After Chicago Renegade, my husband and I drove into Wisconsin to visit the House On The Rock. I’m not sure I’ve ever been in Wisconsin before- it is beautiful even though they’ve had a terrible drought all summer. We were lucky enough to be there a few weeks after they’d finally had rain and although the corn was only about 3 ft high, everything was very green and pretty.

This is the display in one of the the Ladies Restrooms!

I was initially confused about what kind of collection I was looking at. It is a wide variety of stuff. Some is rare, special and amazing, some looked very close to junk to me- especially when I was looking at something I know about. I readjusted my expectations.

There was an amazing collection of automata, mostly musical- from individual self-playing instruments to whole orchestras!

I was saddened by how many were in poor repair. Visitors can buy tokens and choose which they’d like to see in action. One of the first that we tried was a mechanical banjo. There were 4 “fingers” but only 2 of them were working. It was terrible. Other ones that we tried were wonderful in spite of the broken bits, but I really wish someone cared enough to spend money on keeping these treasures going.

Wonderful collection of circus posters in the cafe.

A player piano with an interesting way of storing the scroll- definitely worth 50¢ to see that in action.

Here you can see the scale of some of these “music boxes”.

This one filled an entire room- And it wasn’t the only one!

There were a number of these planters out in the parking lots. I’m not sure you can tell how big these are- well over 10 ft tall I think.

And next I’ll post some photos of the NIADA doll conference and my too short visit to Maker Faire.

Thanks for all the nice notes- really I’m fine. I mostly wanted to let people know why things were going to be quiet around here. We all need time to reflect.

Currently I am planning to schedule some classes in the next few months- I’m thinking that it would be fun to focus on projects that people would like to make for holiday gifts- little felt ornaments, owls, tiny worlds… and if I can figure out about sewing machines, the fish. I’m wondering about weekends versus weekdays. Also, just a reminder, I am happy to schedule a class for any group at your convenience if you have a least 4 people ready to go.

I’ll be back soon!