Fair Day

It was a very long weekend Chez Points West. Friday, I worked until 6, taking my lunch hour in the middle of the afternoon to run a Very Important Errand. Immediately after work, I was off to a party at my boss’ house, stopping only for some mayo and some cookies, as it was a potluck BBQ. It was a going away party for a coworker who is going to spend the academic year in Wales, and we partied the evening away.

I was up early the next morning for our annual visit to the County Fair. I love the County Fair. I love that Los Angeles has a County Fair. One of these years, I will enter the County Fair, but so far, I’ve just been an observer.

A few years ago, we saw two baby goats born right in front of us, but all of the pregnant animals stayed pregnant while we were in the barn this year. The highlight of the day was a visit to the petting zoo, where Little Miss got to pet a real, live sheep:

That came after our visit to this spot:

The Vintage Craft Barn, where I got an impromptu spindle lesson, and Little Miss tried her hand at weaving:

Later, K and Little Miss checked out the pig races while I stayed in the Tapestry building. I’m always impressed and amused by the Tablescaping entries. My favorite this year was entered under the theme “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.

It’s a gay engagement breakfast, in honor of California’s acceptance of marriage equality. See? Two grooms!

As an aside, I love those salt and pepper shakers.

And, they included a little something for the cat:

The yarn addict in me loves the Tiffany Blue yarn, but the cat person side of me is slightly horrified, since letting a cat play with a ball of yarn tends to lead to bad results for the cat (not to mention the yarn).

After Tablescaping, I spent a good long time checking out the needlearts displays. I saw one verrrrrry familiar pattern:

Sure enough, it’s a Clapotis. It said so on the entry card. This picture also gives you an idea of why the needlearts displays at the L.A. Fair make me a little crazy. They arrange the items by color or theme, rather than putting all the entries in a single category together. This makes it impossible to compare items (which might be what they’re going for), and nearly impossible to find a particular entry. They can look up an entry for you at the information kiosks if you want to find your own (or a friend’s). There are a few exceptions to this rule – all of the handspinning entries seemed to be in one spot. Although, if that’s true, there weren’t many entries. I’m not entirely sure they display all of the entries in all of the categories. It’s very confusing.