Books and dead things

More museum time. I know, I know, boring, right? Maybe I'm crazy, but I actually really like museums. I usually find a surprising amount of inspiration in things like...rocks. And old maps. And stuff like that. It was scorching hot in London all weekend so I seized the opportunity to stay inside all day and still feel like I was improving myself somehow. Here are the results:

The British Library:
I went there, like an idiot, to check out a book. They don't check out books. They have the equivalent of 8 stories of library under the actual building and that only stores half of their collections. You have to be a hard-core research junkie to get down there and you better have years of free time because you have to read that 5,000 page study inside the library.

They do, however have some pretty awesome exhibits for tourists. Don't turn up your nose, you probably fit into that category. There were rooms upon rooms of ancient maps of misshapen countries/continents, and a section of fantastic manuscripts. Some examples: a Bible from the 4th century, a copy of Alice in Wonderland illustrated by Salvidor Dali, the original Handel's Messiah, an essay Charlotte Bronte wrote as a teenager, scribbled out lyric drafts from the Beatles... those items alone are reason enough to check it out!

The British Natural History Museum:
At first I was thinking, "oh no, not scientific dead stuff!" but the second I stepped inside this fantastic building I changed my mind. Two words: so cool.



Really cool dead stuff:

(Apparently that was a giant amphibian once)

(Giant walking egg with head/terrifying armadillo)

(Whoa.)

(Dodo! Favorite extinct animal by far, simply because of it's name and it's use of the caucus race)

(Supposed bits of the missing link...hmm...sorry, not buying it. Apparently you can tell if it was ambidextrous by looking at that tooth. Not really, but I wouldn't put it past them.)

Then come the rocks. Once again, call me crazy, but I find rocks really really inspiring. Check out the patterns on the bits of hard dirt in the next few pics - don't they look a bit like batik fabrics? I'm completely obsessed. I want to make LCS collections out of all of these!

(This one doesn't exactly inspire me, but it is from outer space and they think it's been floating around since creation which is pretty cool regardless.)

The Hope Diamond was on display, along with several other fantastic gems, but for some reason their perfect clarity doesn't inspire me as much as the imperfect jumbles of color in the other stones.

The following two pictures are totally unrelated but if it were legal and I had time for a pet I would want one of these:

(So ridiculously cute!)