Arts and Music Festival

Last weekend we had the Lotus Festival. Great festival in town that brings art and music from the world. It goes from Thursday to Sunday with the main events on Friday and Saturday nights in 4 different venues around town, including some tents they put on the street. There are some streets closed for pedestrians and performers and the shows on the tents and closed venues require a ticket to get in, but there is a lot of folklore and things happening outside and tons of people walking and wearing their "Lotus clothing"... all sorts of fun clothes, colorful, edgy, artist-y...

MG and I like to go out and walk, look at the people, at the street performances... eat from the different stands that restaurants have out, drink a hot cocoa (it was coooold on Sat night!).

Kids playing violins...

Bands playing different music...

Saturday night there was a space for kids to do skateboarding, they armed some ramps and flew on them!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think I forgot to make the post about the Brains a while ago when they happened... there is an artist in town that made 22 fiber glass brains and got different artists around town to work on them and embellish them... Here's MG with the Lotus brain that was adorned with the logo t-shirts from past years.

Here you can see the info tent with a projection of the Lotus logo.

And one of the shows venues - a theatre...

There is also an Arts Village in one of the closed streets... they have a little tent with lots of chalks in any color so people can draw in the street! I love that!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is another band that got a lot of prople dancing and twirling around...

 

 

 

 

And finally, there was some people walking around in home-made-with-recycled-items costumes, walking with huge fishes all around downtown.

 

 

MG and I had a wonderful time!!!

See you soon!
S.

Learning to sew...

It has been a few years that I've wanted to learn how to sew... I've tried several times since we came to the States to take classes without much success... finally, last week I had my first sewing class!!
At the Yarn Shop, with my friends, and one of them is the teacher!
It is almost perfect, the only down side being that our great friend-teacher will be moving away in 2 weeks... but hey! at least I think I'll be done with my first skirt by then...

Last week we learned to be friends with the sewing machine, we took our measurements and had a field trip to Jo-Ann's Fabrics to get patterns, fabrics and notions...
I forgot to take a photo of the pattern, but here's what my fabric looks like:::

Maybe a little bit busy, but I love the colors and the paisleys make me happy... lots of doodling and just my kind of colors-happy-feelings...

My fabric is all washed and dryed, I need to iron it, and will be ready for the next class tomorrow night.

See you soon!
S.

County Fair!!!

Summer came and went... We had the County Fair in town. It was the first time for us. I've heard of them and watch them on TV but never went before.
My friends at the shop encouraged me to enter my crocheted pieces. I did... here's what happened:::

MG took me to the Fair back in July so I could enter my pieces... that day, I had my dearest and best friends coming to visit us... they arrived at night. My twin friends whom I've known since we were 3 years old in kindergarden, and my loved and awsome uncle who is one of my closest friends...

So the following week, when the Fair was in it's full, we went to see the results...

I got ribbons in all my pieces!!!! ALL of them!!! I couldn't believe it!!! it was totally amazing and I was jumping and my face hurt from so much smiling!!
I got a first place and honor ribbon in my purple coat... And a first place ribbon on the yellow girl dress:

 

A first place on my knitted pink-magenta sweater that I think I never shower you because I can't find the post... I should write about it... is sooo pretty.

A first place and honor on my Eva's Shawl...

And a second place (ggrrr) on my crocheted sea... I knew it was going to be bad because I didn't wove all my ends in... well... next time!

AND last!!!! I got a first place, and a SECOND RESERVE CHAMPION on the green vest!

You see, after all that I realized that everyone that enters whatever pretty much gets a ribbon... 1st, 2nd or 3rd... and it's mostly a "grade" on your work and how good was in detail, manufacture, quality, etc... and not so much against others. Still it was pretty exciting!!!

But the last one, the Second Reserve Champion was a real 2nd place withing the whole category. So I was deffinitely happy for that.

Later, we went to explore the fair:::

You can see how happy my friends make me!!!!
And dear MG decided to take the day off and was with us all day walking and seeing animals and eating delicious food fair....

P.E.R.F.E.C.T!!!

Very proud of myself, until next time!
S.

Speedway Race...

Back in July, MG called me to the shop on a Friday afternoon to say that one of his friends had invited us to a race at the local Speedway. There is races every Friday evening during the summer, and some more important races within a circuit at state level.
MG was soooooo excited to go!!!

This race was one of the importants and there was a lot of people coming from out of town, lots of people coming with their caravans and trucks and I was amazed to realized that this was a whole world that I had not known at all until that day.

The weather was very good, a little cloudy but cooler after the warm WARM days we had been getting...
The track was made of red clay... loose red clay I must say... and when the "warming" races started, the small cars would go so fast and sliding in the curves that they would throw a lot of clay at the public...

and the noise!!!! Oh my!!! it was soooo loud!!!! even screaming we couldn't hear each other. But I got excited to of being there and see something new and experience the excitement of the crowd.

I was very appreciative when MG's friend went to get us a pair of earplugs for the noise. I was a lot better after that!!
Here MG with his friend and the friend's brother.

So after a long time of warming and trying, starting, stoping... the race started...

You see, the cars can accelerate and go faster and faster, but they can't really start up and accelerate to start. So there is some vans designed "push trucks" to literaly push the cars until they can run on itselfs.
They would bump each other or slide out of the curve so they'd stop the race, or at least go slower and not count that lap, until a push truck had pushed the car inside the track again... not very easy to explain.

We even saw a couple of flipped cars!!!

We were there for a long time, like 5 hours or so...

But it was a very good experience. Not that I'd like to do it every weekend, but I'm glad we went.

See you soon!
S.