The Quart Before the Horse

Many of the Burma Shave rhymes used puns.  A favorite:

Drinking drivers,
Nothing worse,
They put the quart
Before the hearse.
Burma Shave

A friend and I went to the Minnesota State Fair on Saturday.  I wore my new, expensive walking shoes and put my orthotics inside them.  In happy consequence, my feet never complained once the whole nine hours – but my upper legs did.  Monday they still ached.  Highlight at the Fair: The Willis Clan.  They performed free at the Leinekugel band shell – I’m ashamed to admit I’d never heard of them.  Their Irish music was spectacular, their harmonies (particularly the three older sisters’) were intensely moving, their instremental talents explosively good.  I’m going to buy an album or two, or maybe ask for one for my birthday in October and/or Christmas. 

A nice thing about Saturday, the sky was thickly overcast early in the day – we arrived a little after 7 am – and temperatures hovered in the low seventies with a delicious cool little breeze.  That lasted until somewhere around three, when the sun came out with a vengeance and suddenly everyone in the Twin Cities who hadn’t yet come decided it wasn’t going to rain after all so why not get to the Fair?  It was literally elbow-to-elbow in the streets and avenues.  One tradition we have (and many, many others do, too) is to make a second-last stop at Sweet Marths’s for a bucket of hot-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies, then, last stop, go to the Moo Booth where you can buy a cup of whole or chocolate milk which can be refilled as often as you wish to get back in line to do so.  But this year the line at Sweet Martha’s was hundreds of people long, though they had every one of the multiple windows open and though they had opened a second bakery, so we each bought a raspberry-banana smoothie instead and watched them judging the charolais cattle while we drank, and came home without that lovely final sweet bite.  The Minnesota State Fair is second in size only to the Texas State Fair, and I think we probably walked over two thirds of it.

In stitching news, I broke down and bought a new needlepoint canvas after seeing it a dozen times at The Club Room.  It made me smile every single time I saw it – and it still does when I get it out to stitch.  I took it with me to Chicago and got some advice on ways to complicate the stitching of it.  I may even take some of the advice!  Here’s a picture of it.