A memorable trip

Our last day of vacation... This afternoon my brother will be taking us to the airport and we'll fly home. With the free tickets we had to take what they gave us, so today it will be three different flights to get home. We'll get home quite a few hours later, past our bedtime! Tomorrow DH will be back at work and I have 2 appointments, so it's full speed ahead. Even though we had a great time, I am ready to be at home. In all, I have only been home for 4 days since school was over for the year. I need some home time!

We spent both of our weekends here at my brother and his wife's house in the mountains of Virginia. They have a beautiful place there and we spent a lot of time on a screened porch, relaxing and talking. My brother taught me a few things about my camera (I never have taken the time to really read that directions book!), so I am excited to experiment some more with that. I got some good photos during the time we were here, so I'll have to post them on my photo website. I'll let you know when they are there.

During the week while my DB and DSIL were working, Rich and I took off and went to Williamsburg, VA. We spent 3 nights and 2 days there. We saw as much as we could of the buildings, went on a couple of night excursions (ghosts...BOO!), and also had a fabulous meal at the King's Arms Tavern. We also hit a Nike outlet and bought shoes, and a pottery outlet and bought a few pieces of salt glaze pottery for my "collection," Thursday was our long day driving, as we went from Williamsburg to Asheville, NC. We got there at night and the next day went to Biltmore Estate. Wow, that was incredible. It is hard to believe that someone actually lived there. What an interesting day! The gardens were beautiful, too. No pictures there. I left my camera in the car rather than carry it around all day since we couldn't take any photos in the house.

The time spent at the mountain home was so relaxing, but we also did some things while there. We went to BBQ fest, but it rainned a lot that afternoon. We still had fun. We also went to some antique stores.

It'll be good to be home though, so I am looking forward to our last leg of this trip. Great times, fun and memories, but as it says in my favorite movie, "There's no place like home."

In Virginia

We have just spent the weekend at my brother and his wife's mountain home in Virginia. It is just beautiful here! So relaxing, and so pretty. It has been really nice to be able to spend some time with DB and DSIL. My nephew came up Friday night with his wife and their new baby. We were lucky to be able to spend some time with them and were happy to be able to meet DN's wife at last. Their daughter is a little doll! Tomorrow we will be going back to North Carolina and picking up our rental car, and then we head for Williamsburg, VA.

Yesterday we went to see Maybry Mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is fairly close to where they live. In fact, their house is right off of the Parkway. I got some great photos. I'll post one after I get home. Today we went to two antique stores in Fancy Gap. I bought two things...QUILT TOPS! One is a Dresden Plate, which has feed sacks in it. In fact, I think the background squares might be feedsacks (plain unbleached muslin, anyway). With the colors and fabric I am guessing it was from the 30's. The other one is all plaid fabric with squares for most and then it switches to smaller rectangles on one side. I have no idea how old it is. will have to look at fabric books to see if there are any fabrics that can be identified. It is kind of a funny looking thing, but I like it. Now, the best part, I only paid $35 for the Dresden Plate, and $10 for the plaid one! I was thrilled to find them for that amount. Cooooool! Will have to write more the next time I can get to a computer. Oh, how I wish I had a laptop!

My "Quilty" Day!

I should have been doing laundry, etc. since we leave for vacation tomorrow. I have all day though, since our plane leaves at 7:40. I did do lots of errands this morning, oil change and tires rotated, picked up a Rx, went to the credit union, picked up AAA books and maps, and went to the Quilt Shop to copy a page of handouts for the DJ club and also to buy more fusible for applique. Whew! All that before noon! Then I came home and worked on my bookcase blocks, and a block I need to mail out for a baby quilt. I'll post a photo of my bookcase blocks, and also I thought I'd post a photo of the postcards that I made for the exchange. Tomorrow I will be finishing laundry, paying bills and also cleaning. Hope the time away will be relaxing, not ALL go, go, go! Better get some sleep, sleep. sleep!

I'm still tired!

I just finished the last of my homework for the Archaeology Field School. Yawn... There is a lot of work to these classes! I thought I'd tell you more about the 2nd week of class. It was MUCH better. Our group finally had a feature to dig. It is amazing that you really can tell where a feature is once you get below the plow zone, because the soil is a different color where the organic material decayed. It creates a "stain" in the soil. Sometimes they are very subtle, but they are there. Back to the dig... We only got down 5 levels, which is 25 cm. You only take 5 cm at a time, with a trowel unless you find something and then you use bamboo picks and paintbrushes to brush off soil. We found fire cracked rock, pottery sherds, ash, charcoal, some stone tools, and a lot of waste flakes. So, we know we had a garbage pit (a gold mine for an archaeologist!). We ran out of time to excavate any more so we had to leave it for the next group to continue to excavate. We already had a piece of pottery sticking out of level 6. It was hard to give it up, especially since it took so long to find a feature in the first place. I couldn't believe all of the paperwork involved with the dig. You make a plan map (where you will dig), based on a datum point you put in the highest part of the feature. You use that to make a level floor at each part. You take a sample of soil in the top of the level, which is analyzed back at the lab looking for tiny things that you would otherwise miss. These would be things like seeds that were preserved because they were charred in a fire. Then you start using a sharpened mason's trowel to take off a tiny layer of soil at a time. You do this over and over until you reach the bottom of a level. Anything you find in that level gets put in bags with the number on the bag that was assigned to that level. All the soil you trowel is also sceened through 1/4 inch mesh to find the smaller things that you may have missed. You think you are being thorough and finding everything, and then you screen the soil and find more. Once you reach the bottom of a level you photograph it with a sign board giving information about the feature number, level, etc. and you draw another map. These maps can change according to what you find in the feature. Ours got smaller. Sometimes you think your feature is bigger because of rodent runs and earthworms mixing the soil. Ours looked bigger at first because of this, but then under the rodent runs was sterile soil so we wereable to better define our feature. In August when we go back we will find out what they found under where we stopped. I enjoyed it so much more when I was doing something other than DIGGING!!!!

Postcards

I'm experimenting. I have a photo of the postcards I received back from my postcard exchange and I am going to try to post it here.

woooo hoooo it worked! Aren't they cool?

Not working too hard!

I have been working on my homework for my Archaeology class, and need a break. I need to do one more lesson, and I think I will avoid it and do it Tuesday, since it is due by midnight that day. That way I can leave and go have some fun. Camping for the weekend. I'll be taking sewing along. Friends who were supposed to be coming can't come so it'll be a more quiet time. I miss my hubby since I haven't seen him for 6 days, so it'll be good to see him.

ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz

I'm home from my dig. I am exhausted. This week I at least was able to dig on a real feature. It is a garbage pit. We found broken pots, "points", lots of ash and charcoal. It was very interesting. The paperwork takes longer than the digging. Everything must be recorded with great acuracy. After bringing it back to the lab you have to wash it, and then catalog it. Every artifact gets its own number, which is painted on the back of it. Pots are glued together if you can find pieces that match. I took tons of pictures and will be posting on my Kodak site. More later.
Angel