Rocket Science and Cotton Farming - lots o' pics

[eukarya]

Hi all,

Here's my addition to the challenge.  I call Huntsville, AL my hometown these days and I really wanted to make something for the good old Rocket City.  My main hobby is to paint eggs (which is appropriate considering how big the egg and poultry industry is in rural Alabama).  I've traveled around a fair bit and in no other place have I seen pure rural imagery crashing into high technology like it does here.  In Research Park, there are world class research centers with cotton fields for neighbors.  Imagine denim-clad, Chevy truck-driving folks with thick Southern drawls talking about rocket systems and microchips over "pig sandwiches" at a bbq joint within "spitting distance" of NASA.  I love this town!

Here's the finished piece:
Rockets - Huntsville is the original home of the US Space Program.  The Saturn Rockets were developed here and several old rockets stand guard over the city from the US Space and Rocket Center.


Cotton - Even though Cummings Research Park is reportedly the second largest research park in the United States, and the fourth largest in the world, it is still interspersed with large fields where cotton is grown every year.  Before the rockets, Huntsville made lots of cotton.


Here are some additional views of the Saturn Rockets and cotton fields:



Here are some "in progress" pics... You can see what a mess my desk is:



And finally, here are some pics that show some of what inspired me to make this ornament:
Rockets -


Cotton and Research -



Thank you for looking!  I hope you enjoyed the lovely dichotomy of my hometown as much as I do!

[childs play]

That's really nice! Great imagery. Huntsville is a cool city, I've been there a couple of times. Also, it's my brother-in-law's dream to move there and work for NASA.

[pinkanddinky]

Go Alabama!! (Not the team, the state ) I live in Mobile and went to college in B-ham, although I am originally from TN. Your egg is cool!

[eukarya]

Thanks for the feedback.  I'm glad to know that other people here know and love Alabama in general and "Huntsvegas" in particular. 

[hughsie]

The egg is gorgeous! There's such a lot of town pride captured there as well.

[panda]

The egg is absolutely beautiful......mom and dad lived in Huntsville for 40 yrs.  It is nice city and even after all these years I have not been to the space center.

[Tangerine_Dreams]

Ok, first off "huntsvegas" made me laugh!!  I swear, everything in Alabama gets a "vegas"  at the end of it!!  (a few of our friends thrown a vegas at the end of their cities too lmao)

Those are really pretty fabulous eggs!!! you did a magnificent job!

 I love Huntsville!  Dh is an aerospace engineer as a contractor for Marshall (he works on the external tank) and travels to Huntsville often!  We actually moved there for a month after Hurricane Katrina because that is where they sent all the engineers to work from down here! lol  We could see the Saturn Rockets from our Hotel!!  Dh has a few college buddies that work at Redstone.

I'd totally move to Huntsville, if it weren't for all those darned "bama" fans!!  (dh is an Auburn grad lol)

[eukarya]

Ok, first off "huntsvegas" made me laugh!! 

I would love to know where this thing originated.  Lots of people around here do the "huntsvegas" thing.  I've never understood it.  It's not something we would do out west where I grew up.

[Yarn or Fabric]

I'm also in Huntsville!
We moved here a bit over 2 years ago and I just love it here!
I can not think of a place I would rather be to be honest with you - and I have lived in oodles of places.  I love Huntsville.
Okay, I am not a football fan so the whole Bama/Auburn thing just goes right over me fortunately.  But for those that don't understand - Walmart even has one of those stores in the front of the building - you know next to the infamous incredibly stinky nail salon - that is only Auburn/Bama merchandise.

Man.  I wish they would rip that out and put in an Auntie Anne's pretzel place like my Walmart had in PA! That was awesome!  I miss my pretzels at Walmart.

Okay. there are a few things that I would like to see added here!

[feelix]

I love this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you are so talented!!!!!!

[eukarya]

Okay, I am not a football fan so the whole Bama/Auburn thing just goes right over me fortunately. 

Yeah, that's lost on me too.  Especially since so many people pick sides when they never even went to either Bama or Auburn.  Still it doesn't seem to be as bad in Hsv as it is in other Alabama towns.  Perhaps that's because of all of us non-Alabama natives here. 

[Tangerine_Dreams]

Lol don't kid yourselves!! lol Pretzels will never be more important than football stores! lol  Especially not in Alabama!!    It's so hard to explain!!  I'm from a family of Georgia fans (who wanted me to change my wedding date because UGA played that weekend) so I understand (and love) football season and all the SEC entails!  It's hard when you're not entrenched into it!

Dh spent a few years as a child in Montgomery and Prattville (also known by residents as "pratt-vegas" lol just one of the many lol  I have NO idea where it started! ) so he's been a big Auburn fan since then....he always wanted to go to Auburn! 

I've always noticed that it's usually the Bama fans that have no relation to the school.  Auburn fans are usually Alumni or family of someone who went there.  Of course, that is a nonscientific and totally biased study! lol  Along the same lines that if you see a car driving down the road, and it has a bama sticker on it, you could almost gaurantee it's black (they like black for some reason), white or burgandy (crimson if you will) where as it is NOT gauranteed that a vehicle with an Auburn sticker will be a white or blue car (or orange for that matter).  Also nonscientific. I promise that you will be looking next time you are out on the road or in the mall parking lot! lol  And for the record:  our cars are brown, green and black lol

ooh no...the picking of sides is like a baptism! lol You do it early, probably in utero! And I'm sure many have been left out of wills for it! lol  Oh and it IS bad in Huntsville (mostly Bama by nature of being so much closer to Tuscaloosa), it's just more subtle lol Until football season hits and you can't even get down 65 without a TON of traffic.

[mandodeb]

I cannot even imagine how long it must take to create the beautiful images on an egg - such a small canvas!  You are soooo talented!

[Tiel]

Those eggs are great.  I have seen and watched someone paint on eggs before.  Myself I had paint everywhere.  I enjoy doing pen and ink with rouge.  Not very good at it but none the less I enjoy trying.

You could be right about the colors of the cars..LOL  Sister-in-law a black car Al. fan.  However, I live in Monroeville, AL and I bleed scarlet and gray for the Buckeyes.  Moved from Mobile, Al 2 years ago and we have a sorry Wal-mart.  Small, hot, not much in the way for crafts and not a Super Wal-mart.  Have to travel 1-2 hours to enter a real Walmart or a Joann's, Michaels or Hobby Lobby.

[radiochu]

that's awesome!  my sister lives in Huntsville (well, Madison actually), and whenever we visit, I always notice rockets and cotton!    this is so cool.

[aimee_ant123]

I live in Kentucky, but i imediately recognized those rockets because we pass by them everytime we go to florida...  i didnt even know what city they were in, i can just always remember being woken up at some point in the trip... "hey guys wake up... we're about to pass the rockets" lol  or at least i think those are the same ones... i could be wrong...

[eukarya]

The small stuff isn't so bad for me...It's scaling up to larger pieces where I have some trouble.  As for getting paint everywhere, the trick is to know when to put it down and let it dry a bit.  More than once I've trapped myself with an egg that's completely wet except for where my fingers are...I have to sit there holding it until it's dry enough to set down.

As for colors, yeah, I've noticed that Bama fans(and there are many here) have an unnatural aversion to anything orange.  Auburn fans have their moments too though... I see a lot of dirty tiger tails dragging behind SUVs here and on Sunday I saw an orange and dark blue pickup truck (the top was blue, the bottom was orange!).   I, for one, am a UAH alumni, so I like blue and white and prefer hockey to football 

[eukarya]

I live in Kentucky, but i imediately recognized those rockets because we pass by them everytime we go to florida...  i didnt even know what city they were in, i can just always remember being woken up at some point in the trip... "hey guys wake up... we're about to pass the rockets" lol  or at least i think those are the same ones... i could be wrong...

I think those are probably the rockets at the Tennessee-Alabama border (at the visitors' center).  There are more rockets in Huntsville with is off of I65 a bit.

[hngoodlett]

Oh, yay, an Alabama one! And I'm going to have to reiterate the "-vegas" phenomenon. I add it to the end of my town too!

[missjesswinkwink]

Awesome - I've been there for space camp and my aunt/uncle lived there for a while when he worked for NASA.  So awesome.

[jsumonkeygirl]

That is EXACTLY how Huntsville looks! Huntsvegas was my "second" home; I grew up in "Scottsvegas" (scottsboro) where there is nothing to do, so we were in hville every weekend!