Tag: fun

Walking up to the Grandstand shops, we were afforded this nice view:

And also the great Minnesota Yarn Bomb.  Much yarn bomb knitting on display!

Also, these women, getting their photo taken, plus another woman who was either incredibly aloof, or just not with them.

Yarn bomb horse! (With corn dog) Minnesota nice, and the works of Crochet Twin Cities

Another horse

A view of the crowd.

Sara was enlisted to take a photo of some fair-goers, so I took the opportunity to take a photo of her taking a photo.

A knit Elvis

And more ways to illustrate the crowds.

Fun, food-inspired yarn bombs, with model, complete with foot kick.

Some memorializing of Prince

These bunnies have a black stripe down their back.

We watched this goat contest long enough to see the winners.

The announcer said a lot of words into his microphone, but they weren’t very articulated words, so I caught pieces here and there.  (Acoustics might also have contributed to the problem.)

We were sitting in the bleachers, but many people stopped wandering and watched the contest.

Some post-contest chatting.

Grooming stations.

Cows! I was starting to lose the light and animals tend to be too twitchy for low-light situations.  Thank goodness these two were sleeping.

Past winners.

We headed to the Agricultural Building.  It’s a great Art Deco monolith.  You’ll see it from above later.

Pike Schemes never misses a head-in-the-hole opportunity.  Sara and I partook.  Shawn captured us nicely, I think.  (Until I set up this post, I had no idea what the front of this display looked like.)

There were other agriculture props for us.

Corn.  And some winning corn.

We stood in line to see the Crop Art.  I didn’t even know it was a thing, but boy, is it a thing.  There are rules (only seeds that can produce a crop in Minnesota) and anyone who enters will have their work displayed.  There is even a category for out-of-state people. I noticed Portland author Cathy Camper’s had a piece entered.  I had no idea she did crop art.

There were a lot of political themes.  You can see how the artists had to also display a key of what made up their seed art.

I thought this one had the best use of  a hashtag.

These shoes seemed to be an example of seed art gone wrong. (Sorry Susan.)

Some of them looked more like paintings, like that one of Buster Keaton.  And it’s always nice to see RBG in the house.

This intricate entry caused a lot of cheery commentary.

Sweet Martha’s Cookies are only available at the fair. (And apparently, three other events.)  The lines are long. They come in a bucket, lovingly rendered here, in seed art form. More amazing crop art.

My favorite was this map of Minnesota authors.

Here was another well-done political seed art.

Aside from a variety of scarecrows, there were also vintage feed sacks to look at.

Also, the bathrooms in the Agriculture building were great. There was a woman working the door, who would monitor stall usage and tell the first person in line which stall to go to.  This meant no looking under the stalls or wandering about.  Very efficient!

In the Minnesota Fruit section was my one of my favorite fair items.

Frozen cider!  Inexpensive and so delicious!  I bought one the next day, too.

It’s Fairchild the Gopher. He’s served as the mascot since 1966.

In one of the food halls I procured these delicious Swedish meatballs.

We next visited the 4-H building, which was sprawling.  The Arts-In people were mid-performance when we arrived, but we opted to look at the displays.  I planned to go back the next day to catch the full performance.

There were many books of projects to look through.  This 4-H-er spent less than $30 to make this string art.

The informational posters are often my favorite part.

Like this one.  Who doesn’t need to know more about the song “Don’t Stop Belivin'”?

And maybe you have some cosplay needs?

Aside from showing off one of the many 4-H banners on display, this is also my favorite thing I found in the 4-H hall.  What an interesting way to study the root system of soybeans and corn.

And here’s a good lesson for all.

And maybe you need a baby jogger converted into a gun rack?  This 4-H-er has got you covered.

Another banner.  I’m wondering if each group doesn’t make a new one every year?  I don’t think that fidget spinners would have been on people’s radar last year.

I’m going to say this a lot, but the sheer quantity of everything about the fair was mind-boggling.  All of these items had to be collected and then hung, then will be taken down and redistributed.  How many volunteers does it take?

4-H skill at building furniture was on display.

I leave you with science, and cheese.

It’s fair time!  Sara and I walked to the U of M shuttle stop and waited. Then realized that we forgot to bring the tickets.  Then we waited for Shawn to appear with the tickets (the original plan was that he was going to join us later) only to eventually figure out that he took the city bus system, not the shuttle system.  It gave us time to observe the large amounts of people who take the shuttle to the fair. The buses come regularly.  Every five to 15 minutes.

Reunited with Shawn at the entrance!   Here’s a poorly taken self-portrait at the streetcar arch.  It was great Shawn and Sara bought tickets online before the fair started.  The line to buy tickets on-site was very, very long. Long lines come with the fair, so it was nice to skip that one.

The fair even has mapped out the best place for a self-portrait.

There were a lot of people there.  Apparently, it had rained the previous weekend, so THIS was the weekend to go.

How many people attended on this day?  254,431.  Yep. Bigger than my hometown of Boise, Idaho.

Shawn navigated us through the crowds and we took in the fine art at the fine arts building. I “bought” Sara a lot of things.  There was a really cool Rube Goldberg machine that was not for sale.  Which was too bad, because interest was high among the fair-goers.  It probably would have gone for a good price.

This volunteer kept an eye on us, and was ready to help.  Notice the stack of pencils to his left.

After our campus tour, and a trip home for lunch, we took the light rail to St. Paul to visit the newly renovated capitol building.

It looks great, as every newly renovated capitol should.

Here’s the informative plaque when the capitol was first built.  The renovation had a similarly-styled plaque across the hallway.  I neglected to take a picture of it.

Sara fills an empty niche.  Why is this niche empty?

There is a grand view under the rotunda.

The rotunda itself was very impressive.

Sara as governor in the governor’s reception room.

We loved all the guilding and that very ostentatious “M” on the curtains in the reception room. 

Why have two flags when you could have six?

There were quotes about government.

Some good manifest destiny imagery.

The worker, working away.

Looking down on the star that is a symbol of the motto “The North Star State.” 

A closer look at the rotunda.  All the detail!  Such a good color of blue!

These lights were very fun.

Sara and I rounded a corner and spotted this elevator.  We both gasped in delight.  It was so beautiful!

The mail slots were still there, but alas, no longer usable.

We looked at all four of the season murals.

Looking down to the main floor.

One of the most interesting thing about this capitol building was that it housed not only the governor, House and Senate, but also the Supreme Court.  I feel that this is an unusual setup.

Great staircase.

More quotes about government. 

Here’s what the murals looked like, before the restoration.

We took the fabulous elevator down to the basement, where we were delighted to find…

The Rathskeller Cafeteria.  It was designed in the style of a German Beer Hall and included fun mottoes written in German, along with small animals painted on the walls.

Here are some of the mottos and how they were changed during Prohibition.

We also found the media area, located right under the star below the rotunda. When we looped back around, there was a man vacuuming, so we got to see it lit up.

It’s not surprising that chilly Minnesota has an underground tunnel system built into its physical plant.   We could have walked the whole loop, but opted for a trip to the Senate Office Building and back. Aside from having a good capitol building, they also had an impressive amount of grounds.