Behind the scenes at the museum

This week has been pretty eventful. 2 days off work sick (neither too serious), FAR too much work to do, and (best of all) our latest museum exhibition, part of the You Are What You Ate project. 'The Dark Side of eating' opens today in Pontefract Museum!!! I popped over in the week - it's really weird seeing a gallery part way though change over. All of the structure was there, and Andrew and Dave were busy painting and - wait for it - wall papering!!! Modern museum exhibitions often print their panels onto wall paper, and then just paste them onto the walls!! I took some pics of the work in progress:








The first panel to go up - the introduction!

I'm sure the boys had it looking perfect by last night - I'm popping over again on Wednesday, and will take a few more photos then!

Despite all of this going on, I did find quite a bit of time for my stitching! I've almost finished all of the crochet flowers I've been doing to make a scarf - I've enough yarn left for one more grey flower:



I've also been carrying on with Eeyore's problem. I was actually really enjoying this piece last night! I'm more than 1/4 done, I'd like to get to half way before I switch to another piece - otherwise I'll never finish it!!



Happy stitching!

A Little Archaeology

OK, so when I set this blog up I did say that occasionally I would post about my other passion, archaeology...

At the moment I am busy working on a ton of different projects (possibly too many, who knows...), but the one that is really exciting (well, one of the ones that is really exciting...) is called 'From Cemetery to Clinic', funded by JISC.

Basically, with a group of colleagues in both Archaeological Sciences and Visual Computung we are creating an online resource about a medeival cemetery in Chichester. It's not just any cemetery, but was attached to a leper hospital, which later became an alms house. And lots of the skeletons show signs of leproy. We (well, my clever colleagues, not me!) are busy creating 3D laser scans, with textured overlays, of the affected bones and linking this into a GIS map of the excavated cemetery - with lots of information about the skeletons. It's a short project (just 5 months), and scarily we're half way through - but we now have a blog about the project and what we are doing - so if you are interested in my day job, or archaeology in general, then please do have a look.


Finger bone with a groove at the far end - this is caused by the contraction of hand muscles in leprosy - the person would have been unable to straighten their fiungers, a feature called 'claw hand deformity'.

Still here!!!

I am still here, just rushed off my feet! I've been meaning to post for over a week, and even took photos ready to share, but just didn't find the time. Work has been busy (it always is!), but this semester I'm also busy advising an archaeological excavation - which means a long day once a week driving to site (2.5-3 hours), advising, excavating (if I get chance) and having meetings before driving home - 13-15 hour days, which do leave me a little tired for a few days afterwards. Not that I'm complaining - it's years since I've worked on an excavation, and I am loving it!!

The other thing that's kept me busy is planning our trip to the US in April. Yesterday I finally got our flights booked (and from our local airport at a not too bad price, which is unusual - usually I have to drive to Manchester). The bad news is a 6am departure, which means we should be at the airport by about 3am... thank goodness it's only 15 mins away! My conference is in Albuquerque, and this seemed a good opportunity for a road trip to see some of the SW. So we are flying to Vegas, visiting the Grand Canyon, Mountain Valley and the Mesa Verde, then Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Ed's coming along for a 2 1/5 week holiday... hopefully he'll find things to do in Albuquerque while I'm working. Any tips on places to visit (and needlework shops especially) gratefully received!!!

I also joined weight watchers. 2 weeks in (I weigh in on Mondays). I lost 3.5 lbs last week, and now my (admittedly always baggy jeans) are so loose I can take them off without undoing them. I don't think they are decent enough for anywhere other than in the house now!! Hopefully my smaller jeans will start to fit soon - most now do up, but are a little snug!

Anyway, with all that going on I've not done a huge amount of stitching, but I have done more than these photos, which I think I took last Saturday:


Fantasy Triptych - I've been working on the background today, and will go back to it as soon as I have posted this


Postman Pat - worked on this during the week (a little) - he has a face now!

In my last post I said I'd share my latest 2 framed projects:

Elliot and Buttons Wedding Day - for Jane and Keith. I really love the way the 'aged' silver frame sets this off


You were hatched birth sampler for Jamie and Matt - again I'm delighted with the framing job

I'll take new photos of FT and PP when it's light - I forgot today. But they are coming along brilliantly. Neither will be as far along as I hoped at the end of the month (ie bedtime!), but both are much further along than at the start.

A week goes by...

..and I didn't get much stitching time! For the last week my good friend Annia was staying - we are co-editing an archaeology book on late Anglo-Saxon cemeteries - so we were busy busy busy! We had great fun, survived on the great combination of tea, chocolate and curry, and actually did a lot of work! Because I barely picked up a needle all week, I don't have any stitchy photos to share, so instead here's some photos of a field trip we did to Undercliffe cemetery in Bradford with some of our students (Annia also gave a lecture on post-medieval funerary archaeology while she was here):


Don't blink!





Quaker graves in the foreground



Don't let the stunning blue sky fool you - it was perishing, we narrowly missed a few hail storms...

Tomorrow I fly to Chicago for an anthropology conference, next Saturday I pop down to see Phil, Amanda and Jack in St Peters Missouri, and I get back on Tuesday. I've packed pretty much everything, I just need to select a travelling project... see you all later!

Viking Unst

Ok, now for a little archaeology! (and a shameless beg for votes)

Our university is a co-partner in the Viking Unst Project, the excavation of a Viking settlement on the most northern island in the UK. It's been nominated for a Heritage Lottery Fund award for 'best in heritage'and I'm asking blog readers to vote for it at: www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards.

I've just spoken to Zoe, one of the team who are currently en-route to Unst for the excavation. They left Bradford on Sunday, and are still 2 ferry rides away from Unst, apparently they missed a ferry this morning and are trying to pass the time skimming stones somewhere in the Shetlands. They'd really appreciate your vote.

Here is a pic of the excavation of a long house (courtesy of the Northern Atlantic Research Unit - That's why I phoned Zoe ;) ):


And this is a photo of their coolest find from last year, a small stone carved into a little man: