‘Creating Your Calm’ theme of ‘Women In Conversation at Home’

What have you done with all that spare time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic? Binge-watch Netflix? Take long naps?

As the world reopens, it’s become clear that some people have cultivated new pastimes and even started new businesses.

Such is the case with three women who have rediscovered old skills and started new, creative hobbies. Their stories were the topic of the most recent “Women in Conversation at Home” sponsored by The Press Democrat and supported by Summit State Bank. It was the third in the spring virtual series.

The Thursday evening segment, “Creating Your Calm,” was hosted by business adviser Bianca Broos of Santa Rosa, and spotlighted Michelle Promyotin, Peggy Grills and Samantha Paull.

Promyotin and Paull are busy working women whose jobs were affected by the pandemic. Grills recently retired and rebuilt her home from the ground up after losing it in the 2017 Tubbs fire.

Those tuning into the streaming session were first treated to a beverage-making season by chef Duskie Estes, owner of Black Pig Meat Co. and executive director of Food To Pantry.

Estes created what she called “a ton of fun” — a flaming Mai Tai cocktail using citrus, dark rum, amaretto and a jigger of pineapple juice.

She was followed by a musical performance by the Rainbow Girls, who have been playing shows from home for the past year and are gearing up to head out on the road. The Bodega Bay-based folk trio, made up of Erin Chapin, Caitlin Gowdey and Vanessa May, sang their song “Free Wine,” written during the stay-at-home portion of the pandemic.

Following the performance, participants got to go through a breathing exercise from Kamali Minter, a love and intimacy educator who has studied tantra, Taoism and yoga. She led viewers through a “Bliss Breath.”

Then each of the featured women was interviewed separately and then all together by Broos, who complimented the women on their “delightful stories of creativity.”

Promyotin, whose husband, Sunny, is a professional musician with his own group, Sunny and the Black Pack, works full time as a technical recruiter. She is also lead stylist of her own concierge wedding hair styling company. Recruiting and weddings were mostly put on hold, and when Sunny and some of her friends gave her a ukulele made by Kala Brand Music in Petaluma, Promyotin decided to take the plunge and learn her first musical instrument.

She was afraid to try, fearing her playing would be compared to Sunny’s, but the Bay Area native said she has had positive response since she started taking lessons from one of her husband’s band members. She started by learning one chord at a time.

“It has changed my life...,” Promyotin said. “It’s an indescribable feeling to play music with someone else. It makes me happy.”

In addition, because she is passionate about cooking, and had time on her hands, she started cooking more with her husband and teaching her friends. Her first try at something new — a molecular gastronomy meal — took 15 hours of failed attempts and finally success with a four-course meal.

In another creative development, she and her husband started to livestream her cooking lessons. “Food and music,” she said, “speak to people’s souls.”

Paull, who works in the hospitality industry, both in tourism and through her event-planning business, found herself with extra time and recalled her love for baking. She finds it is a stress reliever, and normally specializes in cake and cupcake decorating. But a friend who was excited about baking sourdough bread and gave her and her son a sample, convinced her to try the exacting two-day process with a sourdough starter, partly because she could share her loaves with friends.

The Santa Rosa resident has since expanded to making seeded and jalepeño loaves and sourdough pancakes, waffles and soft pretzels.

“Sharing the loaves with others has been rewarding,” she told Broos.

Paull realized the practice gave her the structure her days needed during the aimless COVID-19 stay-at-home period.

“It gave me back what I lost ... — a schedule, a reason to get up from my desk,“ she said.

Grills, whose Santa Rosa home was rebuilt in 2019, had a vision for her backyard landscape design. She asked that two concrete slabs be poured, then began contemplating what she wanted to put there.

After staring at her dirt yard for several months, she found the inspiration to create a two-area landscape design — “I love the separation of space,” she said — starting with a deck that serves as the outdoor kitchen-dining area with a bridge leading to a water feature where there is outdoor seating. Birds love the bubbling water and visit often, Grills said. And she chose plants in attractive fall colors.

Ideas for the space mostly came from driving around Santa Rosa and looking at businesses. Plus, she said “I get a lot of inspiration from my senses.”

She enjoys sitting on her deck, at the start and end of her days, immersing herself in the “sights and the sounds and the smells. It’s really calming.”

Her creativity unleashed, and inspired by a friend taking online lessons in fabric art, Grills also started painting again. She was inspired to go beyond her usual still life painting to take online tutorials in creating abstract designs with oil paints and cold wax.

“I’ve done 11 paintings in 11 weeks,” Grills said. “That’s so much more prolific than I’ve ever been.”

Fall sessions of “Women in Conversation” will be held Sept. 2 and Nov. 6 and will be in-person events.

You can reach Staff Writer Kathleen Coates at kathleen.coates@pressdemocrat.com.