New Thing #3 - Visit the Charleston Museum

When I was 14, my grandparents moved to South Carolina. They both retired and decided it was too expensive/dangerous to continue living in the DC Metro area, so they picked up and moved to this little dinky town in middle of nowhere about 45 minutes north of Charleston. Sixteen years later, this town finally grew large enough to get a Dollar General (no actual grocery store or anything yet. Just a Dollar General.) I used to go visit them every summer. When I turned 23, my parents lost everything and moved in with my grandparents. When they divorced, Dad stuck around to take care of my grandfather after my grandmother passed away.

All of this is really just to show you I've had plenty of opportunities in my life to go to Charleston. My grandma took me once during one of those summers. We walked around a lot but, being from DC and accustomed to free museums, did not want to pay to get into any of the museums or houses. I haven't been back since, though I desperately wanted to go. Charleston, South Carolina is a gorgeous city. It really is. The history is absolutely fascinating as well. One time when I go up, I want to take a carriage ride through the city on one of the historical tours, just to have someone talking to us about all of the different places there. This past Christmas, Kim took us into downtown to see the sights.

The middle picture is where they auctioned the slaves. Back behind that is a long building that stretches out for multiple blocks. Now they have a number of local vendors selling their wares (mostly Charleston tourist stuff probably made in China) but before, the long buildings behind it were for holding people until they were ready to go on the auction block. (Or so I've gathered.) It's depressing as hell but I'm glad they decided to keep that part of history around as a reminder. (The city needs it. The racism there is ridiculous.) I have to admit though - it's a little weird to see that public face to it looking so nice. It's hard to imagine something so pretty hosting something so ugly.

We also (finally!) went into one of the museums. The Charleston museum was very nice - better than I expected. I know a part of my love for it was the focus on what I find the most fascinating - every day life. Naturally, there was a lot of stuff there from the War. The weapons kept my dad entertained. The displays on the every day lives of women kept me entertained. My favorite displays in any history museum are always the clothing displays. I wish I had taken more pictures of that.

What impressed me the most was that they included an opportunity for you to slip into historical models of the clothing to see what it felt like to wear the clothing. Teaching about history: you're doing it right. It's one thing to just look at these things in museums. There are some who will retain that knowledge for a lifetime. But most? They're not going to learn unless they have a chance to interact with it. That's why I'm so passionate about living history. History is much easier to understand when one can put themselves in their shoes, to live, even just for five minutes, as their ancestors did. 

Here you can try on the clothing of the women - most importantly - farthingales! Or hoop skirts, whatever you want to call them. They were designed more like a French farthingale but it was enough to give people an idea of what it's like to walk around and try to do chores in that shit. (aka "if you can afford a farthingale, you're not doing any fucking chores.")

Overall, I highly recommend the Charleston Museum if you're in the area. It was $10 to get in, or $16 if you want to get in to there and one of the two houses that they are partnered with. It was a great deal in my opinion. 

New Thing #2 - Foam Crafting

I typically do not have the time to craft anymore. However, while school was on break for the winter, I took advantage of the time and started crafting like crazy. In addition to the scrapbooking and smash booking I did in the previous post, I tried my hand at foam crafting. One of my friends back a few years ago purchased a foam Thomas Jefferson craft set.

Yes, that's right. I'm officially that nerd who owns a Thomas Jefferson craft set. I'm also that immature nerd who laugh because once you glue his clothes on, he's still nekkid in the back. I'm probably going to draw him a butt crack soon.

But yes - BEHOLD the glory that is foam!Thomas Jefferson!

Naturally, he comes with his own little Declaration of Independence Constitution, because that totally makes more sense than the Declaration of Independence? There was also a little set of fun facts. The whole thing came with some easel backs to glue on the back so you can display him around the house, but he may just end up in my smash book instead. I don't really have the space for him to be up on an easel. 

The downside to foam!Jefferson? I discovered I hate working with foam. Until the glue settles, it slips and slides eeeverywhere. The vest and jacket also don't fit together perfectly. I didn't discover this until it was too late to try to cut it with my X-acto knife.  Oh well. It's still cute, even if his clothes are kind of falling off. He'll look great wherever I put him. 

New Thing #1 - Scrapbooking and SMASH

Back awhile ago, Shae posted pictures on her Flickr account of some scrapbook pages she did for derby. I've had the urge to scrapbook for awhile but this finally pushed me over the edge to try it. I apologize now; this is a very image heavy post.

1. Scrapbooking is much more involved than I thought. There are so many sites devoted to it, with some people viewing it as a very formal artform with structured designs and themes while others tell you that it doesn't matter what you do with it so long as you have fun.  With any particular page, you need to figure out where you're placing your pictures, add fun little crap to it, maybe write something to go along with the picture (I chose to skip this step because all of the pictures I used were old enough that I didn't really have anything to say), have a title for the page, etc. Before getting into this, scrapbooking to me was just putting pictures on pretty paper and maybe included some pretty stickers or something.

2. Scrapbooking is expensive as fuck. Seriously. I bought a beginners kit and used that so it's not been too bad. However, I went ahead and bought a whole bunch of extra papers and whatnot, plus some neat pens and wavy scissors and... next thing I knew, I had over $50 worth of stuff. I go home, do more research on it and realize how many little things I still don't have - a paper cutter, a cricut, ephemera... plus after I opened it, I realized the pen pack I bought isn't really what I wanted. They are very thin, fine point. I'm keeping them for use on other things, but for the scrapbook I'd like a thicker pen.

3. You can scrapbook without all of those expensive little things but you either need the stuff or the talent to make it look good. I have neither. My pages are a little boring so far. They might improve with time, but I'm not holding my breath. I bought a zebra striped scrapbook that I was going to use for all the stupid/awesome things I've done in my lifetime (drive overnight to Salem Massachusetts to see the Halloween decorations, drive overnight to DC for the Rally to Restore Sanity only to arrive so tired that we just walked around the museums and had conversations that resembled that stage between drunk and hungover, moving to Florida with no car/job/home just a sleeping bag and $400, joining roller derby, 1776 nights, etc.). Instead, I think I just might make it work as my fandom one (since I bought a HP scrapbook kit too that needs to be used) and use my new Smash book for all the random shit.

As for Smash book, if you're not familiar with it, the company that produces it has a cute little video with information on the concept.

There are a number of different pre-set themes for Smash books. You don't necessarily need to follow the theme; it's really just for the paper you start out with. I picked up two of them - one for travel (I was going to do a travel scrapbook, but this seems like it would be easier to keep all of my stuff together) and one for the more everyday stuff I do. I can easily see where this would be another hobby that could be easily expensive, but perhaps less so. The Smash accessories seem fairly inexpensive at this point. Once I get my printer up and going, I can print stuff that way as well. I'm thinking I should have started out with the Smash book and worked my way up to scrapbooking. It's a good way for beginners to get into the craft. I don't have any completed pages yet, but here's what I have so far.