jinian | fair pictures!

Animals!

This cow was licking her shoulder with a huge pink tongue.

This goat. Okay, this goat. So I walked up to her and said hello, and she made intense eye contact. Then she put her front legs up on the side of the pen. Continuing the intense eye contact, she started rubbing and nibbling at my fingers. I did not know what to do. I looked to

marzipan_pig, who singsonged that I was making out with a goat. This was no help. I petted the goat! Her lips were soft and warm and bristly; I was flustered but obliging. As suddenly as it began, she lost interest. Anyway, that is her in the picture. Maybe we will meet again someday.

I don't know if all fairs have the quasi-informative posters made by the 4H kids. The combination of subject matter and very judicious clip art lady raised this one into a category of its own.

Collections!

My favorite this year may have been the cookbooks. Titles included Make It With Salt, Take a Can of Salmon, Drink Your Troubles Away, The Little Cyanide Cookbook, and my personal favorite Be Bold With Bananas.

Some of the best collections juxtapose antique and modern objects. It's unusual for them to give me quite this much whiplash, though.

A good collection of Girl Scout stuff included a little card of stamps, of which this Family Planning stamp was one.

As promised, the Tardis yukata. I didn't find an artist credit.

Quilts!

The light varied a lot in different areas, and the quilts were hung from the ceiling as always, so photo quality could be better for some of these.

Flamin' geometry! (artist name blurred, sorry)

Happy pixel dragon has a BALL. Look how his spines go all around his tail. (artist name blurred, sorry)

Spiky spiky spiky! I love the unevenness of the ring of triangles. (artist name blurred, sorry)

Such a simple thing to do for such a strong effect! These are plain log-cabin quilt blocks, but choosing the gradations of color for each side and overlapping them differently makes the quilt fascinating and a little vertiginous. (Harriet Beach)

All about contrasts: the red and white, the fluffy feather-quilting and stark right angles. (Lisa Martin)

More than 24 hours later, I remain caught between "this is the best thing ever" and "why, why would you do that." I think it's two identical pattern repeats with the squares offset by half. Or do you need more fabric than that with seam allowances involved? MADNESS. (Ann Crain)