if yesterday was sheep day then today was culture day.  The Textile Musem is right next door to the school, here is the museum from my studio window.

 There is a sod roof and it is a lovely building.  The original museum opened in 1971 and was housed in the two small building that are closest to the school.  The new building opened in 2003, this is their web site:

http://www.simnet.is/textile/index_e.htm

It has absolutley exquisite hand made items that are works of art, from knitting to weaving to hardanger to bobbin lace, etc., etc.  You can touch the pieces if you wear gloves and with so much eye candy it was difficult to know where to look.  The museum was open today, it does not open for the season until June 1st, because today was museums day across Iceland.  They had music at the open day, two musicians from the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, a woman on violin and a man on xylophone and lots of other interesting things that made sound. They did about 6 or 7 songs with him playing the xylophone and her on violin, she was talking about the songs but as it was all in Icelandic it was hard to get the gist.  For the last part of their performance she told nursery rhymes, some so old that folks I talked with after said they had never heard them.  He made music on rocks set up like a xylophone, an odd little keyboard that he blew into while he played it, crinkled up plastic wrap, saw blades from three circular saws struck and they sounded like church bells and on and on.  The last part was much more intersting to me as you did not need to know the language to understand some of the actions. There were quite a few people in the museum so we can go back next week when they are setting up a new exhibit and take our time looking at all of the wonderful works of art. 

They have some old equipment on display and this commercial spinning machine that was cranked by hand struck my fancy.

   
 

Pretty intersting old piece of machinery that looks like it would probably still work today.

But hard to get a lot of work done if you are out on the town, I did get all of the components finished for a 3D sculpture and it is going to be much better than the last one, I can tell by how the colours are already starting to blend at the prefelt stage.  I made 5 cords and did the piece they will be put into, here it is laid out ready for the next stage.

  The cords will be sewn into channels and then the felting will begin.  By this time tomorrow night it will be drying and on Tuesday morning I should be able to cut into it.
So not lots to show for a day’s work, we had two different groups threw today so I did some talking about felting if that counts.  Thanks for reading.