Woven Wire Jewelry

Take a ride and see Missouri's biggest, smallest, oddest

The Water Bar in Excelsior Springs, Mo., houses the vistors center, Excelsior Springs Hall of Waters & Cultural Museum, 201 East Broadway. The building boasts exquisite Art Deco detailing and houses the world's longest mineral water bar and a mineral water bath department. The Hall of Waters is owned by the cityof Excelsior Springs and its government offices are located there. Photo by Kevin Morgan

Think you've seen it all? Until a few years ago my husband, Guy, and I thought we had — that is, we thought that over our combined century or so of taking trips, we had seen just about every tourist attraction Missouri has to offer.

But we also favor driving the roads less traveled, and in doing so have made some interesting discoveries. Who knew, for instance, that Missouri is home to the world's largest pecan … or largest goose? Or that the tombstone of Prince Eric of Sunbeam, patriarch of nearly every Angus beef burger on the planet, is here? Or that the original colony of rare white squirrels is in our state? (There are only five such colonies in all of North America — and all can trace their roots to Missouri.)

We began unearthing a whole different type of Missouri attractions — the quirky or unusual ones. And there is no shortage.

1. The Airline History Museum displays such things as the complimentary pack of cigarettes that was once given to airplane passengers and the whimsical one-size-fits-all paper dresses TWA flight attendants wore in 1968. The hostesses carried staplers and tape to keep their dresses from falling off. The museum is at 201 NW Lou Holland Drive, Wheeler Airport, Kansas City; 1-816-421-3401; ahmhangar.com . The museum is closed for renovations but will reopen in December.

2. The Arabia Steamboat Museum is a superb museum displaying thousands of artifacts retrieved from the steamboat that sank in the Missouri River in 1856 and was unearthed in the late 1980s from a farmer's cornfield. The cargo, bound for the frontier, included nearly everything you can imagine: more than a million glass trade beads, gold jewelry, farming tools, clothing, jars of cherries, jars of pickles and even bottles of champagne, which when opened after being underground more than 130 years were still good. The only life lost was a mule tied up on deck, whose owner refused to get back on the slowly sinking boat to untie him; his skeleton is in a glass case. The museum is at 400 Grand Boulevard, Kansas City; 1-816-471-4030; 1856.com .

Woven Wire Jewelry (Beadwork How-To) [Paperback] | Beading Forums

A new wire weaving technique that varies the number of wires and their thickness to create stunningly beautiful bracelets, necklaces, and pendants is introduced in this guide. Project instructions go well beyond simple line drawings to show the assembly process of each piece in a series of step-by-step photographs. The nine projects begin with an elegantly simple woven bracelet and move on to more dramatic projects that include a domed cuff bracelet with soldered bead ends, a free-form bracelet, a woven neck piece, and a pendant with a woven frame. Projects range in difficulty from easy to advanced, and many can be completed without soldering. The more experienced craftsperson will savor the way Precious Metal Clay adds striking embellishments to three of the projects.

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