MN State Fair

I took my annual trip to the MN State Fair last week, along with a few hundred thousand other people. My trip was short and sweet. I saw, ate and bought what I wanted and went home. The Creative Activity Building is a must and I spend a lot of time there. I love to stand in front of the knitting display case and listen to people's comments. The most popular one, "That takes so much patience." When I heard someone ask her friend, "When do people find time to do this?" I had to interject, "My knitting is in my purse and I knit all the way to the fair on the bus." My favorite comment this year was, " What do they do with these things when they bring them home from the fair?" Her friend's comment was, "I suppose they enter them in another fair." Duh...they live in MN and in front of them are sweaters, hats, mittens, and socks.

This year I came away with an angry feeling. Here is a typical display of the knitting. This rack has beautiful shawls, scarves, afghans, crammed together so nothing shows. The back of the display cabinet had sweaters hung so close, overlapping you couldn't tell what it was. Amazing Threads has a youth knitting group and one girl (maybe 13 or 14) made a beautiful sweater which she entered in the adult division. When she proudly brought her family to see it displayed, all that showed was the button on the front. Then, walking through the rest of the display area, there are quilts hung all over, all beautifully displayed. The ones that weren't in the cabinets had glass double sided display units which hung together so you could page through like a book. Lots of quilts, all visible. (I have nothing against quilters, just the displays at the State Fair.)