Bad Knees Travel

 I got some paper samples and some of my Origami friends wanted to know what I learned. Much too much info for putting on fBorg, so I am putting it here. I did the same fold on all of the papers so that I could evaluate the creasy ness, and feel.  All of the paper needed to be cut to squares. And the quantities are big. First thing Uline is a great company. I have dealt with them for years.  My order took 19 hours to arrive. But there are no small quantities. But the samples were free, but had creases in them And their packing has lots of plastic, and a catalog.  This blog post is not intended as a promotion for them, but as a way of sharing what I learned about these different papers. 50 lb Black Kraft Paper - 48" x 720' This is some of the nicest Kraft paper available.  It took creases cleanly. Note how nicely the tail folded.  It kept a curve and the box on the back of the crane popped out nicely.  I think this may be the same Kraft paper found at P...

Walking around Barmouth  we came across this. Which may be one of my oddest finds in a while. It seems that a ship sank off the coast here around 1790. The ship was possibly  The Bronze Bell.  It was full of valuable stuff like coins and Carrera marble,  and lots of cannon. It was discovered in 1978 by archeological scuba divers. More on that that. . One of the things that they hauled up was this huge hunk of marble.  Marble is soft enough for molusks to make holes in, as seen in the second photo. Sculptor Frank Cocksey did this beautiful work exposing the beautiful white marble inside the big piece of stone. You can read more at  this site . Looking for information about the sculpture, like why did it get moved across the road two years ago, and why does it not show on google maps? There is a lot of bad internet information,  and a couple of interesting clues for me to hunt down tomorrow. 

If a picture is worth a thousand words,  then this picture is worth a few words of explanation.  It was taken in Oxford on a busy corner.  Notice the narrow street.  This is a very busy street with coach size busses turning as the streets become a pedestrian area. The signal lights become crucial as clueless tourists try to cross.  As I stood on this corner,  I was hearing a workman bragging "look at what I got done!".  "So you are the one mucking up the street " So he told me the whole story. It seems that a crucial underground wire controlling the signal has failed.  It was probably installed just after WWII. Not a bad lifespan.  But That underground wire goes under that bit of scaffolding.  That is the corner piece of a 4 story scaffolding that wraps around a block size building,  half way through a 2 to 3 year project.  Go back and look at that photo again. And see the bigger picture. 

Imagine you are driving in far rural Midwales.  Narrow, hedge lined roads with barely enough room for two cars to pass in the wide spots. You come around a curve to the top of a hill. You reach a cross roads, you find a group of mad men, in tatters, brandishing sticks. Women with hankies  frolicking.  Ignoring the threat of rain. The Bettwys Triangle Art and Music   with  The Shropshire Bedlams and Martha Rhoden's Tuppenny Dish.  What can you do, but park and watch . An old church,  with beautiful carved headstones.  The rain held off until the last crack of the sticks then  it poured.

So my plan of adding to one post every day didn't work,  so I will post when I can, and go back and fill in later.  Check in every day or so to see what I am up to. The blogger app is still rotating my photos  in random fashion.  I promise to rotate when I can get on a real computer.  On with the narrative.  Muckross House in Killarney is one of those manor houses built for people with too much money,  and not enough  sense. I am finding that the manors in Ireland are the newest builds of this sort of thing. All trying to be like the Downton Abby,  but those were built over centuries by very old families. Only the Americans like Hearst came after in building manors.  There is a lot about how Queen  Victoria  visited in August 1861. The house was 20 years old at the time. A wing was created and furnished just for her use. Small as she was, i cannot imagine her and Albert sleeping in this tiny ...