The last stop on this weekend's romp through time and space was at the
Archaeology Expo in Storrs, where we met up with friends and spent a rainy afternoon chatting with knowledgeable and enthusiastic folks, and exploring their exhibits. Exhibits/activities included excavating and reconstructing a skeleton, flint knapping, drilling stone, testing stone lamps like ones found in a
cave in France, fletching with turkey feathers, trebuchet and
ballista construction (and a video showing how much fun it can be to launch pumpkins the length of a football field and call it research), Connecticut brownstone and other quarries,
antique machinery, mining, and a really interesting exhibit about silkworms and silk harvesting, where Jesse and an exhibitor spent quite a bit of time unwinding a silk cocoon. Really made us understand how much work goes into that silk that we have in our spinning stash and elsewhere in this fiber-laden house.
Hey, we even spotted a knitter in the wild!
Home again for an evening of making stained glass stars. I did just a small bit of stained glass work a few years ago and haven't touched it for a while, so I basically had to learn all over again, but it was great to have Jesse and Leah join in and learn it with me. Jesse's done a fair amount of soldering in his electronics projects, so he was very comfortable with the soldering iron, and Leah's eager to learn just about everything, so we all took turns and learned from each other and helped each other and ended up with three stars by the end of the day. The plan is to wire wrap them and dangle a glass bead in the center.
Monday brought us crashing back to reality. Nothing at all went smoothly. I won't bore you with all the ugly details, but will illustrate the depth and breadth by saying that this day included a broken pair of brand new eyeglasses, a visit to mall hell (where there is an absence of chainmaille rings in two large craft supply stores and very few size 11 sneakers that do not look like they belong on the feet of a gangsta rapper), a near head-on collision with a moronic neighbor on my little one-way street, a whopping dental bill, the roof of my car being bombarded by acorns, a visit to the police station, and a suicidal enormous turtle with a bad 'tude. Seriously, a giant freakin' psycho turtle was a part of my day here in the 'burbs.
By evening, I was wiped out, so I figured I'd just chill with something mindless and wind up a few neat little cakes of sock yarn. This seemed like a fine plan for the first 7 yarncakes, but on the 8th one, I have no idea how it happened, but the outer portion of the ball came flying off the winder and got all tangled on the yarn feeder thingy and made a big terrible mess before I even saw it!
So I began untangling and got this far before the family took pity on me. They said I should go to bed and they'd take turns to fix it for me today.
It appears that I made it through the night without anything bad happening in my immediate vicinity. Let's hope this is the beginning of a trend.
is spent with fine fiber enthusiasts of all ages and projects ranging from knitting to rugmaking to needle felting to spinning to puppetmaking to needlepoint,
and includes a metalworking workshop with our friend Leslie Wind. Of course, I had to incorporate one of Scott's beads into the scarf pin I made.
Leslie was kind enough to give Leah one of her beautiful cable needle necklaces and plans to make some featuring Scott's buttons as the embellishment at the top. I can't wait to see how they turn out!
