Back in time

Monday we went to a new museum.  It's the Michigan Heritage Museum in Whitehall, Michigan and is set up as different site dwellings,  so you can walk through time from no dwellings to a 1900s farmhouse.  What was most impressive was the careful research - this place isn't cute and hokey - and there was nothing kids couldn't touch or take part in.  Very well done.

 As soon as we walked onto the grounds and saw the mastodon skeleton  Elizabeth said, "this is MY kind of place!" and they picked up a paint brush and started cleaning mastodon bones. They would have spent an hour doing this if we didn't direct them to the next place.

 This native home was complete with fires burning outside to skins on the bench inside.  Adelaide knew what the animal pelts were.  The only one she was stumped by was the rabbit pelt!  She knew the beaver but not the rabbit!

 The interpretive boards were colorful, informative and easily imagined.

 Inside Adelaide is explaining something to the interpreter.  She is not a shy child and really got into this experience.

 Elizabeth was pounding corn in the large mortar and pestle.  There was a spear for fishing, a net for catching fish made of woven plant parts, this mortar and pestle was carved.   Absolutely everything here was hands on.  And on a Monday, we had the place almost to ourselves. 

 Elizabeth drew a picture of each dwelling we saw in her book. It was "research."

 While Adelaide said the Native American wigwam was her favorite, she really took to this log sawing station outside the lumberjack cabin.  You can see sawdust at the bottom so they were really making the saw work.  But she didn't leave this alone.  After Elizabeth worked with her for a few minutes Adelaide asked one of the interpreters to do it with her. We toured the cabin only to come out and find Adelaide sawing with yet a different interpreter!

 She has skinny little duck legs and even skinnier arms and she worked this with all her might. It wasn't easy.  See the sawdust?

Here's my latest project.  Boy, it feels good to say that!  I am doing two of these table runners so each  scene is done four times.  I absolutely loved the background fabric.  I don't do sparkly fabric at all, but on this those little dots are gold and it looks like stars in the sky.