We’re back in Indiana after a glorious week on the beach on
Topsail Island, North Carolina. It
was awesome! Though we have
traveled to the Outer Banks in the past, this year was a new adventure for
us. We went to southern North
Carolina and rented a house on the beach of North Topsail Island.
That meant that the ocean temperature
was warm enough for even me to venture in several times. I spent a record amount of time hanging
out at the beach, boogie boarding, and collecting treasures that had washed up
on shore. I didn’t take any work
with me, as in no fibers except the clothes I wore. I did take along my pencil crayons and a sketchbook and had
some wonderful opportunities for plein air sketching.
Of course thoughts of art are never far away. I did find a couple of types of beach
rock that are going to be perfect for artwork. One type is known locally as mother stones. These are rocks with many smooth holes
in them. We collected them before
we knew what they were, but we learned all about them on our visit to the
Missiles and More Museum. We had a
delightful and informative chat about the local beach artifacts with the two
curators.
We learned that the
stones were revered by ancient cultures as a talisman of fertility. From my perspective, they’re awesome
‘beads’ to use in weavings. We
also collected Precambrian quartz discs, washed smooth by the ocean like sturdy
beach class. Some of them were almost
transparent while some possessed oxidized or reduced iron that tinged them red
or grey.
I’m not sure what I’m
going to use these for, but rest assured I’ll find something. We also learned about fossilized
shark’s teeth that are common the island.
They’re black, sharp and shiny.
Once we knew to look for them, though, we found them all over.
One of the things I really looked forward to was being able
to buy fish right off the fishing boats in the neighboring town of Snead’s
Ferry. What a great name for a
town! We discovered Mitchell’s,
and like the seagulls, we leaned to come when the boats were returning with
fresh fish and shrimp around nine in the morning.
We got to see the shrimp unloaded and learned how to clean
and prepare them. They were
amazing sautéed in butter and garlic, tasting more like lobster than
shrimp. We got to pick out the fish
we wanted from the laundry baskets full of ice most days.
Even when it didn’t come from the boat,
we had amazing fresh fish every day!
We tried redfish, mullet, sea trout, pompano, croaker, spot, flounder,
bluefish, redfish and a big black drum on the last night that Jacob declared as
his favorite.
The pompano was a
huge hit in our only fish fry—mmm, was that ever good! Jim and Tommie caught spot and croaker
off the pier, then bluefish, flounder and sharks in the surf. If I ever retire from Bloomington I
want to move to Snead’s Ferry.
Even the name just says it all.
Our whole north Topsail Island vacation played out at a slower pace than
our trips to the Outer Banks around Corolla.
The houses don’t have pools and rarely have hot tubs, and
the people we interacted with were more down-to-earth than the more
tourist-oriented folks on the Outer Banks. I’d like to say
it’s good to be back in Bloomington, but I wouldn’t mind still being in North
Carolina!
Now that I’m back in town and settled in, my focus is on
finishing some pieces for the Des Moines show in late June. High on my list is my large format
piece that features a path through the woods piece. I’ve been crocheting the dimensional portion of the path to
create the base, which projects forward about ten inches to support my tree
trunks.
Next I’ll needle felt the
path on top of the base. At that
point I’ll be ready to assemble the piece—I already have the tree trunks,
branches and crocheted leaf clumps waiting to become trees. I’ll be glad to pack that one up for
art fairs and ultimately off to a good home.
This week features more family news than art news. Still, I need mention a couple of other
things. We did find fresh local blueberries
at a roadside farmstand. That
means I got a pie! There was no
pie dish, so it ended up in a small casserole dish. There was a lot of filling and not so much crust, which I
liked. Jacob got into baking on
the trip, thanks to Mrs. Tamborrino’s Emeril cooking project. Jacob came with a book full of class
favorite recipes.
He made gulab
jamun (little deep fried milk and butter balls, soaked in cardamom-flavoured sugar
syrup). Yum! At the end of the trip I made ‘Low
Tide’ cookies to use up all the left over baking supplies. They were just perfect as a snack food
on our trip home. All the flights
were on time, our luggage followed us, and we got home at a reasonable
hour. Let the summer begin!
Until next week,
Martina Celerin
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