Extraordinary Adventures or “All in a Days Work”…

…After reviewing her calendar for the next week, she decided to go ahead and premedicate…

One of my students today shared her favorite T-shirt quote, and I had to write it down.  One more month of teaching, the last hard push for the year, and I’m almost there.  This trip so far is going down in the annals as one of the highlights.  I finished the three day Garment Construction class today at Haywood Community College.  What a pleasure it has been to work in this facility, the students were all a joy, interesting and interested, enthusiastic, and running with ideas.  Amy Putansu, head of the Fibers Department, was also a joy to work with, always ready to jump in with whatever I needed, and thrilled with the course content, and of course, it always thrills me when there is talk of having me back.

I moved to a different hostess tonight, I’ll be staying with Barb Butler, the other half of the Sutherland Handweaving Studio, I mentioned the studio in my previous blog post.  Tomorrow I’ll be giving a one day color and inspiration class, this is the class where we just get to play all day with color and yarn.

Anyway, Barb lives in a lovely home in the mountains in Asheville, actually it is pretty breathtaking, the views are incredible, and her home lovely and spacious, there is a crystal chandelier over my bed.  I want to live here.  It rained heavily all day, but that only enhanced the lush views of the mountains, the greenery, the flowers, the gardens.

Barb and her husband planned a real treat for me tonight.  Both excellent cooks, Barb and her husband have a wood fired bread/pizza oven in the back of the house, and they had prepared their own pizza dough earlier in the day.  By the time I had arrived, everything was pretty much  ready to go, it was make your own pizza night, and Bill rolled out the fresh dough, tossing it a few times, just like they do in the pizza parlor, and each of us had our own pie to assemble.  The list of ingredients was inspiring.  There were bowls of hot Italian sausage, roasted fennel, red pepper, red onion, huge sliced mushrooms, artichoke hearts, three types of cheeses, fresh tomatoes, and of course homemade pizza sauce.  Bill put on the pizza seasonings, and one by one, we carried each pizza downstairs and outside, where Bill artfully placed each pie into the 700 degree wood fired oven one at a time, each pizza took only about a minute and a half to cook.  True Italian thin crust pizza.

Once cooked, Bill sprinkled on fresh Basil, and when they were all ready to eat, Barb sliced all the pizzas and we dug in.  Bill served a 2003 French Gigondas wine, one of the nicest wines I’ve ever tasted, what a great evening.  I’ve had some pretty terrific adventures while on the road, and this evening has to be up there with the top ten.  Asheville is a magical place, I’m still partial to NJ of course, but I’m met some amazing people, and had some terrific adventures so far, and more to come…

Stay tuned…