folktale

Today is a beautiful day! The sun is shining, the birds are singing...and I'm going to North Carolina! Yessss.

I'm so very excited to visit all my old haunts in Asheville - #1 on my list is, of course, Earth Guild! Oh, the memories. Earth Guild is the store where I bought my very first (and only) drop spindle and my first wool & acid dyes as well. And they have EVERYTHING. Mostly. I'm going to check out their fibers and see if I can find some fun sparkles or something. They used to have raw llama fiber and other interesting bits. I also want to get some candlemaking supplies, since I'm on a big petroleum-free candle kick. And I want to get some scrap leather for the soles on a pair of felt slippers I want to make. What else. I'll probably come back with like half the store.

#2 is the French Broad Food Co-op & Amazing Savings. The Co-op has this big wall of herbs, the best selection I've ever seen. I want to stock up on tea blends & herbs - I need spinning fuel! Amazing Savings is - I don't even know how to describe it. Here's a little blurb about it I found online: "One of Asheville's best kept secrets. Organic and natural foods at 50% to 80% off because they are either almost out of date or they are out of date or just overstocked." Some of our scores at this store in the past included: 30 lbs of organic prunes (for $10!), 25 lbs of raw cashews (free), 50 lbs of whole wheat flour (free), 25 lbs of organic blueberry granola ($25), and 200 lbs of organic refined-sugar-free peanut butter chips (FREE). All the "free" stuff is free because they were throwing it out. They have so much food, they're always throwing stuff out. We used to go pick the big unopened boxes of food out of the dumpster, and they would sometimes leave boxes of organic produce outside of the dumpster for us to pick through. One time I got enough organic apples to brew 3 gallons of apple-mint mead + I dried a ton to take hiking. Just...don't get me started on Amazing Savings.

#3 is the recycling center behind Earth Fare. Yes, it's an odd place to want to go, but you can find so much great stuff there. Although we're usually the only people carrying stuff AWAY from the recycling center...everyone else is dropping stuff off. I want to look for glass gallon jugs for brewing & glass baby food jars or something similar for candlemaking & homemade salves. And occasionally you can find fancy things like blue glass wine bottles that you can use to bottle your own wine/mead/whatever.

#4 is the brewing supply store, which I forgot the name of. I need some airlocks to go with the glass gallon jugs. Homebrew, here I come!

But mostly, I'll probably be out in the woods, climbing mountains and so on.

See you guys when I get back! (Probably around Thursday or so).