John Wise

Important Note: This is another series of blog posts where, when the events described within were transpiring, we did not take notes, and so here I am, thousands of years later, attempting to give context to images that, while able to trigger fragments of memories, act as an incomplete picture of the story. Sure enough, we should have been tending to these things without fail, but little did we understand the value of revisiting milestones later in life. And so, without that proverbial further ado, here we go into a murky past.

The graduating class of 2007 “Fall Edition” of Yarn School, as organized by the Harveyville Project, is seen here in all of its “Bad Ass Women of Crafting” glory. I ended up spending more time among these curious women than I thought I would, which elicited the question from a few of them, “What did you think of this experience?” My answer went something like, “I’m floored at the openness and sharing of not only the instructors but of those with complementary skills regarding the fiber arts world. From my world of tech, I’m mostly used to chest-beating secretive bragging of a bunch of alpha males that would never share anything that might help someone else without a financial component.”

This is why we wear clothes as women have historically created, evolved, and worked the tools used for making fabric; well, that’s what anthropologists have come to believe, and it sounds good to me.

What would a three-and-a-half-day workshop be without swag? T-shirts and tote bags were part of the haul.

These are the t-shirts I mentioned and to complete the return to high school sense of things, lockers had been assigned to each participant to store things they didn’t need at every juncture.

This was our room in Social Sciences, which included a chalkboard behind me that we never used as we were too busy to pay much attention.

Finally, this was Blake, our person in the kitchen who prepared our many meals, often vegetarian or vegan. As for the toad, I can’t tell you anything at all about it, but I’ll take a stab at suggesting it was an Eastern narrow-mouthed version of the species.

As you can guess from this photo, we are leaving Kansas after an incredibly satisfying journey into something new.

While not represented photographically, we turned our 4-hour drive into a full half-day affair by stopping here, there, and everywhere.

In our meandering trek back to Oklahoma City for tomorrow morning’s flight, we were stopped by undecipherable crazy registered on this massive steel structure, airing grievances we couldn’t understand. This “used” to be on Highway 64 before entering Perry, meaning that in the intervening 14 years since we passed through, the signs were torn down due to road improvements.

A last stop at the Steak & Catfish Barn because it was that good, followed by this spectacular glow of the last moments of sunset. Our motel was another non-descript, super cheap, nearly embarrassing excuse for lodging, but what the heck, it helps us afford these kinds of amazing adventures.