As I sit here trying to put words on the screen, I hear Søren and Silas discussing the difference between the Union and Confederate uniforms. It is 10:40am on Sunday morning and already our day has been so full. (Though our bellies remain empty.)

I dream often, of escaping the constant chaos and duties of our current lives to explore the world with my fellows. This would mean taking them out of school, eliminating the familiar, abandoning systems, saying farewell to family and friends and making the most of the unknown. What a friggin' dream. 

Until then, I neglect my duties - the laundry (clean since Monday) that needs folding, a house that needs a thorough going-over, boys that need bathing and piles and piles of Peg and Awl lists that need conquered. This morning the boys awoke with projects on their minds which included testing out the already blackened scratchpaper and cutting out and putting together articulated armies of soldiers and monsters from a Figures in Motion book we picked up in Gettysburg. 

Together the boys and I searched the house for tools to scratch with. I flipped through books for inspiration as Silas chanted the Star Wars theme song. Though our 'things to scratch with' were a little rusty and limited, the boys figured out how to make different marks on the paper, which was our goal. We also found brass fasteners and put some bodies together...

 Of course my favourite part was when Søren held up his Transformation of History...

Vampire Lincoln and Ghostly Barton:

Here is some of our inspiration - varied, though I must confess, a bit on the (usual) gloomy side.

No. 1: Edward Gorey

No matter the project, Edward Gorey is up for discussion. His work always connects to what we do and in this case we were exploring the variety of marks that he used to fill leach page with texture and tale.

No. 2 Heironymus Bosch

Another favourite, this time H.B. was great for showing how to load up a page with characters and monsters not in a straight line. Søren, like Edward Gorey, tends to line his characters up, adding page after page as his army grows.

No. 3 Flashlight by Lizi Boyd

Such a fantastic book. There are so many little details that make this book wonderful. Here we look at the marks on the black background combined with the effect of the flashlight brightening everything in its path.  

The weekends have been our adventure spots lately. We have forgone grand escapes to far-away places, settling for close-by weekend road trips which have proven to be quite extraordinary. Our list is mostly comprised of historic spots which are generally surrounded by nature of one kind or another. 

This past weekend found us heading toward Western, PA, a direction I headed once a year, as a child, with my mom and my brother to visit my Grandma and cousins on the Mountaintop upon which they live(d) in Blairsville, PA. A place, my Pop always claimed that had two seasons: August and Winter. This certainly seemed true this October weekend as we drove through hail and snow and sunshine.

Our mission was to collect wood from a friend who called upon us rescue it. Our first stop was Gettysburg. Always fun, though we weren't prepared for 34 degree weather. Cloaked in hoodies and colds, we steered clear of the battlefields and toured the museum. (Which was fantastic!)

We left Gettysburg, a place that changed the course of American history and nearly immediately encountered a very strange and very strangely typical American tourist stop - Mister Ed's Elephant Museum. We couldn't resist. It was a candy shoppe, truly, surrounded by elephant tchotchkes and a mysterious collection of regular human things like hats and flip flops hanging in trees amongst pumpkins, neglected elephants and these Wildermenn:

We were quite fortunate, that evening, to find Horn O' Plenty in Bedford for dinner. Western PA was never, in my childhood anyway, a place for good food. More often, we stuffed ourselves with Blizzards from Dairy Queen and passed by Quick Marts &c). Next stop, and late, was a visit with Grandma, born in 1927 (that makes her 88!), full of pep and so excited for our unexpected visit. When we pulled into her driveway (past the olde shoppe that use to be my Grandpap's, the shoppe my mom painted robin's egg blue when she was 6 or so - she told me this one day when we were visiting and Søren was a baby, and I peeled a peeling layer from the brick and sure enough, robin's egg blue on the inside!) My grandma stood by the door, as I remember her always doing, when we arrived and as we left. We stayed up til midnight talking. I love gathering bits of stories and memories, and neglect this all too often. 

The next morning we awoke, played Mille Born, had breakfast and headed toward Indiana. The sun shone bright, though the chill, propelled by the wind, snaked through our hoodies and into our bones as Walter and Joseph cut and sorted slabs of Oak, the boys ran amongst the rows of felled trees as I often did in my Frogger dreams as a kid, and I documented what I could with camera clicks and pen scratches.

We are lucky to have our boys near so often. There is always something to explore, something to learn, and people to meet. Next trip, at the end of November, will find us on the road again, this time heading South for Renegade Austin, followed up by a week in Dallas to set up a Peg and Awl showroom at The Dallas Market along side Coral and Tusk and others we cannot wait to meet!

Søren drawing, Joseph sawing. 

Silas draws whilst Exxon looks up for a snuggle.  

When was it decided that bringing your kids to work was a bad idea? Separation in general seems to be a strange and unfortunate part of our culture.  At the Peg and Awl workshoppe, Søren and Silas, like Shop Kids all over the world, get to see people making things all day long.  Here they dive into piles o' trash and extract bits, confirming literally, as does Peg and Awl, the trash and treasure cliche. 

I loved Colonial Williamsburg, VA, of course. 

But I never got that feeling that sometimes takes over of actually travelling back in time. (There was a time long ago that I would go to the Philadelphia and walk around for hours with Ben Franklin's autobiography (and a random assortment of Philadelphia pasts) and read and imagine (easily) that I was there, nearly 300 years prior.) (This is something I kind of do(id) whenever I wander(ed), but mostly pre children). 

I enjoyed it more in a Twilight-Zone way. 

And learned a lot a lot - shoemaking, bookbinding, business &c. My most favourite was the brick house. Insanely fascinating and the numbers (10,000 brick fired each year - enough to make a chimney!) were beyond me. I am particularly good at small things.  

The one story I was most fascinated with was the Bowden-Armistead House. Or the woman in it who, it was told, sweeps her porch every Sunday. The mystery here is, that when she was approached by a Rockefeller who wished to purchase her home, she allegedly said, "I am not impressed with your money." This was in 1926, or the project began that year anyway. So Miss Bowden-Armistead (or Mary A. Stephenson) would be 86 years old if she was exactly 0 when she was approached. So perhaps it is a daughter who sweeps. The home was built in the 19th century and endured some modernity like telephone wires that cast wobbly lines on the not dirt road, but then all was sucked back. Buildings, wires, telephones, plumbing. Everything around her into the colonial era. And she remained. And she sweeps. Or her ghost sweeps. 

I really want to know and I kind of don't want to know.

you can see the house on the left...