Michael taught old time fiddle at the Folk School and capped off the week with treating us to a Friday Night Concert on March 8th 2013. What a wonderful night filled with old time tunes, ballads, and fiddlin’! Here is a sample snippet from a wonderful evening. The tune is “Chased Old Satan (Starry Crown)” with Michael on fiddle, Géraud on bass, Annie Fain on banjo, and Sandy on guitar.

Yummy Snow Day Activity! Julie’s first 3-layer cake!

3. Candice’s secret message pen
4. Personal strength
5. Speaking of strength, I got my photo on Crossfit Murphy’s blog- woo hoo!

Getting My Back Squat On at Crossfit Murphy

6. Square Dance ONLY at the Folk School with Michael Ismerio
7. A new pretty blue yoga mat that is for tall people! I’ve been practicing yoga for over 10 years and have never invested in a mat that fits my body – it is revolutionary!!!!
8. Sleeping Charlie
9. Three weeks sticking to giving stuff up for Lent.
10. Test driving sewing machines like cars.

Meet my awesome roomie Charlotte! Here are 10 things about her: she works at the Yarn Circle (pictured above), she made that green sweater, she loves butter, she can play the guitar and sing real well, she is a fancy-pants Contra Dance caller and has called all across the South, she’s a dancer on Sticks-in-the-Mud Border Morris, she often assists in the Cheesemaking classes at the Folk School, she loves to chop wood, she’s from Virginia, she loves Almond Butter from Trader Joe’s. She’s rad. I am really enjoying living with her and Julie.

After getting settled in we headed over the Champy’s an eatery dedicated to sipping 40z and fried chicken. Amazingly enough we read the local paper and found out there was a squaredance in the basement of a local bar – what are the chances of that?! Te Claw had booked the night and Jennifer (who I met at Dare to Be Square in Riner) was calling. The band was from Vermont and the were called something like the Apocalyptians or something like that. They wore animal skin hats and drove in an ambulance. The dance was such a treat!

After the dance we headed over to a fancy schmancy cocktail bar called the Easy Bistro. It was in the old Coca Cola Bottling Factory building. I had a $12 cocktail called the billionaire which had bourbon and absinthe among other things. It was yummy, but left me hankering for a sidecar, which I might call the Cory Marie signature drink… if you don’t count the Shirley Temple.

The next day we had a decadent brunch at the Knitting Factory and then took a wonderful walk to the Coolidge Park Carousel, across the pedestrian bridge, to the art museum and around downtown. Chattanooga has a 1/4 mile pedestrian bridge crossing the river… It’s the width of a car bridge. So many folks were out and about on Sunday on the bridge. I thought it was very cool city planning to allocate the space for pedestrians. The bridge ended at the art museum – Chattanooga has a lot of great public art. By the Crash Pad, there were murals everywhere. It is also a city with great graphic design sensibilities – many businesses had beautiful logos!

All in all Chattanooga is alright by me. I loved it and Julie and Crissy were great tour guides! I can’t wait to spend more time there!

The cows staring us down!

We also ran into this weird contraption in the woods. Moonshine still? Redneck rocketship? Make-shift meth lab? Trapping device? This city girl sure didn’t know, but after some local consultation, now I do! It’s a feeder used by hunters to lure animals into a particular area, so they get used to coming to that area. Kinda seems like cheating.

Hunter’s device