Sleepy Lisa.

The Kansas State History Museum is a mere 35 minutes away from Harveyville. Today, Gord and I went to check it out. Luckily for us, today was the first day of their new Kansas Quilt Exhibit. They have 27 beautiful quilts. Several by Josephine Craig, and Emporia, KS quilter - the first of which I am standing in front of in the photos below:

Most of the quilts were from the 1800’s.  There was one recent quilt on display - from 1986, made by Nellie Bird. Amazingly, Nellie herself was touring the exhibit at the exact same time as us. I made sure to tell her how gorgeous her quilt was. Seeing these makes we want to take up quilting. But I think I should get through my yarn stash before introducing another hobby. Gord is pictured next to Nellie’s awesome postage stamp quilt. She made this quilt for an exhibit on Kansas at Bloomindales in NYC in 1986. She put a price of $10,000 on it to prevent anyone from purchasing it. No one did, and she passed it on to her children, who then donated it to the museum.

As any good museum on the Plains, this museum has a great collection of Native American items. I love these boot moccasins - I need to see if I can find a replica somewhere.

They also have a massive amount of Westward expansion memorabilia. One of which is the incredibly creepy Calvare doll - its a French doll from the 1920’s. I cannot imagine the little girl who owned this doll snuggling with her as she goes to sleep at night. I would have nightmares.

Speaking of snuggling, Sleepy Lisa found a Jack-o-Lantern after her own heart laying down in front of the museum taking a nap. Of course, I had to stop and give it a snuggle.

The KS History Museum also has a little over a miles of winding trails on the grounds. Gord and I took advantage of the nice weather and took a stroll. Here is a sad looking photo of us in a gazebo. The 5:00pm light doesn’t do us justice. Lesson learned.

I picked up some pamphlets on other Topeka sights. My goal is to do something interesting and educational at least once a week.