My love affair with Texas started 45 years ago

I grew up in Salt Lake City, in an ultraconservative, religion-infused, and patriarchal culture. I was the daughter of a ranch-family career woman and a Lebanese blue collar worker who were not, um, mainstream. With my olive skin, brown eyes and preference for more diverse lifestyles, I did not fit in.

I couldn’t wait to get out of there, and Texas was my first stop. At 22 years old, my husband and I moved to Houston at the same time the rest of the country (seemed like) did, in1976. Our welcome ceremony included a car fire 30 feet away from our overloaded U-Haul on the gridlocked I-45 South freeway. I loved it immediately.

Over the next few months, we settled into jobs, found housing, bought automobiles and made lifelong friends. The contrast to safe, stolid, Utah was clear. Here was a BOOMING economy, people that were a lot bolder and wilder than back home, and the entire place boasted a pretty cavalier attitude about “the ways things ought to be done.”

The oil was pumping, the Oilers were winning, and everyone — including me, an English major with no other skills — could find a good job. That starter job turning into a 45-year entrepreneurial career was not unusual here, while was hard to imagine in Utah or anywhere else.

The feeling was palpable: this was a land of opportunity. It had the air of the Wild West.

A melting pot of energy

Even though everyone back home meant to scare us off with tales of the heat and the bugs and the craziness, I fell for Texas hard. I loved being able to be outside year-round, I loved the range of skin colors and the cacophony of languages, I loved the arts & culture, I loved the professional sports, I loved the nonstop hustle.
The activity was constant, and it was all accessible. Where else could you get tickets to an off-Broadway play and park right outside on the street? Where else could you drive on the beach?
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Beyond Her wraps are something I am fond, and really proud, of. From the beginning, they've been a staple — for me and many of my customers. Made of a soft, lightweight, and warm bamboo jersey, they are a perfect accessory that you can carry in your bag for chilly nights and restaurants. Embellished with original images, and hand-printed with organic yet contemporary images, you'll learn to love them. And in true BH fashion, they're washable! 

Our complete line-up of large bamboo jersey wraps with my designs is featured here.

People always ask how to drape them, and I'm sure there are many ways. But, in my very first attempt at a homemade video, here's what I suggest!

We always laugh that Beyond Her is a lifestyle, and you can see that at any trunk show at Her house. I love playing store! It's a lot of work to move furniture, but after all the fussing and fighting, I honestly wish I could keep my downstairs retail forever!

Here's a look at this year's show. Our last event for 2023 is on Saturday Dec. 2 from 11-4. A couple of items (the calendar towel and the mugs) can be pre-ordered and picked up at the show. But some items are truly unique, and must be seen in person. I invite you to stick around and see what's new!

Covid did a number on community-based artnepreneurs like myself. Markets were out, of course. And the whole lockdown pretty much coincided with my technical coming-of-retirement-age. I succumbed, I guess, figuring it was destiny.

It was during this time that I committed myself to creating fine art.  I took the fundamental courses for Houston's museum art school, then printing classes.

Enjoyed it — and learned SO much. But I found myself in the same quandary I had been in, way back in my first years of college. Was I really an artist? Everyone seemed more passionate than me. Took me back to those conversations in 1972 when my fellow art students were deciding whether to buy cigarettes or oil paints. To me, there was no decision: cigarettes. Not enough fire in the belly, in '72 or in 2022. 

But then we emerged from the pandemic. And retail was back, markets were back, more plentiful than ever. I decided to do what I called a "last run," really to use up all the stock I had in the studio, and dip my toe back in the water. 

My first season back — boy! was I in for a shock. Over the lockdown years, things changed in my tiny screen printing / textile / fabricating world. The suppliers changed, the ink formulas changed, my supplies exceeded their expiration date, my equipment aged, websites and online selling evolved, etc., etc. It was like starting from scratch.

New school
I re-enrolled in printing classes and even had a good idea of where my textile printing / manipulation direction would take me, but the truth was, retail was calling me. I missed the world of creating and selling hard goods that people used every day. Why? It's beyond me!

So, we're back. It's getting easier. We're figuring out how to work in this new terrain. .  And, wonder of wonders, we feel welcome. We've missed you!

Tennis is a big hobby of mine, and I follow the grand slams like somebody from Green Bay follows the Packers. When I first attended a big-name tennis tournament, it came as a surprise that people were as big of geeks as me when it came to players, stats, techniques, odds, etc. In fact, compared to others, I'm very much an amateur.

When the pandemic hit, the cancellation of tournaments, and the lack of crowds able to attend them, came as a giant blow. So, watching the major tournaments come back has been a source of joy to me. And I've spent an inordinate amount of time watching people whose names have no vowels — or are all vowels — slam the bejesus out of the tennis ball on television.

I'm enjoying the sport now more than ever. Why? In the course of adjusting to tiny crowds, health hazards, diminished ticket sales and more, professional tennis has made a few changes. And in my opinion, they are HUGE improvements, and may save us all hours of our lives NOT watching player tantrums. Here are just a couple:

• There are now no linesmen at tourneys that can afford the technology. And guess what that means? No arguments, no glaring, no huffing and puffing. Somehow, now the verdicts are accepted and the game goes on.
• Players are responsible for their own towels, sparing the viewers the almost painful scene of 11-year-olds scrambling out to offer relief to the tennis gods, looking away while they powder their nose. I don't care to ever witness this medieval act again.

Of course, there is still plenty to irritate — spectators who can't seem to get their masks over their noses, for instance — but I will always love the athletics, the flags, the sport, the competition, and the always interesting, always gorgeous, tennis gear that gets rolled out for these events.  

I'll always be tracking tennis on TV. But I guess I have to thank Coronavirus for the changes that make it less precious and more fun to watch.

That should make life pretty simple, right? So here's what I don't get: why are there SO many sizes and types of king sized sheets? Obviously, I'm not a huge consumer of king sized sheets, but I have bought my fair share over the years, and each and every one is a different size, with different form-fitting techniques.

One set (and price does not seem to matter here) sloppily droops over my respectably-thick mattress, requiring constant tuck-ins; the next turns into an upper body workout to get three out of four corners on (on the fourth I just give up). Pillowcases, too, are just randomly sized, it seems.

What this country needs (and I'm laughing here) is a Bureau of Standards & Measures focused on making things like this purchasing decision more consistent. I mean, how do we know what we're in for until we've washed the dang things? And who returns washed sheets?

Once again, it's beyond me.

I am not a great driver, have never pretended to be, but I have been driving for nearly half a century, and for decades accident-free. What I don't get is why everyone else thinks they're a better driver than I am — to the point that they start bullying me into decisions.

I'm talking about those people who, while tied at a four-way stop, for example, start waving to tell me to come ahead — even though it's really my decision.. And here's what I really don't get: nine times out of ten, those drivers will be in vehicles that are noticeably damaged, in every way. 

I mean, they have nothing to lose, right? Clearly, their decision-making is questionable, if not downright faulty. And yet, and yet, they really think they should be in charge of the intersection. 

Why? It's beyond me.

Everyone has their own pandemic story. The only thing distinctive about mine is that it coincided with my official retirement from a 40-year career in freelance writing — a career that had been languishing anyway, along with the disappearance of the written word. 

But really, the demise of a once-robust level of marketing and business communications is what led to the birth and nurturing of Beyond Her. The design and production of all those home and fashion accessories filled my time (and that of anyone in my orbit) for more than 15 years. 

So when COVID came and wiped out all the arts markets and retail activity that had kept Her lurching along for all those years, it was the proverbial one-two punch. Fate had spoken: "Darling, your working years are over." 

And so, I went back to art school in Spring 2020, tackling the core curriculum that would get me into the meaty classes. Worked up a head of steam, and then . . . COVID shut-down. Completed the courses online and enrolled in a printmaking course in Spring 2021. 

I was all giddy-up about the Fall 2021 semester, but then more surges and more surges — the bottom line was I couldn't make myself go back to those long days in a mask. My fine art career would have to wait. So disappointing

My idea became to create things out of all the items that remained in my studio from the Beyond Her Working Years. I had so much fabric, tons of blank inventory, shelves full of arts & craft materials. 

I also had a small piece of property in La Grange, Texas, that contained pecan and catalba trees, a fire pit, and a whole countryside of native plants that, I discovered, could be used as dyestuff. It all appealed to my lifelong habits of stalking outdoor environments and my total respect for all things pioneer. And just coincidentally, one of my main diversions during the pandemic was taking free online workshops, most specifically on natural dyes. It all just came together!

Thus began the Beyond Her Space project. The past 20 months have been full of research, online education, scouring and mordanting experiments, hot dye baths, burns and failures in every color, head-scratching results, full-on tears and wonderful discoveries. 

My take-away is that the natural dyers' motto of "low and slow" was custom designed to make me gear down and enjoy the journey =)) Others have tried. 

I now have an impressive collection of color journals documenting all this activity, creating a detailed historical record. But, truly, every day is a new day when it comes to natural dyes, at least the way I roll.

I have small batches of other natural dye projects, but my main focus for Fall 2021 was working with

• the native pecan trees on my lot (both the green hulls and smashed leaves and branches, which each produce different shades of rose or brown).
• Texas goldenrod blossoms, foraged from the roadside in Central Texas. When steeped, it produces a lovely yellow with just the blossoms, or a yellow-green with the stems.
• Reduced crystal indigo, purchased several years ago. Although this is actually a synthetic designed for ease of use, it behaves like organic  indigo, meaning that you create a vat and keep it "fed." We all know and love indigo blue.

​I'm so happy with this project, and so these crazy circumstances that forced me to focus on, and make art in, the tiny spot of the world that I inhabit. After all those years of dyeing and printing with only consistency in mind,  it was lovely to be able to just ooh and ah at the variations. 

My new attitude is that natural dye products are quintessentially quirky, erratic and imperfect. Just like us.