Hot Springs AR

A couple of weeks ago, when I was transferring all the stuff we had to do to the new calendar, I noticed that we had nothing scheduled for the weekend of Feb 3-5.  This is such an usual event for us, because it seems like there is always something going on where we have something we have to do, or go.  I mentioned it to my spouse and he was amazed too, but then he remembered it was Super Bowl weekend and figured that was probably the main reason nothing had been scheduled for Sunday.  Saturday was just a fluke, and I thought nothing more of it.
    But he didn't,  after New Orleans lost in the play offs, he really wasn't interested in the Super Bowl as to which team would win - he liked certain players on both teams; so he decided to surprise me with an early Valentines day gift.  We had been talking about going up to Hot Springs Arkansas for quite awhile, but never seemed to find a good time to go.  He decided this weekend would be the perfect time for us to get away, and scheduled a stay at the Arlington Hotel. 
   The Arlington Hotel has always been a special place for us.  When my eldest child was just a baby, my husband had to go to a business meeting at that hotel, and we came along too so we could start our vacation from there. My son was teething at the time and was very fussy and was not going to sleep that night.  To quiet him down, I took him down to the lobby at 2 a.m. and was letting him crawl around in the sitting area, only problem was he finally decided he wasn't going to crawl anymore.   He took his FIRST steps there!! I was so excited.  I wished I had my camera but it was packed away in my luggage and never did get those shots.  The next morning I couldn't wait for his daddy to see what he could now do, by then he was walking all over the place and there was no stopping him.  We were so busy watching him that neither one of us thought about taking any pictures, and the opportunity was lost forever.
  That was about 24 years ago and we have only made it back there one other time - again with children.  We both felt like we were long overdue for another visit there for just the two of us.  This time it was so much nicer because we were not on such a tight budget and could take advantage of the hot baths and other amenities the place offers.  After all that was what the area was always famous for its Hot Springs and rejuvenation properties.  The Bathhouse row is now part of a National Park.

Here's a view of the Arlington hotel from Tufa Terrace Trail.

Hotel Arlington, Hot Springs National park

The Arlington Hotel lobby, Hot Springs AR

 This is the area where my son started to walk, its still basically the same except the rugs and upholstery have been updated.
  But this is what got me really excited about being there.  Is seeing this as we pulled into the parking garage.

 Look at those fold rocks.  Aren't they beautiful.  There wasn't a whole lot of geologic information that I saw which really disappointed me.  The park is big and we didn't make it to all of its attractions and I probably missed the display where they talk about the geology.  Most of the stuff we did see was all about the historical significance of the area and the way its always attracted people to the hot waters.

   From what I can figure out these rocks are Lower Paleozoic rocks of the Ouachita Mountains. According to "Geology of National Parks" 6th ed by Ann G. Harris, Ester Tuttle & Sherwood D. Tuttle (2004)  Ch 52 pgs 779-790, The rocks that outcrop in the park are: 'The Womble shale, Bigfork Chert, Polk Creek Shale of Ordovician age; the Silurian Blaylock sandstone and the Missouri Mountain Shale; and the Arksnsas Novaculite which is Devonian and Lower Mississippian in age.' 

      Here's a closer view and a different angle.  There was definitely faulting in the area and it looked like its the  overhang thrust of the Stanley Shale but I don't know it for sure. The Arlington is located in the Y of Fountain street and Park ave and Central ave.

The folded rocks behind the Arlington parking garage

   Most of the geology that I saw talked about how the Hot Springs are formed.  They mention that the rain falls onto the highly fractured Arkansas Novaculite.  It takes about 4000 years to percolate down through the rock. (though some of the waters they think make be as young as twenty years).  As it does down it gets heated by rocks of high temperature and then flows out as an artesian springs. The water comes out in the Hot Springs Sandstone outcrop along the the traces of two thrust faults that that parallels the Hot Springs mountain anticline.

Here's one of the springs anyone can get water from.

 Noble Fountain, Hot Springs AR

 Since the area was famous for its hots springs, bathhouses sprung up around them.  Now the area is not as popular as it used to be around the turn of the century and started to run into decline but people have stepped up and turned most of the bathhouses into historical landmarks.  It still is a fun area to visit.

Bath House Row, Hot Springs National park, AR; Arlington in background.

 Fordyce Bathhouse  National Park visitor center & Maurice Bathhouse to its left

 One of the more popular attractions to the park is the Hot Springs mountain tower.  In the past we were here during the tourist season and was not able to go into it and see the view from the top.  I was so glad we went when we did because this time we had no problems getting in and seeing things.  It is very much worth the effort to do.
  Here's the tower.

Hot Springs Mountain Tower

 I really liked seeing the north view. You can see the Hot springs Mountain Sandstone is right next to the Stanley Shale beds in the valley.  I really got a feel for why the springs are where they are. 

The north view from the Hot springs Mountain Tower

This picture is to the east and you see the Hot Spring mountain and the Arkansas novaculite mountain.
The one thing I don't like about the area is the vegetation is so prolific you don't get to see a lot of really fresh outcrops unless an area has been recently cleared away. 

East View from the Hot Springs Mountain tower

 
   Years and years before, I had been to the area with a friend that was a geologist.  He had been here before on a field trip.  One of the things they did was to collect quartz crystal from the Coleman mine.  He took me to this mine and we had a great time collecting some crystals.  Through the years and with moving, I either gave away or left behind most of what I collected.  I always thought that I would be back here some day and never really worried about not having the stuff anymore.
   Well with this trip I thought I would see if I couldn't find that mine again. I got on the internet and found out that there's now two Coleman mines --Jim and Ron.  It turns out they are brothers.  I remembered I could see the mine from the shop and figured I must have gone to Ron's mine.
   My husband knows how I'm with rock shops and things like that. He knew I wouldn't be happy until I went and visited the area and see if things were the way I remembered them. I wasn't so keen on going because  the night before there had been a terrible thunderstorm and the weather was foretasted to be bad all weekend long. I was hesitant about going since conditions were predicted to be so miserable and I'm to the point now I hate being cold, wet and miserable. We decided that we could at least go to the rock shops since they would be mostly inside.   So the first thing we did Saturday was head out to find them.
  Boy was I glad we decided to do that. I could not have asked for a prettier day.  It was in the high 60's, mostly cloudy sky's with the sun occasionally poking through.  Since it had rained so much the day before everything was nice and wet and easy to see.
  As we drove along Highway 7, I saw some interesting things.  Near Mountain Valley, and the Glazypeau Mountain I saw a piece of land that was cleared away and was for sale.  Since we had nothing better to do we decided to turn back and look at it.  Here's what it look like from the road.

 But then as I started to walk closer this is what I saw.  Isn't that some amazing folding and faulting. I was so glad we had stopped to look at it.

 And this is as close to it as I could get without wading through a deep, deep puddle.

  Finally we got to the Coleman rock shop.  I thought we were at Ron's but it turned out we were at Jim's.  Just look at the crystals they have sitting out front.  If you look really carefully you can see the penny on it for scale.

This one the penny didn't make it in the photo but they still were impressive to see.

Quartz Crystals in front of the Jim Coleman Rock Shop

 It took awhile but my husband was finally able to drag me away.  I couldn't wait to see Ron's mine and if it was the one I remembered or not.  I was so excited I was like a little kid in a candy store.

   Here's Ron Coleman's mine and it was just as I remembered it.  Even though it was wet.  I just had to go out and try to look for something.  When you go there you are not allowed to go into the mine itself, but you are allowed to look in the talus piles.  You are allowed to keep what ever you find and can carry out.  They give you a bag to put your stuff in. 

Ron Coleman quartz mine

Ron Coleman quartz mine, Jessieville, AR

According to the Howard's, Darcy & Mike "Collecting Crystals - the Guide to Quartz in Arkansas" (2000 pgs 13-14) the crystals are formed in the Blakely sandstone, Ouachita Mountains (Orogeny)  during the Late Pennsylvanian age (290-245 million years ago.)  During this time the seas were closing thrusting the land mass to the south up to the north and forming the massive continent Pangaea.  The sands in the area were heated and some of them melted yielding a silica rich solution that was able to precipitate out in the open fractures of the rocks. These long quartz veins formed along the fractures because that was where it was easiest for it to travel.  Eventually some of them got filled in, but not all of them and thus individual crystal can now be found in those open fractures.  It appears that the crystals were formed only during the mountain building time of the Pennsylvanian and had stopped in the Triassic.  Most of the crystals are in the crystal belt formations of Crystal Mountain  and Blakely sandstone. The Blakely sandstone was deposited during the Ordovician age (400-500 mya) based on fossil evidence.
     From my observation the sandstone is pretty fine grain and there is a lot of red clay associated with it.  All of which leads me to believe it was deposited in a fluvial to sub-aqueous environment, but I didn't have enough time to really study this and figure it out on my own.  Everything I was looking at was in the tailing piles and thus were out of place. 
Here's some rocks that lined the road to the tailing piles.

veined sandstone, Ron Coleman quartz mine

This next one gives you a really good idea of how the quartz formed along the fractures of the rocks.

quartz veins in a sandstone @ the Ron Coleman mine

 This was the area we were allowed to look in for the quartz crystal.  As you can see it doesn't give you much of a feel for how the matrix rock was deposited..

Ron Coleman quartz mine where you are allowed to hunt for quartz crystals

 I did find quite a few crystals but now I have to get them cleaned up since they are all covered in that red mud/clay.  We did find some really nice pieces but they were too heavy for us to haul out so we left them there for some other strong body person to get.
    While we were there another family was there also.  My husband and I would chuckle every time we heard the young girl scream at the top of her lungs, I've found another lucky rock.

   I mused upon the Lucky Rocks she found and realized she'll remember this the rest of her life, just like I have all those years ago when I wasn't much older than her when I first saw this mine.  I wonder if she'll become a geologist too.

  If you ever get a chance you should definitely check out the Hot Springs area, and the Coleman mines.

And I forgot to include what Wikipedia has to say about it  Hot_Springs,_Arkansas.
 Hot_Springs_National_Park
Here's the geology of it from Wikipedia

Geology

The thermal springs are situated in the Ouachita Mountains of central Arkansas. The springs emerge in a gap between Hot Springs Mountain and West Mountain in an area about 1,500 feet (460 m) long by 400 feet (120 m) wide at altitudes from 576 to 683 feet (208 m). The springs predominantly are composed of hot water from thousands of feet underground mixed with some shallow cold ground water. Currently, there are 43 thermal springs in the park that are presumed to be flowing. Thermal water from 33 of the thermal springs is collected and monitored at a central reservoir, which distributes the combined discharge for public use and consumption. Rock types in the area include shale units which generally impede ground-water movement, while fractured chert, novaculite, and sandstone units generally support ground-water movement.^[10]

Conceptual diagram of thermal water flow.

The water comes from rain which falls in mountains to the north and northeast. Flowing downward through cracked rock at about one foot a year, the meteoric water migrates to estimated minimum depths of 4,500 to 7,500 ft (2,300 m) and achieves high temperatures in the deep section of the flow path before rising along fault and fracture conduits. Under artesian pressure, the thermal waters rise and emerge through the Hot Springs Sandstone between the traces of two thrust faults, along several northeast-trending lineaments. Some rainwater from near the springs mixes with the deep hot water before discharge. The trip down takes about 4,000 years while the hot water takes about a year to reach the surface.^[5]
The heat comes from the natural heating of rocks as depth increases. The composition of the water indicates it is heated rainwater which has not approached a magmatic source, so no volcanic action is involved in the formation of these hot springs. The result is the mildly alkaline, pleasant tasting solution with dissolved calcium carbonate.^[5]

[edit] Rock types

Remaining natural hot springs

The exposed rock types in the vicinity of the thermal springs are sedimentary rocks of Mississippian to Ordovician age, with the exception of younger igneous rocks (Cretaceous age) exposed in two small areas about 6 and 11 miles (18 km) southeast of the thermal springs (Potash Sulphur Spring and Magnet Cove, respectively), and in many small dikes and sills. Most dikes are less than 5 ft (1.5 m) wide. There have been 80 dikes noted about 4 miles (6.4 km) southeast of Hot Springs, on and near the Ouachita River. There is no indication that igneous rock occurs where the thermal springs discharge.
The sedimentary rocks in the vicinity of the thermal springs consist of shale, chert, novaculite, sandstone, and conglomerate.

• The Stanley Shale is predominantly a clayey, thinly fissile, black to green shale, with large amounts of sandstone interbedded throughout the formation. The sandstone, when freshly exposed, is a hard, fine-grained, feldspathic, silty sandstone, but weathers easily to a soft, clayey porous material ranging from green to brown in color. Almost all of the low-lying areas in the city of Hot Springs are composed of the Stanley Shale, and it surrounds Hot Springs Mountain on the south, east, and west sides.
• The Hot Springs Sandstone Member of the Stanley Shale, hereafter referred to as the Hot Springs Sandstone, consists of fine- to medium-grained sandstone with some shale and conglomerate. The sandstone is gray, hard and quartzitic, reaching thicknesses up to 6 ft (1.8 m) The shale predominantly occurs at the top of the unit, and the principal bed of the conglomerate occurs at the bottom.
• The Arkansas Novaculite consists of lower, middle, and upper members. The lower member is a massive fractured novaculite, and is the dominant member on Hot Springs Mountain, with a thickness of about 275 ft (84 m) The middle member is a black clay shale interbedded with novaculite, about 10 ft (3.0 m) thick on Hot Springs Mountain. The upper member is chiefly a massive, highly calcareous light gray to black novaculite. It reaches a maximum thickness of 180 ft (55 m) in the area.
• The Polk Creek Shale and Missouri Mountain Shale overlie the Bigfork Chert and generally consist of shale with minor thin layers of quartzitic sandstone. The Polk Creek Shale is a black, fissile, graphitic shale. The Missouri Mountain Shale varies in color, and is soft and argillaceous.
• The Bigfork Chert overlies the Womble Shale and consists almost entirely of chert and silty chert in layers 2 to 12 inches (300 mm) thick, separated by minor thin beds of black shale. The chert is very brittle and intensely fractured from folding.
• The Womble Shale is the oldest geologic unit that underlies all other exposed units. It is black, hard, and argillaceous shale.^[10]

During most of the Paleozoic Era, what became the Ouachita Mountains was the bottom of a shallow sea, where several sedimentary layers were created. About 500 million years ago a collision of the South American Plate with the North American Plate caused the shale and sandstone layers to fracture and fissure, creating mountains of the folded rocks.^[1] The thermal springs emerge from the plunging crest line of a large overturned anticline in the Zigzag Mountains of the Ouachita anticlinorium. The overturned anticline plunges toward the southwest into the Mazarn Basin. There are two recognized major thrust faults trending nearly parallel to fold axes that define the northern and southern limits of the thermal springs discharge area. The northern fault extends nearly parallel to Fountain Street northeastward about 9,200 ft (2,800 m) onto the southeast flank of North Mountain, and dips about 26 degrees north. At the northern extent of the thermal springs, this fault is suggested to form along the bedding contact of the Hot Springs Sandstone and Stanley Shale, with the Stanley Shale forming the hanging wall of the fault. The southern fault extends northeastward about 9,000 ft (2,700 m) roughly along the axis of the Hot Springs anticline, and dips about 44 degrees north. It has been proposed that a fault splits away from the southern fault, trends west and connects with the northern fault. A natural ravine trends along the location of this fault. Extensive cracks, joints, and fissures in the Bigfork Chert, Arkansas Novaculite, and the Hot Springs Sandstone allow the water to flow in the thermal springs area.^[10] Dissolved minerals in the water precipitate to form the white to tan travertine or "tufa rock" seen near the openings of the hot springs.^[1]

Musings of a 90 year old

A friend forwarded this to me.  I'm not one to normally forward things on but this was something I thought was worth sharing. Written by a 90 year old This is something we should all read at least once a week!!!!! Make sure you read to the end!!!!!! Written by Regina Brett, 90 years old, of the Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio . "To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more: 1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good. 2. When in doubt, just take the next small step. 3. Life is too short – enjoy it. 4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and family will. 5. Pay off your credit cards every month. 6. You don't have to win every argument. Stay true to yourself. 7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone. 8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it. 9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck. 10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile. 11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present. 12. It's OK to let your children see you cry. 13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about. 14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it. 15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye But don't worry; God never blinks. 16.. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind. 17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful. Clutter weighs you down in many ways. 18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger. 19. It's never too late to be happy. But it’s all up to you and no one else. 20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer. 21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special. 22. Over prepare, then go with the flow. 23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple. 24. The most important sex organ is the brain. 25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you. 26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?' 27. Always choose life. 28. Forgive but don’t forget. 29. What other people think of you is none of your business. 30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time. 31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change. 32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does. 33. Believe in miracles. 34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do. 35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now. 36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young. 37. Your children get only one childhood. 38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved. 39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere. 40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back. 41. Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have not what you need.. 42. The best is yet to come... 43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up. 44. Yield. 45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift." Its estimated 93% won't forward this. If you are one of the 7% who will, forward this with the title '7%'. I'm in the 7%. Friends are the family that we choose.

Fracking the Marcellus shale

I was surfing the net and came across http://exploreshale.org/ while looking at Agile .  This is a quick and easy presentation on fracking oil shales - namely the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania. I liked the way they made it so any lay person could understand and follow how it is done.
   When I went up to visit  the Cleveland suburbs of  Ohio, I could see a lot of work  with oil and gas wells were being done around where I had grown up.  I even got a photo, so of course I'm interested on what's being said since my mom still in the area.

  

The Cleveland shale with glacial sediments on top

 
 Another Musing : I enjoy Agile a lot because they deal with geophysic type material.  When I was in the Oil/Gas industry I would have loved to have access to the technical stuff they like to blog. I did take a course in the stuff they write about, years and years ago, so some of it I can actually understand what they are writing about.  I keep on thinking if I ever get back into that area of geology this material that Agile writes about would be very beneficial to know so I try to follow it as much as I can.
.

My Interest in Other Things

This post is not going to be geologic related stuff but on my other things.  For over 50 years I had to entertain myself without using the internet.  Needless to say I've developed some hobbies and interest that have kept me busy all these years.  Geology has always been my main love but living up north with the snow I couldn't always go outside or do things outside for very long.  I had to find other things to do during the winter time.
  My main form of entertainment was reading.  I came by that naturally since my mom was a grade school librarian, (also my sister and my brother-in-law are both librarians too.)  I grew up in a house were my mom would be making dinner and reading a book and that book was not a cookbook but a best seller.  She'd have it propped on the counter as she would mix ingredients together.  I could never figure out how she ever mastered that technique because whenever I try reading my cookbook to cook something I get all sorts of ingredients into it.  Also in our house we only had one TV for the longest time.  Most of the time I didn't care for what was being watched. Since my mom was a librarian we'd have books all over the house. I'd much rather go and curl up with a good book and be entertained for hours by reading it.  My favorite genre is science fiction.
  I was a middle child in a big family.  Most of the time I was left alone to do my own thing.  The only person who really took an interest in me was my mom's mom.  She lived about 2 miles away and when I got older I was allowed to go visit her.  In fact I was encouraged to visit her since she was house bound and couldn't drive a car. My grandma believed that idle hands were the devil workshop and so she decided I needed to learn how to do certain things.  First and foremost she made sure I knew how to sew.  For that I will always be grateful to her.
   Next she decided I needed to learn how to embroider.  I was about seven years old and she thought I could handle that.  She used to be a school teacher in a one room school house and was very good at instructing you and then leaving you be to master it on your own.  She would only help you when you ran into a major problem that would keep a piece from being finished.  If it was something minor she would say 'Leave it, every hand made piece needs to have at least one mistake in it so that people know its hand made - otherwise they will think it came from a store.'  That was some of the best advice I ever got.  It allowed me to make minor mistakes in my stuff and not have everything perfect.  But don't get me wrong even though she wouldn't get upset with one tiny mistake she would not let you have  a lot of mistakes either.  I would hate it when she would look at something and say 'You can do better than that'.  She would undo what I did and then hand it back to me to do it better.  Here's the first piece I ever embroidered. It's a pillow case.

  After she taught me embroidering she taught me to crochet with a single needle.  I don't have anything from when she did teach me.  It was mostly dollies and edging for the pillow cases. But knowing how to crochet later in life I did crochet a couple of major pieces.  The first was an afghan.

(Please excuse the shape of it.  I used to have a dog that when he'd get nervous with thunderstorm he'd hide under it.  Then he developed the bad habit of sucking on it.  Needless to say he started to put wholes in it and I ended up putting it in storage thinking one day I'd get around to fixing it.  Trouble is the colors in my house are no longer in that color scheme and I didn't have a lot of motivation to get it fixed.)
 

Here is the second one. I did this one using an afghan hook and stitch.  You were suppose to embroider on top, but I was lazy and thought it would be faster just to change the colors of the thread and just crochet the colors in.  It took some experimentation but I eventually figured it out.  I was pleased with the way it did turn out. Can you guess what team my husband was a fan of at the time. 

 Blogger wont let me download the picture of it on the bed.  I have it on a queen size bed.  But here is a closer look of it where you can see I crochet in the colors.

After I mastered crocheting she moved me onto Knitting. At first I mostly did scarves.  But then I eventually moved up to other more complicated things like hats and mittens.  I have nothing from that time.  But I still to occasionally like to knit.  I've had some on going projects for years.  My children wanted to have an afghan like my husband had.  I prefer to knit.  I was so happy to find that they now make needles were you can have your knitting as long as you want it to.  I was able to knit afghans for two of them and am working on a third one for my youngest son.  I usually like to work on it when I watch TV.  I don't watch a lot of TV so these projects are taking a lot longer than I had planned on them to take.  (Because blogger is messing up with what it will include and the order of things I'll show you what blogger will let me have.)

The completed one on my son's twin size bed.

   I am from Irish descent and so was she.  She was very proud of it and made sure I was proud of it too. My grandmother made sure I knew how to knit like the Irish do.  In my day's of living up north I've made a lot of sweaters but they were always given away as gifts.  Now I don't do many because living in the south there is no need for heavy sweaters like there is up there.  I don't have any of those sweaters to show but I do have these swatches.  Before I would knit a sweater I would always make a sample piece using the patterns I had picked out. It would give me a gauge of how big it would run and how many stitches I would need to add to the needles.  (At the top is a piece that I was working on for my mother-in-law when she died.  She was only 80 lbs at the time and tinnie, tiny. I never finish that piece because I didn't know anyone else that small to give it to.  Since then I forgot what size needles I was using or the pattern.  I keep it as a reminder of my love for her.)

 Each design  represents something.  One is the tree of life - my you have a long life.  Another is a heart and that is my you love last a long time.  Another one is a symbol for money - may you have lots of it and a different one is for wisdom.  I can't remember all that these were suppose to represent.  I wish I had my grandmother here to tell me what they mean again.. 

 One of the last thing my grandmother taught me how to do was to quilt.  Quilting was her least favorite thing to do and so she was not into it very much.  But she did attempt to show me.  I guess I picked up on that but it never really stuck with me.  That was something I had to learn on my own.  And the reason being was when I was in high school she decided I needed to make a hope chest.  I started this piece of embroidery for my bed.  My family used to joke about it since I worked on it so infrequently.  They said I would never get married at the rate I was working on it.  And in a way they were right I didn't get married for the first time until I was just months shy of 30.  The piece was embroidered by then but it wasn't quilted. Later I had to take a class and join a quilting club to find out how to quilt it, but I did do it and here it is.  

 

 All of this was to lead up to the main purpose of this post.  I haven't been doing a lot of blogging lately simply because I've been involved with other things like the pumpkin patch ( here ) (Now I'll see what blogger is going to let me down load so I can figure out what to write about.  - I can't stand the way blogger is being so picky about which images it will let me down load.)

   One of the things I'm doing is working on another quilt.  I got this quilt kit years ago.  I was remodeling my house and saw it and thought that this would be perfect for my bed.  I bought it but then my sewing machine broke and I stopped sewing for awhile.  The sewing bug got me and I got a new machine only it was so complicated I didn't enjoy working on it.  I had to wait a couple of years later to afford a simpler one that was more to my style of sewing.  The other one I gave to a textile art major that was thrilled to get it.  Its taken me awhile to get around to it but I finally am. Here's what I've done so far.

The other hobby that I have that I love to do and takes mega amount of time is to weave.  In September/ October I usually have demonstrations to give at various places because there is usually a break in the weather. Some of the events I've gone to are Colonial Days, Red River Revel, Family days at the State museum and Pioneer days@ LSUS.  I've gotten some table top looms for these events so that I can transport them easily and they have to be set up for those demonstrations since most people don't like to see you warping the looms (besides it takes too much concentration power to do it while you are being constantly interrupted - its best to do it at home w/ relatively peace & quiet.) 
So now I'm going to see what loom images blogger will let me use.  This really is getting old and frustrating.

 This is my newest loom.  Isn't  it a beauty. Its got four harnesses. 

Look at the stuff I can do on it!! This is a modified chevron pattern.

Modified chevron pattern on a 4 harness loom

Here's a very simple basic one that gives a tabby or twill weave.

Simple one harness loom with a tabby weave

 Here's my inkle loom .  This gives you a different type of weave since the warp threads wrap around the weft.

 

inkle loom

 Here's my inkle again with a different project on it.  Look at how complicated it is.  Each thread has to be threaded individually.  Needless to say it takes a lot of time and patients to thread a loom.  I do it because it is such a lost art and I feel children need to see how cloths were made before modern machines could make them.

Inkle loom

And the final thing I worked on was making beaded jewelry from the material I had gotten at the gem & mineral show ( here  ). Here's just a few that I made.  Most of the time when I was making them I tried to keep someone in mind as I would make them. I would try to picture that person wearing them. This blue ended up being given to a friend of mind with blue eyes.

 Like when I was doing this one I thought of Silver Fox being in the dessert and  What she would wear.

I had Dana in mind when I made this green one. Hers is very similar but she has a brass dragon fly in the center and is longer. Its made from adventurine.  I liked it so much I kept  this one for myself. 

  Or this one - I thought of Anne Jefferson. Its tigers eye with howlite hearts.

 And this one was for Evelyn at Geolnerys.

 I had some with other people in mind like Dana and Jessica but they didn't get down loaded. 

 With the necklaces I make them to be given away at Mardi Gras time and for gifts.  I now muse upon when I can give some of these away. I'm hoping that maybe someday I'll meet up with a few of the geobloggers so that I can give them one a set of beads.  

Now you can see why I've not been blogging much and geology isn't the only thing I'm musing upon.