I spent the past week at Arrowwood Resort in Alexandria, MN sitting by the pool, looking at Lake Darling, swimming, reading, knitting, playing with my favorite 6-year-old, and eating about six meals a day. The onion rings at the cafe at the resort are excellent, and I ate a lot of them. The extra weight will help with flotation, I'm sure.
My mango Crocs enjoyed paddling in the foam at the edge of Lake Darling.
That squished blue ball of yarn you see under my arm in the photo above is going to be a sample baby sweater for my Lola Baby Bolero class (see the Classes tab at www.borealisyarn.com). This blue one will be an adapted, more "boy-looking"version with a straight bottom front instead of the curved fronts for the more girly version. The red one in the store is the original version with the curved fronts. The adaptation will be only available in my class as an addendum to the original pattern; you can't knit the whole sweater from the addendum.
I brought Shadow Shawl #3 with me to the lake, but as it needs some ripping and re-knitting, I didn't work on it. Not the most relaxing thing to bring on vacation, in retrospect.
I went to the State Fair yesterday and looked at all the knitwear in the Creative Activities building. Congrats to Katie and Jean and Paul for their awards. (Jean: you was robbed on the yellow/green/etc. shawl).
I've now eaten my annual quota of cheese curds, footlong hot dogs (OK, my sister and I shared one, so I guess I only had 6 inches), Pronto Pups, and other good-and-good-for-you foods. Some random Fair hints:
1. Go to Dino's Gyros if you want to sit down to eat. Yesterday there were about 75 people waiting to get into the Whatsis Dining Hall, but Dino's was mostly empty. And their gyros are really good.
2. Warning: the big hunk of bacon on a stick thing that's been hyped this year is maple bacon. Ewwwww .... at least to my taste. I'm a traditionalist when it comes to bacon and the sweet stuff should stay on its own stick.
3. Both the DFL booth and the Obama booth were rather disappointing; we were looking for bumper stickers or car magnets but all the Obama booth had were t-shirts, cardboard rally signs, and buttons. The DFL booth had even less Obama stuff. I'd say they really missed an opportunity. If you're tired, hot, grumpy with humanity, and at the end of your Fair visit, don't walk for blocks to visit the Obama booth, as we did. It's out of the way, hard to find, and about the size of a lemonade stand.
4. OK, cows give milk, but why is the Moo Booth situated in the stink zone of the Dairy Barn? Just as I don't like sweet stuff on my bacon, I don't really like to smell manure while I'm eating ice cream.
5. Park and Ride. We do it every year and it's awesome. The lot across the street from the 4th St. Ramp at the U of M (near 4th St. and 17th Ave.) is free and the bus ride takes under 10 min. There's no waiting for a bus, usually.
6. There's a horrible, loud, Hammond Organ machine in the Creative Activities Building this year. However, it only runs for about 5 minutes every hour. (Otherwise, I would have had to run out screaming in front of a Clydesdale.)
Maybe now that it is starting to feel a little more like fall I'll be knitting more ... ?
