Back in Tulsa!

After a wonderful week of vacation fun in New York, we're back on the farm.  For a bit anyway. There are a few photos of our trip on my knitting blog if you want to see what we look like when we're stoked up on Magnolia Bakery cupcakes.

Tomorrow begins the Garden Deva Open House in Tulsa.  The studio is easy to find on Trenton between 3rd & 4th and I highly recommend everyone coming out to spend an hour (or two or three) perusing the art, crafts, and delicious food available.  This is the last event for us in Tulsa so be sure to pick up those lavender holiday gifts!  We'll have Handmade Naked Lavender Soap, Soap in Sachets, Shea Butter, and several options of gift combos.

The music at the Garden Deva is always outstanding.  Especially fun is the final hour of the event on Saturday when the djembe drummers from the Tulsa area show up in great numbers and really get the crowd's mojo working.

Don't miss it!

Edited to add:
Sadly the djembe drummers did not make it the Deva this year - but there were fire dancers!!

Woody Fest weekend!

While the MTV generation was zoned out on what was happening in LA yesterday, I was thinking about good music – music with integrity.

One of our favorite Oklahoma summer events happens this weekend. Woody Fest!
Folkies and music lovers in general from across the country descend on the little town of Okemah, Oklahoma to celebrate the life and music of Woody Guthrie on the weekend near his birthday. Woody wrote and sang songs of the working-man, the common folk.

I’m not going to go into the tragic details of Woody’s final battle with disease. You can get that elsewhere online or in books. You can read Woody’s words, you can sing the songs and feel a little camaraderie with your fellow humans and the plight of the average Joe.

Each year there are favorite performers that we look forward to seeing again. And as always we anticipate the joy of finding a new “favorite” to add to the list. Such acts as Monica Taylor, Barton & Sweeny, John Fullbright, The Red Dirt Rangers, The Burns Sisters, Randy Crouch, Buffalo Fitz, Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion, and Don Conoscenti just to name a few. (Don’t expect any of these people to wear a sequin glove or do the moonwalk.) For links to the performers check the WoodyFest site on the 2009 Entertainers Page.

And it’s not just the performers we look forward to seeing. It’s the people. I’m horrible at names, faces I’m pretty good at though, and the first glimpse of some of those faces brings joy to my spirit. The young hippie couple from Krebs, she is from the Lovera family and they have a new baby that we’ll see for the first time. Mary Ann and her sister from back East, Sam from Tulsa who we’ve watched grow into his teens, the fellow vendors like Dana, Diane, Charley and Chance. The Sisters of the Purple Veil will no doubt be there too.

I think we've even figured out how to keep the shea butter fresh and will be bringing that along this year. So if you're planning on coming to Woody Fest - come say hello!

This is going to be a great weekend!!!

crossposted on lostcityknits.blogspot.com

The Soap Box

It’s summer and it’s really hot in Oklahoma. The triple digits and high humidity busted our schedule a few weeks early this year. Usually it’s around the first of July before we begin to melt while working out in the field, but not this year.

Summer is a tough time to sell one of our most loved products, the Lavender Shea Butter. I purposefully do not put a huge amount of beeswax in our shea tins, I know that creamy silkiness is why we (our customers and ourselves) love it. When the temps hit 90 degrees plus – the good stuff melts. That’s just the way it is. If you have a tin – don’t leave it in your car, or in your purse for that matter. Many of us ladies have had that nasty experience of leaving a tube of lipstick in the bottom of our purse on a hot summer day, reached in and drew our hand out coated with red/pink/peach goo. Not so pretty. You can put your shea in the refrigerator to re-solidify it if needed.

In less than two weeks we’ll be missing from the CSFM as we make our annual trek to Woody Fest. It’s a fun-filled free concert weekend of folk music honoring the great Woody Guthrie in his hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma. If you’re one of our regular Woody Fest friends, or if you’re new to Woody Fest, please be sure to stop by the booth while you’re enjoying the Pastures of Plenty and the great music. If it’s hot again, and it’s sure to be, we’ll be handing out those Iced Lavender Towels that help keep us refreshed and smelling pretty.

Because of the heat we won’t be taking Lavender Shea Butter to Woody Fest, but we will be bringing something new – our Soap Sampler Gift Box! This winter Chris and I thought we’d try a little something new – little being the appropriate word. Our regular soap weighs about five ounces – it’s a hefty bath bar, we love it and hope you do too. Chris made a few new additional soap molds for me and I’ve created a smaller bar – the Square Deal Soap – just for fun. After a little searching we also found the perfect size box to hold six Square Deals. It’s a great way to sample our different bars of soap. Ever wondered if you’d like the Lavender Cedar bar? Always bought just the Lavender Bud bar? Need a gift for yourself or a friend? Now you can have a small box of five our favorites (two Lavender Buds are included – because who doesn’t love that bar?) I’ve also whipped up a new blend of soap – Lavender Lemongrass. It’s quite yummy and can only be found in the Soap Sampler this summer. (I hope to make it in the large size for the fall shows.)

Here’s a peek at the Soap Sampler Gift Box – the price is good – six bars of handcrafted soap featuring our organic lavender buds for only $16. How can you beat that?


Oh and be sure to look for Clear Creek Lavender as vendors in the Oklahoma Food Coop!

Second Time Around

Chris and I have moved into our new house on the farm and we're loving it! It's great to finally have everything we own in one place. The backpacks we used weekly for the past how-ever-many years have been put into closets to be used only for "real" travel now.

The new house has a revolving door apparently. It’s funny that we’ve had more visitors in the month that we’ve lived in the new place than any month we lived in Tulsa. First Hillarey and Lance visited for my birthday. We had a great time and I think the kids love the new place as much as we do. Then my sister brought my parents out for a look-see. My mom kept ooohing and ahhing and telling us how much she liked it. It was a family fandango for a while there.

Then we invited our friends Emily and Mike to visit so I could make up for missing Mike’s birthday party. They had seen the house during several of the building stages and were eager to see the finished project.

Chris received an email shortly thereafter from a visitor we didn’t expect or know. Several years ago while bicycling on our tandem we joined a group called Warm Showers, which provides you with a list of names and phone numbers of people who would host touring cyclists in their home for a night – providing a meal and you guessed it – a warm shower. Our first Warm Shower guest was coming through Oklahoma sometime between Saturday and Monday. Emails zipped back and forth and Chris and I got excited about David’s visit.

David Byrne is on his second world bicycle tour. The first was in 1975 shortly after finishing high school. David traveled two and a half years crossing all of the latitudinal lines and visiting 29 countries.

Thirty-four years later David has decided it’s time to undertake another big trip -- he’s recycling the world. This time around he plans to cross all of the longitudinal lines. There are only two points where David’s path will cross the original trek -- his hometown in Minnesota and his birthplace in France where his parents were stationed after WWII.

As it happens Emily and Mike were scheduled to visit the same evening that David was scheduled to arrive. Since Mike and Emily have traveled many of the countries that David has been or will be on this trip we thought it would work out great.

David arrived first and settled into the old farmhouse. A bit later he and Chris were discussing travel options between Oklahoma and Houston, Texas that would provide a shoulder to ride safely out of traffic, offer camping possibilities, and some scenic enjoyment when Emily and Mike arrived.

After a quick tour of the house we all joined around the table and enjoyed a simple meal of quiche, kale, and stuffed mushrooms, with Tiramisu for dessert. Talk flowed freely of travel, movies and the personal histories and stories that make pleasant conversation a memorable experience.

The next morning after breakfast Chris took David next door to see the monastery before David climbed back on the recumbent bike for the day’s journey to Robber’s Cave. Below are a few photos I took of David and his gear. You’ll notice there isn’t much in the way of gear. David is traveling light – really light. One pannier is for clothing the other holds his sleeping bag and hammock, along with a few essentials. There’s one small daypack slung across the bar and secured to the pannier. A small bike bag rests under his seat and a crumpled plastic soda bottle holds and protects extra tire tubes and parts.

The gear is impressive. Or should I say the lack of paraphernalia? A former boss of mine, John, used to tell us how he longed to be able to pack everything he owned into one suitcase. While we just finished building a new house and I continue to buy more yarn than I need, I understand this desire. Mobility is so much simpler when you live lean. A few possessions are easy to pack and go when the urge to travel presses upon you.

David is a retired UPS driver and his wife Julie, is a teacher and also a bicycling enthusiast. Julie, who is taking a two-year sabbatical, will be joining David in Columbia for the rest of the tour.

Yesterday Chris and I went back to work with errands and tasks usual to our life. But for me, and Chris too I think, my mind keeps wandering about skinny spinning wheels and the feel of the road a few inches beneath our pedals. Maybe we’ll tackle the west coast from Seattle to San Francisco on the tandem next….

To quote Chris, “David is taking the trip of a lifetime, for a second time!”









(cross posted from lostcityknits.blogspot.com )