State Fair - Day 6

Thursday was another fabulous day - although if you looked at the weather for that day you would think we should have had a bad day.   It rained and rained most of the day but we planned for a day of rain and took movies and spent the afternoon just being lazy in the camper, watching movies and of course I knitted.  It was a nice afternoon off.  The morning was spent at the Domestic Art's building.  It was so great to spend so long just walking around looking at the displays.  Usually we go to the fair for a day so there isn't time to study the projects but this time there was plenty of time.   In the past I have won two blue ribbons for cross stitch and one project also won best of show.  My goal is to also win a ribbon for crochet and one for knitting so I took my time looking at those projects.  I am thinking I might be able to get a ribbon for a crochet project but the knitting projects with ribbons were really amazing.  I doubt I could match the talents of the knitters that entered this year.

The quilts always amaze me - the small fall quilt that won ribbons was so beautiful and was so much work.  It was hand quilted and the quilting designs were just darling - little ghosts, spiders, pumpkins and the stitches were perfect.  Some of the large quilts confused me - there was one that won a blue ribbon and the blocks were not even and the points were not even close to perfect.  I made a quilt many years ago and if I my blocks had turned out like that,  I would have resewed them and certainly wouldn't have entered it in the fair.  I can't understand at all how it won a ribbon.  Others were amazingly beautiful and didn't win anything.  Of course there isn't room to display the whole quilt so some had pictures attached of the quilt spread out - I wish they did that for all of them.

I took so many pictures and it has been very difficult to decide which ones to put in the blog - I want to put them all in!

These are all buttons!

All of these items are made from duct tape.

Good to know the small crochet items won instead of the big.

This is the fall quilt that was just marvelous

Fabulous crochet!

Lace knit shrug - really difficult

Cross stitch

Knitting projects

Probably my favorite project after the fall quilt

Mine is the lower right

State Fair Day 5

Tuesday was a really great day at the fair.  We saw a sheep dog demonstration that was just fabulous.  Of course I love sheep since they make wool which makes  yarn - but watching this dog make the sheep move around was so impressive.  The owner talked a lot about how the process but the sound system wasn't great so we missed quite a bit but one thing he said was that a good sheep dog could replace two ranch hands but the problem was that a good sheep costs as much as four ranch hands. 

We also saw some horses being judged and some had beautiful braided manes which were very hard to photograph because the horse didn't stay still. 


That evening we had tickets to the Oak Ridge Boys which was wonderful.  The opening act was Jimmy Fortune who use to be with the Statler Brothers.  Since it was the anniversary of 9/11 they of course played a lot of patriotic songs.  They also sang songs from their new album and I think I liked some of their new songs even better than their old. 

State Fair day 4

What is a state fair without marching bands!   We watched quite a few on Monday - there were more on Wednesday.  Some small, some large, some in marching band uniforms and some in t-shirts and jeans. 

We also saw the display from the Fish and Wildlife department showing the mounted deer heads they gathered from one case started in 2003 against 27 out of state poachers which resulted in 119 deer heads and possibly the largest case of its type in history.  These poachers were all charged in federal court, not state court.  The case finally was settled last year but this display was taken down mid week because of an appeal in the case in Colorado.   I think if you click on the pictures of the information boards you will be able to read all the information.

We also saw the 643 pound blue ribbon winning pumpkin and ended our day at a demolition derby.  I have not been to a demo derby since I was a kid at 81 speedway and this was very different.  I hope those drivers were young and limber or they had to be very sore the next day.  Some of those hits were really hard. 

State Fair day 3

Sunday was a great day at the fair.  I started the day with a patchwork quilt presentation at the Domestic Arts building.  I missed the name of the presenter but she had many beautiful quilts to show.  Many of them were made in the 1800's but some were modern day.  They were really gorgeous and made me want to make another quilt.  (I have now come to my senses and probably won't do one)

It was also the first Kstate day at the fair.  It was a big success and hopefully if they have it next year they put it in a bigger venue as there were not enough places to sit and not enough shade.  There is another arena with a lot more room and the seats are bleachers and shaded.  Dr. Tracz, the band director could easily have been a stand up comedian if the band gig hadn't worked out so well for him.  He had us all laughing all during his talk.  About 50 from the marching band were there along with a couple of singing groups and the staff jazz band. 

KSU Band Director Dr. Tracz

Staff Jazz Band - they were excellent

This cowboy looked very out of place but after he checked out the cheerleaders he left

Some of the rigs in the campground cost about what my house did. Three slide outs

State Fair day 2

The second day at the fair included free singing acts, sheep, pigs and donkeys.  The donkey part lasted a little longer than I wanted it to but it was interesting.  The donkeys were mini donkeys and their handlers were dressed very nice and were very serious about the event.  I don't know if they win money for this or if it is just pride but you could tell they were really wanting to win.  The donkeys were shown - just walking up and down the area, then they had to do a high jump and the one that jumped the highest won then there was an obstacle course.  First they were walked by an area with some goose decoys and a pink flamingo.  Some were very frightened of these decoys and wouldn't go near them.  They also had to walk backwards between hay bales, walk by an artificial tree with balloons hanging down, stop in a square and "stay" while the owner let go of the leash and walk around them.  I had no idea donkeys could be trained to do these things.  We also saw the sheep sheering demonstration which was very cool. 

This donkey won the high jump but even he wouldn't jump this height

The highlight of the day for me was finding out my cross stitch got second place - not a blue ribbon but a red one and that made me very happy.   After I got home I noticed the judge had written on the back of the tag "What a hoot!  Love it"

State Fair

We had a new experience this year - we took our fifth wheel camper to the state fair in Hutchinson.  For the whole fair.  Not just a day or two - we got there on Thursday, September 6, the day before the fair started and stayed until Monday, September 17th, the day after the fair ended.   We had seen the campground other years and Dennis thought it would be fun to stay there.  I had a lot of doubts - I really thought we would get bored and want to come home by Wednesday.  To my surprise we never got bored and I was a little sad on the last day that it was over.  The campground has full hookups, we got the major stations on the tv and we used our phone as a hot spot so we had internet.  What more do I need besides my two knitting projects that I took along!

 I printed a schedule for each day and in the morning we would look it over and circle the things we were interested in seeing.  Then we took out to the fair, came back for lunch and went back in the afternoon.  We only left the campground twice - both for a Walmart run and we roughly calculated we walked about five miles a day.  Hope that countered the free ice cream we seemed to get each day.  We had rain one day but had brought movies to watch so we didn't mind staying inside an afternoon.

Our first day, Friday, included watching the llama show - who knew people trained llamas to do an obstacle course which even included obeying the command to "stay".  One family had three generations with llamas in the show.    We also saw a family steel drum band.  Dad, mom on the steel drums, son on the bass and a very bored high school daughter on the drums.  :)   Every picture I took of them had her staring off in the distance looking like she was wishing she was anywhere but where she was.  We also saw the chain saw artist who is amazing. 

Many llamas would not climb the steps

The llama had to "stay" while the human found a marked ball in the batch

This llama was my favorite.