Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Still in downtown Chicago

Day three of the conference and for once everything is quiet for the moment. I'm still fascinated by the view from my hotel room. I tried to capture it in an expanded-square, part of this week's exercises for the Journals class. I pasted it down backwards, the sun's on the wrong side. I did several expanded squares and had a hard time getting the glue on the side I wanted to glue down and not on the top side.

In my room there's a sofa that has a window behind it--it's great light for stitching. I did a little bit last night on my June TIF. There's also a big-screen TV--it's amazing to me how little there is to watch, even with all of cable's offerings.

One of the "tall ships" was sailing by in this photo from my window. The view at night with all of the bright lights is wonderful but I wasn't able to capture it with the camera. This one was taken near sunset. I can see why people live near water--it's ever changing and you can just sit and watch it for hours on end.



Last weekend Steve and I went to the Antique Power and Steam Show in Crown Point, Indiana. It was our second trip and we enjoyed it just as much this year as last. It's an annual event, put on my the South Lake County Agricultural Historical Society and it's really fun. I didn't take many photos--this event is best captured in sound--motors and whistles abound. One area is full of little hand-made feats of engineering--mostly steam engines. The sounds are amazing--pockety-pockety, wush-wush, clickity-clack, and the occasional thwump. They had a steam powered thresher (chaff was flying everywhere! Now I know first hand where the term chafing comes from!) and a steam powered saw that was cutting shingles.

We sat in the grandstand for the Parade of Power, a most impressive display of tractors and farm equipment of all types. Some behemoths were from the early 20th Century. Afterward I learned the finer points of how to shoe a horse and we watched blacksmiths ply their trade.

1 comment:

Jane said...

I haven't been able to get on the comment page for a couple of days from here, it keeps on telling me it can't connect!
You are just around the corner from jen's work, of course, she is not there this week. You aren't in the Trump tower, are you? I hope everything is going smoothly!
Jane