Auugh. So hot. So….so damn hot. Going outside’s pretty much like this:
Holing up in the one air-conditioned room drinking iced beverages in the dark helps (and is what I’d be doing anyway regardless of temperature), but today is a day to reflect on cold thoughts. The iciest one I have is visiting The House On The Rock in Wisconsin in the dead of winter; we were the only people there (well, that we could see; even taking the off-season abbreviated tour in the parts of the house open took us 5 hours, so it’s likely we could have missed someone between the larger-than-life-sized Squid and Whale battle room and the underground Christmas Village).
The weather was a type of cold not known on the East Coast, a bitter cold that bit into your bones and numbed you in minutes, apparently an average winter’s day in the cheese state. We hustled through it to see room after room after room after room of the most random collections (carousels, automaton bands, model ships, hearses), our breath showing even inside. Aaah, I can almost feel the drafty breezes now.
Which all has little to do with this week’s pattern, another state flower embroidery from the State Quilt project. The Wisconsin state flower is wood violets, a flower so special Rhode Island, New Jersey and Illinois decided to choose it too. Really guys? Jersey has some fantastic swamplands, you couldn’t go with the more endangered Swamp Pink? Illinois, you have fields, what, are you too good for the Smooth Blue Aster, Rose Vervain, or Quaker Ladies? Rhode Island, you are tiny and birthed H.P. Lovecraft so you get a pass.
