A Good Yarn

Monday, August 27, 2007

Weekend Update

Another weekend that was jam packed full and just flew by!

Friday night I volunteered to help staff the Minnesota Knitter's Guild booth at the State Fair. A couple of my knitty girlfriends and I had a fun time knitting on display and encouraging people to join the Guild:



There are a lot of really beautiful items on display in the Creative Activities building - gorgeous knitting, beautiful beadwork, stained glass, dichroic glass, quilting, crochet, scrapbooks, just about anything you could put your hands to. It's worth the trip to the fair to check this stuff out.

After our shift, we checked out a few of the other attractions - like the food! One of my favorite things to get at the fair every year is the Gizmo sandwich:



Yummy! It's a loose meat sandwich (ground beef and sausage) with a marinara sauce and melted mozzarella on a bun. If you're not a vegetarian, try one when you're out there.

Another of my favorite things to seek out at the Fair is the Crop Art. I'd never seen or heard of such a thing until I found it one year in the horticulture building and ever since I've been quite taken with it. I was quite taken with this one:



That picture is all made up with different kinds of seeds, people!! Isn't that amazing? Some of the pictures are almost photorealistic. Sometimes they're very rough and homespun looking. Either way, I love them. There are always portraits done. There are always political statements and it seems like most seed artists are liberal, because they tend to be of liberal politicians or unflattering to conservatives. There was a great one of Dick Cheney and another one of the Wizard of Oz with Bush, Cheney, Rice and Gonzales (good riddance, by the way) as the characters. There were two of Al Franken - this one was my favorite:



If you're not from Minnesota, you may not be aware that Al Franken is running for the US Senate. Against Norm Coleman, who is much despised by the liberals in Minnesota. I really hope Al wins, not only because I hate Coleman's policy positions and tendency to just do whatever is politically expedient for him, and not just because I think Al is incredibly smart and has great common sense, but also because he's a close, personal friend:



OK, not really. I went back out to the fair on Sunday with my brother and Michael and Bill and his family and Al was out there, so I got my picture taken with him. But he initiated the clinch, not me! The man's in show business AND in politics, he knows how to persuade an audience/voter!

In between my two trips to the fair, I had to get up really early on Saturday and pick up Bill and his whole family (not only his wife and kids, but also his parents and his siblings and their families) at the train station. After everyone was finally back home or at least on their way home with their own vehicle, I was exhausted, so I took a nap. Which totally screwed up my sleeping patterns for the rest of the weekend. Oh well. Then I had to head into the office and do some work for the rest of the day. I came home and watched the Vikings pre-season game and knit my Tomato sweater. It's kind of fun to knit something purple while was "The Purple".