday marnin' and the Fambly looked like they'd put on their Sunday bonnets to go to church:

I'm going to scrape the snow off their solar collectors so they will light up tonight. It's a sunny Sunday in the mountains.

One more snowpic and then I will stop. This rhododendron driftwood, a gift of the River, takes on a new dimension in the snow:

Behind my sewing machine, Elsa (she's from Switzerland), I have been on this wrapped-rope bowl kick. I made this one and then made a lid for it and then decided I hated the lid:

I have made about five of them to give away to various friends over the next week. I start another work-work soon, one that looks to be more work than work-work. We'll see.

the Sun and tennis elbow have returned to the Avant Garden. I do not play tennis, so let's call it "stacker-elbow" instead. It hurts -- poisons the whole body and keeps me exhausted and blaaaaah.  But enough whining; let's do something else.

Remember this stack out at Bent Creek:

It looked like this last time I visited and the temperature was 14F:

which I think is cool-times-18, or maybe even cool to the third power. 

Last weekend I went down to Atlanta to visit my folks and do some woodworking in dad's shop. On my way through Athens, Ga., I took this pic while driving on Hwy. 78:

But don't tell my mom I used the Nikon while driving. She has enough to worry about. Germs, for example. She puts onions all around her house just because she got this e-mail.

Anyway, it's Friday and after a really tough week of pain and work-work and feeling like I weigh 354 pounds, I came home from work-work today and stacked a few things, just some fixer-uppers that had fallen.

This guy, for example:

 and his taller pal:

Perhaps the weather will cheer up and this will be a rockin' weekend. I hope so.

I'm not tired of looking at The Time-gobblin' (or "Time Goblin" if you prefer) Quilt Top yet. Friend Bobby did a cut-out version of it:

I'm stuck on how to finish .... well, that's not totally true. I know how to finish, I just am afraid of investing the time when I have so many flat-earth (flat earth -- (flat ûrth) 1. (n) Any part of the Avant Gardener's life that is not of the avant garden, such as work-work and suburbia) things going on, such as possible changes in work-work and a million other Avant projix twisting around in my head. I need a clone. Again.

That's about the only word to describe the past two weeks of weather. Old Man Winter is sitting on us and laughing, like the big bully kid down the block who won't get off you no matter how many times you cry "Uncle!"

So my activities outdoors have been limited ... well, non-existent really. Though I did get a metal detector for Christmas and on Dec. 31, I found a horse shoe over at Rob's. I'm hanging on to that as a sign of good luck.

Look what Zimbabwe put on its $10 trillion bill:

For their $20 trillion bill I could do a really fancy stack; maybe an Arch-on-Pedestal or something. Perhaps they'll call.

In other news ...

the Avant Family now includes an Avant Dog:

Her name is Stella Blue, but we call her "Stella" mostly.

She's about 6-months-old, a mixture of this-n-that. She's our second dog from the Asheville Humane Society. The first Avant Dog was Sylvia:

Both canine experiences have been positive and I encourage everyone who reads this (thanks, Mom!) to consider AHS if a dog -- or cat -- is in your future.

On Sunday, January 3, I went out to Bent Creek with Ashevillian Bill Branyon. It was 14F (that's -10C for you European or Scientific types), so there was no stacking going on, but I did note this way-cool ice formation:

Was there hair or perhaps plant matter that caused that?

I sadly discovered that a Hemlock Tree that stood guard over the Unphotographable Herd of Arches had snapped and fallen into the Creek. The limbs that dangled near the Creek collected Icebells: Icebells ... I love that word and phenomenon.

My friend Erin from work-work took a series of pics of the Time Goblin (or "Time-gobblin'" if you prefer) Quilt Top at work-work today:

That's me behind it, spreading it out flat ...

And she took a detail shot as well:

It looks quite a bit softer than it really is ...

I love that pile of rags, as Rob calls it. I really do. I figure I have about 25 football games behind the sewing machine invested in it; hence the name.

I'm not quite sure where to go with it now, though I have some ideas ... I need some professional advice on the quilting and showing -- yes, I might enter it in a quilt show -- and stuff. Help! And I have 12.5 yards-plus of Kona cotton for my next one.

The plan now is some version or variation of this idea ... when we moved to New Zealand in 1994, we did not take a bed. Instead of buying a bed, I dragged a big big chunk of driftwood up from the beach and made a driftwood head- and foot-board for a platform bed. And now the plan is to make a driftwood bed in the woods between the Avant Garden Proper and the River and put the Time-gobblin' (or "Time Goblin" if you prefer) Quilt Top on a platform bed with an air mattress or something. 

I entertained the idea of renting the bed out by the night to rich suckers from Atlanta but then I thought they might get amourous, and given the way sound bounces off the cliff across the River and goes echoing through our quiet  neighborhood, I decided against it.

 12 inches of it in a day. Five days later, much of it is still here. It made for a crazy week around town.

The Fambly stood tall in the elements: 

The next day, they looked like this:

This was all that was left of the Rock Ness Monsters:

This may sound crazy, but I believe it to be true. Visitors to my Garden can be divided into two camps: Those who know who Matt Ryan is (he's the quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, the official NFL team of the Avant Garden), and those who know who Henry Rollins is (he's the former lead singer of legendary punk band Black Flag and a spoken-word artist -- a real badass who has come to the Thomas Wolfe Festival in Asheville before, though I have never met him). There may be a third category, a small minority of people who know who both of those guys are, and an even smaller minority in a fourth category of people (European types, for example) who don't know who either of them are. But most of the time, it's Henry Rollins or Matt Ryan. When I am giving tours of the Avant Garden, I introduce them to this stack:

and give it a name they can recognize. If they seem like football fans, I introduce the piece as "Ryan, named after the QB of the Atlanta Falcons." If they seem more punk fans, I tell them it is named "Rollins" and sometimes strike the pose that sparked the idea for the name. It was Rollins for several years before Matt Ryan came aboard. 

Anyway, Sunday morning an emu walked up the road:

His name was "King" and he was lost. There had been talk of me grilling steaks for the fambly Christmas Day meal (14 in all, I think), but I refused, as I do not want to cook outside in Winter. So when this emu walked by, I thot perhaps it was some kind of sign and googled some emu recipes.

It escaped from a local farm and is now home safely again. Like a Disney movie.

Happy Holidays to you, no matter what you celebrate, and let's all

Win in 2010.

It snowed:

just enough to send the most southern among us to the grocery store to empty the bread, egg and milk aisles.

This pic struck me as interesting. The snowflakes that are falling are blurry. The snowflakes that are not blurry are caught in spider webs on the arch-on-pedestal: 

The rainy snow and low temperatures made sewing a pleasant pursuit, and I finally finished the projick that has clogged up Elsa, my sewing machine lately:

It's hanging in the colorful TV room of the Avant Home.

Strange thing about that wall-hanging ... females who view it like it. Males range from "so-so" to "laughable." So it stays until we find something better, but given that we have lived in this house for 10 years and never decorated the walls in that room, I don't think it will come down anytime soon.

This morning I went out to Bent Creek with Will, who works across the street from my work-work. 

He stacked and played:

while I repaired the Unphotographable Herd of Arches, including this nice new herder-in-the-stream:

I'm back to working on the Time-Gobblin' (or Time-Goblin, if you prefer) Quilt Top. I am actually going to start quilting it now. When I am done, I will call it "The Time-Goblin (or Time-Gobblin' if you prefer) Quilt" and drop the "top." There looks to be football and cold weather in the forecast, so a-quiltin' I will go.