Lesley’s latest weaving. The wool for the blue blanket is acid-died. The wool for the shawls in the cabinet is alpaca, some acid-died, some colored with natural dyes such as cochineal, indigo, and black walnut. www.lesleycreed.com/new-page
I’ve been doing this blog since 2005 — 15 years. Over 5½ million page views. Over 4 million unique visits. I was most active in 2012-13, when I was getting about 3,500 page views a day.
But as the years went by, I posted less and less. I started putting up photos on Instagram a few years ago; it’s a photographer’s dream, except for the Facebook factor (like the increasing ads). I put in a lot less time blogging world these days, partly due to Instagramming, partly due to the fact that I have to concentrate on books to keep us afloat.
The best way for you to keep up with what’s going on around here these days, and with me, is to get on my GIMME SHELTER newsletter list. At this stage, with the social media blizzard, email is a form of communication out of the past that suddenly seems to have a new relevance.* I’m writing for a select group of people (latest count about 2,000), not winging it out into the socialnetworkosphere.
If you want to get on the list, subscribe with your email address here. I send one out maybe every 4-6 weeks these days.
*It’s not that “The old is new again.” It’s rather that the old is being looked at in a new light in this digital age, and being rediscovered for its relevance, its soulfulness, its imperfections.
Música del Día: Iko Iko, Dr. John: (Listen to his piano notes at very end of song.)
Just got into Baltimore last night (first time here) and already loving it. Rent for studio apartment, $1200/mo. Sigh! Great dinner at Sicilian restaurant, La Scala, home made pasta, hearty Chianti.
Tomorrow morning (January 21st), I’m heading to Baltimore for the Winter Institute, the annual American Bookseller’s conference for independent booksellers. I’ll be signing copies of The Half-Acre Homestead for book buyers. This is the book lovers’ book conference, always with a wonderful spirit of independence and love of real hold-in-your-hands books from real live dedicated book people. I’ll be posting from Instagram during the week: www.instagram.com/lloyd.kahn
My first trip to Baltimore; have always wanted to go there. Hey, if anyone has suggestions of things to do there, please comment. (Are there cold water swimmers in Baltimore?)
Drawing my dad did when he was in high school (Lick Wilmerding in San Francisco), about 1917-18. After graduation, he had to work to support his family, so never got a chance to go to college or pursue an artistic career.
From Uncle Mud, who wrote: “I’m off to the mountains of Jamaica to teach mud building again next week. The village of Nine Mile is very sweet to us. The little kids call me ‘Meesta Mood’. People there make $20 a day but a sack of cement costs $10 so no one every finishes their house. When we were there in 2018 we taught them how to make windows out of bottles that get thrown by the side of the road, putting up a rough ‘Tree of Life’ window in the dead of night before our flight home. When we came back in 2019 we were treated to this lovely view of the finished window.”
Just when you think maybe SunRay has done all he’s gonna do — like major buildings — he pulls off this wild soaring, spiraling, 4-story log-framed structure in the woods. The spiral turrets up top are just insane. I mean, holy shit! SunRay rolls on, a true Spirit of Nature in his designs, carried out with incredible (and intuitive) building skills.
I wrote Uncle Mud (aka Chris McClellan) about SunRay’s latest (I’d seen a pic on @cabinporn) and he responded:
Lloyd,
I was there in 2018 during the rebuild after the fire so I don’t have anything newer than framing, which I have enclosed. Bonnie sends this video. I’m off to the mountains of Jamaica to teach mud building again next week. The village of Nine Mile is very sweet to us. The little kids call me “Meesta Mood”. People there make $20 a day but a sack of cement costs $10 so no one every finishes their house. When we were there in 2018 we taught them how to make windows out of bottles that get thrown by the side of the road, putting up a rough “Tree of Life” window in the dead of night before our flight home. When we came back in 2019 we were treated to this lovely view of the finished window.
(I’ll put up Mud’s photos in a later post.)
New Fiskars (same outfit that makes the orange-handled scissors) splitting axe that I learned about on CoolTools (kk.org). Works so well it makes splitting fun. As opposed to clunky splitting malls I’ve used up until now.
