Pages

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

dinosaurs, butterflies, and....giant crocheted coral reefs! oh my!

The kids and I spent the day at the Smithsonian Natural History museum today...one of my favorite places.  We always spend quite a bit of time with the dinosaurs, and I seem to always take the same photos over and over, but here is one from today that I loved:
We could title it, "Conversation with a stegosaurus".  Although we spent most of our time in the prehistoric today, we also wandered around quite a bit.  The butterfly display was a special treat, we usually pass as you have to pay to go in, but turns out it is free on Tuesdays! I took way too many pictures, here are some: 






Lastly, but certainly not least, was an exhibit that was crazy and beautiful and amazing and a little bit ridiculous.  It is an exhibit titled "The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef":  it is an entire life sized coral reef filling a large room, and it is entirely made out of YARN!  I am a knitter and not a crochet expert by any means but this was truly incredible. It was art, and yet craft,  biology, and math (making all those crazy hyperbolic curves) and so it appealed to so many sides of my personality that it was almost sensory overload. If I hadn't been with a 5 year old and a 2 year old, I probably would have spent a very long time looking at the details.  Here are some of them, and remember...ALL of it is crocheted by hand.  Many hands went into its creation.
it only looks like a giant messy pile of yarn from a distance...

...then you start to notice details....
and it becomes wonderful and beautiful!

Not just granny's crocheted doilies and toilet paper covers, is it?
 What a wonderful day we had.  Hope you enjoyed it, too!

No comments:

Post a Comment