State Fair Wrap Up

On Saturday Pat and I headed to Des Moines for a short weekend trip.  The State Fair was our objective for Sunday so Saturday afternoon we went shopping around town.  To appease Pat we first went to Bass Pro Shop in Altoona.  Then we headed to Creekside Quilting for some fabric shopping (Pat stayed in the car).  Next up was Penzey's and then the brand new Whole Foods.  We found the most delicious dark chocolate and sea salt caramels at Whole Foods.  They are ridiculously good!  We overdid it at Penzeys and Whole Foods so opted to skip Trader Joe's this trip.  Someday we are going to live somewhere that has these shops so we don't have to incorporate them into our travel plans!  We ended our day at Jethro's BBQ new location in Waukee.  I had a very tasty beer from New Belgium brewery called Red Hoptober. 

Bright and early Sunday morning we headed for the fair grounds.  We like to go early before it gets really busy.  We managed to luck out and get free street parking not too far from the entrance.  We started out at the Varied Industries building and split a cinnamon roll for breakfast along with some coffee flavored water.  After exploring the various booths downstairs we made our way upstairs to the Fabric and Threads area.  I had never found this area before but this year I made sure to look up where it was before going to the fair.  I wasn't sure if it would be cool to take pictures so I didn't but I wish I had!  There were some beautiful projects there.  It was largely quilting with some knitting and other stitchy crafts.  The knitting was very nicely displayed and there were some patterns I recognized.  I am thinking about perhaps entering in the future.  I also saw latch hook rugs that were really intriguing.  One in particular had a field scene with wooly sheep!  I had never seen rugs like that before but I think I should check it out in the future. 

After leaving that building we found The Dominator from the tv show Storm Chasers which Pat loves.  It was pretty cool and I managed to convince Pat to pose for a picture. 

Next we ventured over to the livestock buildings to see if I could find any cute animals.  We were in the sheep barn during the angora goat show so I got some pictures of the goats in their pens before going out to be judged.  They were very interested in what was going on in the ring so it was difficult to get them to look at the camera but I got a few good shots.  These goats are so cute!

The llama show was the night before and I couldn't find where the llamas were being kept or they might have all gone home so I got these pics at the avenue of breeds.  Their was one llama with a baby and one alpaca with a baby.  The alpaca baby was being shy but they were all very cute!

alpaca and baby

llama and baby

After getting a super lunch of corn dogs we headed to the Cultural Center because I had something on reserve at Willow Avenue Pottery .  I had seen these little llamas on Facebook and I thought I needed one, I have heard that people sometimes use llamas as guard animals for flocks of sheep so I got a llama to guard my stash!

So after more exploring, viewing the world's largest chocolate moose, eating some good food and some really questionable fried pickles we headed for home.  We were grateful to get home before it started thunder storming, it even hailed!  Fortunately the garden seems to be ok, the hail wasn't very big but it did come down for a long time. 

I will be back tomorrow with a recipe review and canning update.