Knitting Night Wednesday

It's Wednesday and I've spent most of the evening out knitting. That means I'm energized but it's way to late to do a decent post. So instead I'm putting up a picture or two. I thought I'd share a couple from my recent trip to the Iowa State Fair. I know you'll be surprised but most of these will be animal focused.

I love the fair and I particularly like walking through the animal barns. This year the animal production industry opened their new educational facility. It's an attempt by the industry to fight against the stereotypes that we animal activists are creating. I'm not buying it but the animals there were pretty cute.

Like a baby ostrich. Yeah that's an ostrich! He was about a foot tall.

Or the baby turkeys. These were tough to watch. They kept pecking at each other.

There were quite a few miniature horses this year. And I mean miniature.

And on the other end there was the biggest boar. This sucker was huge.

Lastly, there was a pretty fish. Well okay a knitted fish. I want to make one.

Weird Wednesday

You all remember the Goat of Happiness. These are the Goats of Confusion. I took this picture this past summer at the Iowa State Fair. Yes the one in back doesn't have any ears. They had been cut off. I don't know why. I don't even pretend to understand why animal production is the way it is. But I thought these guys were cute (even without ears) and they were excited to have their picture taken. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself while they were trying to eat my camera.

Fair Footage

Yesterday we went to the fair and had a blast. We ate a pork chop on a stick (actually the bone), a giant pickle, a cup of chocolate chip cookies, a pizza bread, a lamb burger, a grinder, an apple slush, and some fresh baked mini-doughnuts. We were both five pounds heavier and very full. Jeff and I tried hard to share but sometimes we got greedy. 

I only took a couple pictures, particularly in the early part of the fair. We were wandering through the animals and I kept snapping pictures of goats and roosters and pigs. I'm sure the farmers there were wondering what the heck I was doing. Here is the biggest pig this year at the fair. Look at the size of this big boy. 

And a goat with an interesting beard. 

And a scary looking rooster. Jeff said it looked like something out of WOW. 

After the animals we started to eat. Here is a picture of the crowd near the grandstand. That is one of the heaviest areas for food vendors. 

But our favorite part of the fair had to be the exhibit in the Cultural Center. Every year they put someone in the entrance who does a work in progress. Last year it was a gigantic house of cards, the year before a sand sculpture. This year it was ice carving. And it was amazing. Below is a video of the artist. He used a number of different tools to carve this amazing eagle. I grabbed videos and pictures of his chainsaw work and his detail work. I would love to learn something like this. I wanted to ask him about learning but he was surrounded right after his performance. 

All in all it was a great day although my legs still hurt today. I ate and walked and walked and ate. And loved every moment of it. 

Olympic Fever and State Fair Fun

If you had to pick a time of the year when I have no idea how I'm going to fit everything into my day this would be the time. I would say that I enjoy watching the Olympics but that would be understating it, a lot. I am an Olympics junkie. I watch everything I can get my hands on. I'm particularly fond of the non-mainstream sports like rowing, fencing, archery, and a couple mainstream ones like swimming and diving. I don't really care much for gymnastics (yes I know blasphemy in Shawn Johnson country) and I enjoy track and field but normally in smaller doses. But I'll watch every single minute of it (even the gymnastics) except for work time.

And fair time. I have been going to the Iowa State Fair since I was a small child. I don't remember ever skipping a year. It is just too much fun and way too tasty. While there are no corndogs in my future. Unlike 10,000 fans at 8:30 in the morning. http://www.kcci.com/entertainment/17119168/detail.html. But there will be fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies (straight out of the oven), roasted corn, pork chops on a stick, and funnel cake. Yeah for one time of the year I'm a big carnivore. Plus there is the chance to see the butter cow, the award-winning photography, hundreds of animals, horseshoe pitching contests, and the biggest draw, people watching.

There are some strange people that come to the fair. Jeff and I regularly wander around the fair looking for the worst fair shoes (most inappropriate for walking), worst mullet, heaviest person, biggest belt buckle, and many other games. Contrast that with my other passion, the Olympics. Here are people in their prime. They are all muscle, toned and athletic. They represent the best of the best. As much as I hate to admit it, the fair tends to bring out the opposite. While most people here in Iowa are wonderfully nice, there are some people out here that are just a couple fries short of a happy meal. And most of them congregate at the fair. Plus there is the growing (both literally and figuratively) population that use motorized scooters through the fair. I thought strollers were bad enough. It is quite a contrast.

So these next two weeks will be manic. I'll jump from amazing athletes who are the best in the world to scarfing down fair food with some of the heaviest people I've ever seen. Perhaps having the Olympics running at the same time will help me watch what I eat at the fair. Then again, did I mention fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.