Last fall I entered one of my rugs “He Holds All Creation Together” in a national contest called Celebrations. Rug hooking is not like quilting. There aren’t too many shows or contests. So when I was accepted into the exhibit in the Originals category, I was VERY excited. They publish a book with pictures and descriptions of all the quilts, and I have looked forward to and bought the Celebrations book each year. They also display the Celebrations rugs at a big rug event in Ohio held at Sauder Village. I’ve always wanted to go to Sauder, and so that’s how I happened to go to Ohio last week. Here I am next to my rug.
Sauder Village is a fairly large village with some authentic buildings and some reproductions. They have all kinds of demonstrations going on–spinning, weaving, even broom making! The first day I of course visited the farm, and watched a demonstration on milking a goat and making butter. I loved it! When I get tired of chickens, I will turn that into a goat house 🙂
This little building and garden was just charming.
They had a museum too, which I wandered through. Isn’t this a kick? Imagine getting your mail this way. Amazon might have trouble getting your packages to you in two days.
And a wooden bike!! Can you believe it?
Now I only took a picture of this toilet because I would love to have a toilet like this 🙂
Then there was a famous glass man who actually works there. I went the first day, and stared at all his beautiful glass creations and knew that I was not going to spend that much money on glass. But I was so glad I went back the second day. I watched him work on this glass for a long time. He also had a helper there that was very good at explaining what was going on.
One day I wandered the back paths of Sauder Village. There was a fur trader there. Did you know that Beaver hides were the main commodity for trading? I also visited the grist mill, where the nice man gave his whole talk just for me. So of course, I bought two pounds of corn meal… Its in the freezer. But I do like corn bread, so I might try making that soon.
I came upon this beautiful conservatory. But by that time I was too hot to even go inside. I just enjoyed the beauty from outside.
Then one day I thought I’d be more adventurous and headed out to visit a nature preserve. It was rainy, so I just drove through. Everything is so green in Ohio!
The things I noticed most about this area of Ohio were how extremely straight the roads were, corn fields everywhere, and also small cemeteries just sitting on the side of the road in between the corn fields. I realized I hadn’t taken any pictures of the corn fields, so when I saw this view with the pretty flowers in the foreground, I snapped it.
On my last day, I didn’t need to get to the airport until 3:30. I googled “things to do in Toledo.” And I saw that they had a zoo! I decided to be adventurous and visit the zoo. But I have to admit, that was a bit of a bust. I was dressed all in black (very comfortable in airports and airplanes.) But not so great for walking MILES in hot humid weather. And yes, it was so hot and humid, most of the animals were hiding…
They did have a bird aviary that you could walk through, and I really enjoyed that. I like birds. Someday maybe I’ll have some specialty finches again.
After walking all that time in the heat, I was SO HOT. I googled “frozen yogurt” and found that the only one listed was between the zoo and the airport! Perfection. This was my lunch at 2:30. No apologies for the treats on top. They actually had a yogurt that they called California Tart. How about that? Who knew it was a California thing. Its usually the only frozen yogurt that I get.
Of course, I haven’t even mentioned the rug show. I spent a great deal of time there, looking at all the rugs. Someone said there was somewhere between 300 and 800 rugs displayed. Oh, and there were vendors too 🙂 If you want to read more about the rug show you can visit my other blog. I haven’t written about it yet. It’ll probably be up by Friday.