By Sue Fenwick
Sue Fenwick
Everywhere you go, even if it’s on vacation with your left-brained husband looking at airplane engines, there are patterns: A blue sky over Monticello, the glittery gold web of the transmitting and receiving antennas on a satellite, a row of soon-to-be antiquated telephone booths, the window at a bank in Charlottesville, Va. 
The snapshots from a vacation can be turned into much more than a scrapbook of photographs. They can provide the inspiration for some very creative projects.
Recently, I spent a week in the Washington, D.C., area on vacation with my husband, Jeff. We started in Jamestown, Va., and toured the settlement. Jamestown is on a point of land surrounded by inlet waterways. The water lapped at the edges of the grassy shores and glittered under sunny blue skies. There is a museum that is made of copper and glass in Jamestown. The exterior is copper, so it’s burnt orange and teal, and it is elevated on pylons, so it seems to float above the lawn.
Monticello
After Jamestown, we drove to Monticello, near Charlottesville, Va. We drove down tree-lined streets and past old taverns and churches. Thomas Jefferson’s home is strategically placed on a mountain overlooking his beloved University of Virginia and the town below.
Monticello is full of books, quirky rooms and maps of young America. The garden is planted with beautiful and rare flowers and trees, all overlooking the shadowy Appalachians in the distance.
We travelled from the rural countryside, having walked the paths of explorers and American Indians, to the ultra-modern house of American ingenuity: the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va. We saw the space shuttle Discovery, satellites hanging from the ceilings, the Enola Gay and the SR-71, the fastest plane in the world.
We watched a movie on the Hubble Space Telescope and saw photographs of real nebulae and stars being born. The nebulae were pink, gold and blue against the eternal black of outer space.
What inspires you to be creative?
Sue Fenwick is a freelance writer who lives in Springfield, Mo. She writes every Monday.
Star Stitch 
It’s true. There are patterns everywhere you look. Great blog!