One of the things I hoped for in attending the Nebula weekend was to see beauty. There was lots of it, which is to be expected in a city as consciously created as Washington D.C. There was also much consciously created beauty on the night of the Nebula awards. The dressy clothing was a feast to the eye and part of me wishes I’d spent my evening playing photographer. Another part is quite glad I spent my time talking instead.
Nancy and I both dressed up for the evening.
I’ve discovered that I love dresses where the motion of them is part of the beauty. This means that static shots such as this one do not show the dress to best advantage. That top flowed as I moved. It also had the advantage of being incredibly comfortable, always a plus on a high-tension night.
Nancy also posed with other lovely people, such as Mary Robinette Kowal and Sheila Williams.
After that photo, my camera was put away for the evening. However my day touring in D.C. was filled with photography. When I say that D.C. is a consciously created city, I am not kidding. There is attention in every detail. I need to write up a separate post about the monuments, but I was out walking and I would see things like this entrance walkway to the Federal Triangle metro station. 
I could just picture carriages being pulled along those cobblestones. I love that the lanterns were freshly painted with black and gold.
Another of the places I went was the botanical gardens, again there needs to be a whole post about why that stop was important to me, in the meantime here are a couple of small pretty things I saw while there.
The bumblebee was quite obliging. He went about his business and let me get my camera mere inches from his head.
I also went the the National Museum of Art, which is completely full of pretty things. I’m afraid I frustrated our docent, though. She rattled of information about paintings to explain their significance and why they were impressive. I kept pausing to take pictures of floors, frames, and random architectural details. In part it was a rebel streak which was irritated by being instructed what to find impressive, in other part, the details were fascinating.
This table was not a work of art on display. It was just a table that had been placed into the room to provide furniture.
Many of the frames fascinated me. They were works of art in themselves, particularly the ones which were obviously custom made for the piece in question.
I wonder what went through the mind of the artisan who made this frame. Was it a sacred commission or just a job?
Even in the most famous paintings, my eyes were drawn to little details.
Everywhere I looked all weekend long there were small beautiful details, earrings, lamps, smiles, curls, flowers, the scent of honeysuckle in the air. Then I came home to my pretty things here and that was good too.
