Sunday, January 31, 2010

Henry V, Clay Beads, and Pockets of Sawdust

So here’s some ramblings on about the strange and various things I’ve done lately...

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! Or close the wall up with our English dead!” Recognize that? Yup, it’s a line from Henry V. We’ve been speeding through the Middle Ages lately (which means a lot of reading) because we’re trying to get done with the Middle Ages and Renaissance so we can study American History. So when we were at a friend’s house and we saw they had Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, Dad asked to borrow it. It’s so fun when you get to go back and watch movies you only saw a little part of when you were little. Still, though, we had to skip quite a bit of yucky battle stuff, and even that battle stuff we didn’t skip, I didn’t watch. It was interesting, and, boy, could Shakespeare write! Too bad he was so weird; he could have been a great theologian or something! I love the exchange between Henry and Katherine. (And Kenneth and Emma were married in real life.) Henry was so cute trying to find out if she would happily marry him. He said, “Can you love me?” She said, “I cannot tell.” So he said, “Well then, Kate, do you have any neighbors I can ask?” It was a very interesting commentary on the horrors of war... and all that over some land!

Something I’ve found enjoyable lately is to make beads out of Fimo/Sculpey clay. Sculpey is great because you can model with it, bake it hard, and make artsy beads! Some of them I just worked marker into the clay beforehand, and some of them I painted after baking. Then I sanded them to make them look more rustic. I wonder... would there be a market for those online? Can anybody tell me? Or is that just one of those things that people handcraft and overprice and nobody buys?

Okay, my last rambling: oh yes, pockets of sawdust! Our most favoritest loggers (sorry to all the rest), Mr. S and Rob, his son, invited us for a field trip to see them log at their job site! I wasn’t sure I was going to go because I had a lot of school to do, but I’m glad I did because it was interesting. Mr. S (he’s great; I wish he were my grandpa!) had saved some big trees for us, which in my opinion was a pretty cute thing to do. They sure knew what they were doing! It was pretty loud whenever a tree went over! Mr. S, who had wanted to be a logger since he was a boy, saw us watching from the side of the road and shouted “Timber!” after they falled a particularly big one! (You “fall” trees... not “fell” them!) When it was time for their lunch break, they came over and said, “hi” and Mr. S explained to Dad that the timber market was down. While we were talking, he was turning his pockets inside-out and scooping sawdust out of them! Rob just stood there and grinned. Perry said, “Rob, there’s nails in the bottom of your boots!” He laughed. Loggers wear studded boots so they can walk across logs easily. Mr. S explained that, and, since we were walking down the road, Perry asked, “So are you guys only allowed to walk on the road with those on between November and April like studded tires?” That cracked them up! Anyway, here are some pictures. Maybe at a later date, we can post a movie!

Adios, and I hope this wasn’t incredibly boring!




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