I said something recently about writing more frequently…and once again I did a lot of fun stuff, didn’t write about it, built up a backlog of postable material, got overwhelmed, and will be babbling forth a disjointed and photo-heavy entry…AGAIN.
So. We went to Nebraska this past weekend-ish. We left town Halloween night, did a little touristing on Sunday morning, and made it to my folks’ house early Sunday evening, just in time for a FABULOUS bean soup and fresh, home-made bread for supper.
We did a cursory exploration of Lucas, KS. We’ll be back another time to actually go to the Grassroots Art museum and to tour “The Garden Of Eden” properly. I think we’re going to do a minibreak in that area one of these days and camp out at Wilson Lake, ride the trails, then hit Lucas and take in the culture.
But, back to what we’ve been up to.
After our brief jaunt in Lucas, we got back on the road with every intention of stopping in
Minden, NE to visit the Harold Warp Pioneer Village I’m sad to say that we missed the exhibit of period rooms, but we sure saw a lot of other cool stuff. The place is a bit of a hodge-podge, and is entirely heavy on Model A Fords, but even at that, it’s pretty nifty. I’d had it mentally conflated with the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer (another place that I particularly want to visit one of these days). The Stuhr Museum has a particularly good collection of historic costume, the cream of which has been photographed for a particularly good survey book of fashion history.
Oh yes…what I’ve been up to:
My Minnie Pearl costume worked. Unfortunately, I have my eyes closed, and the price tag on my hat was blown to the back, but the outfit worked out pretty well.
It was cheek-chillin’ C O L D on Friday night, though. BRRRR. I ended up putting my sweater and jacket on over my dress pretty shortly after this picture.
Sean was a warmly-dressed sandwich, which was pretty awesome. Look closely and you will notice that his “bread” has a cup-holder. Ingenious!
Melissa & Christi, bringing the holiday cheer!
Here’s a wild-thing.
Jevon excavated his famous articulated dino-skull mask.
It dates at least back to Halloween ’06.
Super-Clint had wayyyyy too much fun being really creepy.
Dapper Dia De Los Muertos! These guys really had it goin’ ON!
Just because I didn’t see them fly up into the sky doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It totally could have, you know!
I didn’t take that many meaningful pictures while I was at my parents’ place, but I did get some HILARIOUS pictures of the dog going all Mutual Of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom out on the prairie:
Fixin’ to climb up after a squirrel.
Definitely the right coloration for autumnal prairie stealth.
Water’s AWESOME when it’s her idea.
Riverbanks? No biggie!
There was still some snow to play in.
Ruby liked it:
A lot!
The visit with my folks was nice…a bit rushed, but it’s always good to get to hang out with my parents. Dad’s been recovering from rotator-cuff surgery and was still pretty sore and laid up while we were there. Being unable to use his right arm has really been working his nerves. Mom brought back no fewer than three old sewing machines from up at Grandma’s and had me go through and find out if/how they worked. Survey says they’re all great. The Singer and the Brother are my two votes for being great all-rounders. Grandma had bought this insane Necchi heavy-duty model just a few years ago, and it seems like a great machine…for someone who wants to make a lot of jeans and canvas purses. I think it’s a bit overkill for most home sewing, but what do I know? The Singer is the simplest sewing machine I have ever seen. It sews. Just straight stitch; nothing else. It’ll back stitch to end a seam, but that’s all. No zig-zags, no frills. The beauty of it is that there’s pretty much nothing to go out of adjustment and the entire thing should be easy to keep humming along nearly indefinitely. The Brother is a little fancier, but still completely intuitive to use. It has some cool pre-set fancy stitching that Mom will probably never use, but which could be put to pretty cute effect.
I told Mom that I’d try to find a PDF of the user manual for this machine, since it seems to be missing. Mom thinks that it might have belonged to her aunt Helga, and so it could have been lost anywhere between California, Maryland, and Florida!
So, I guess that’s a kind of disjointed and sort of condensed and highly illustrated version of what I’ve been up to in the past week or so. I won’t make any promises, but I will try to update more regularly, with a little more coherence and a little less photo-spam.