What we do to amuse

We are often asked "what do you do for fun while in camp?"

The quick answer, at least for me, is "everything!" It seems like there isn't a moment that I'm not enjoying Antarctica, even when working on broken equipment in the freezing cold or toiling to batten down the hatches during a katabatic wind.

There are a few routine things we do as a group that are a lot of fun. Cooking comes to mind, with conversation around the dinner table focusing on animated story-telling. We also show a weekly movie (with popcorn, of course) inside the Jamesway, although it's sometimes difficult to find a film that matches our disparate tastes. This year, it looks like a new activity has been added to our repertoire: "Felting" hats.

Pat Clabuesch (Steve's mom) knitted a red hat for each of us to wear for our group picture. The plan was for us to felt the hats, so that they fit snugly. That turned out to be a problem -- no matter how much we boiled, stirred, and swirled the hats, we just couldn't get them to felt correctly. We still had a lot of fun felting ... and posing for pictures.

Shawn's hat is properly felted (I guess it's now a "cap"). Mine stayed rather floppy. Henry preferred to wear his like a French painter's cap ... or perhaps a Cardinal's headgear, given his prayer-like pose? I don't know for sure.

I do know that we had a lot of fun felting, thanks to Steve's mom.