Scenes from Jerusalem

We had a 3-day break to mark the midpoint of the dig, and I went to Jerusalem!

Still here!

Hi everyone--I'm still in Israel (almost at the halfway point). My blogging efforts are focused on the Kesley Museum dig blog for the time being. Please head over for a bit to see what we're up to. My goal is to post at least one thing a day (there might be a delay in when they show up on the blog though). The blog comes in different sections:

the main blog
our find of the week
and dig life

If you have any questions or are curious about some aspect of our work on the archaeological dig, send me a note on the comments and I'll try to address it through the Kelsey blog. thanks!

A week in Israel

I've been working in Israel for a week now, and everything has been fantastic. We're staying in a lovely guest house with gorgeous gardens and a beautiful view of the valley below:


Miriam Avitan, who runs the guest house with her husband, makes us 3 fantastic meals a day. Last week for lunch we had homemade falafel:


I do my conservation work in a covered shed at the guest house, while most of the team works at the dig site in the mornings. I was able to visit it for the first time last week to see how things were going. They have a gorgeous view from up there of vineyards, and you can even see the Lebanese border on nearby hills.


This summer I will be repairing a whole lot of pottery. Although I do something very similar in the museum setting, here I have added challenges. For example, even though the ceramic fragments are sorted into groups before they come to me, there are usually a few sherds that don't belong. The two pots below were found in the same bag. I also don't have any idea of what the pot will look like when it's completed--or if I have all the pieces. It's like doing a difficult jig saw puzzle without the box, and with a handful of pieces missing.


The cool part about it is that I am the very first person to work on these objects, and the first to see them complete! The pot below was really challenging to put together--if you look closely you'll see that it was actually thrown in two pieces and put together so that the wheel marks run in a different direction than you'd normally expect. It took me a little while to figure out what was going on!


I hope everyone is enjoying a great summer. Although my internet connection is super slow, I'll try to add some pictures to the blog on occasion.

Summer slowdown

Early Monday morning I'll be leaving the States and heading to Israel for 8 weeks. I was offered a chance to work as a conservator on an archaeological excavation, and jumped at the opportunity. This will be my first time working on a dig, my first visit to Israel--and I'm very much looking forward to it. As a conservator on a dig, I will be stabilizing and putting together artifacts that are excavated by the team. It will be an intense work environment, where we will work from early in the morning until the evening 6 days a week. I will be knitting as much as possible, but do expect this blog to remain pretty quiet in the upcoming months. I'll try to post interesting pictures and stories if I can. In the meantime, I will also be guest blogging about my professional work as a conservator over at the Kelsey Museum website:

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/kelseymuseum.digdiary/blog_

If you've ever been curious about life and work on a dig, do keep an eye out for updates. And feel free to send questions my way!

Best wishes for a great summer,
Meghan

Knitting obsessively

I finished my second shawl of the summer--just in time for the thermometer to reach 100 degrees. This is the fantastic textured shawl by Dark Trico, which is available for free through Ravelry. I knit it using a soft green hue of Ultra Alpaca, which I had originally used for my first garment project several years ago. I'm really happy with the way this turned out, and I can see myself loving this during winter visits back to Chicago. [Ravelry link]

I've also cast on for 2.5 other sweaters (the .5 is still a swatch, but will be my traveling project this summer). Above is Anais by Nora Gaughan, which I'm knitting from a large cone of sport weight alpaca I bought for $10 at a yarn sale. It's a really deep eggplant color. I'm thinking of trying to make long sleeves ('cause what good is an alpaca tank top?), and am also thinking of modifying the neck line a la Carrieoke. Although I realize that the lace inserts are the whole idea behind this pattern, I do think it makes quite a nice shape without them. We'll see.

The final project is that second vintage sweater from one of my previous posts--the one with the placket neck. I was nearly finished with the back of that a couple nights ago. I started winding a second skein of yarn when I realized that a colony of mites (insects) had decided to hatch their babies in the box of yarn. If this sounds gross, let me tell you, it was. The yarn got put in zip lock bags and was banished to the freezer for 3 days. It's currently defrosting (to give the remaining eggs a chance to hatch, if they haven't died yet) and will then go back into the freezer for several more days. After that, I'll vacuum the dead insects off, and try to forget about what happened as I knit up the rest. This freezing procedure is similar to what we do in museums when there are infestations (a fairly common occurrence). I've never heard of wool-eating mites, so I'm thinking they just liked the dark cozy yarn-in-shipping-box environment. Blech.

New recipes

Meghan's Summer Garden Pasta
(inspired by the bountiful fresh zucchini, scallions, and rosemary in my garden)

1 small zucchini, cut in small cubes
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon fresh rosemary, minced
2 green onions, chopped
About 1/3 of a package of linguine pasta
A bit of butter or olive oil
salt and pepper
Grana padano parmesan and mozzarella cheeses, or what you have on hand
A squeeze of fresh lemon juice

Prepare the pasta, drain and set aside. Saute the garlic and zucchini and in the butter or olive oil until tender. Add the rosemary, cook for about a minute more. Toss in the green onion, and the pasta. Stir to incorporate. Add salt, pepper, and cheese to your liking. Add a nice squeeze of fresh lemon juice, stir for a bit until the cheese is nice and melty. Serve hot. This will make one very large serving, or two normal-sized portions.

Falafel with homemade tahini sauce, cucumber and pita.

Potato gratin with emmental cheese

Thrift score

While perusing the local thrift stores for clothes to bring on my upcoming summer trip, I happened to find two pieces of Kanga fabric from Kenya for 99 cents each! The other wasn't quite my style, with large overlapping red and purple polka dots, but I did buy this green and yellow one. In trying to remember the name of this type of textile, I happened to find some examples of Obama Kanga. Pretty cool.