Ohio!  Get it?  Can anyone else hear Elmer Fudd saying this in their head or is it just me and way too many hours watching Looney Tunes on Saturday mornings as a kid? (If you want to see the original 1949 Bugs Bunny episode, sit back, click here and enjoy. Hoo fah, you really can find anything on YouTube.) 

We were off to visit my DDS (dear, dear sister) in exotic eastern Ohio last week.  Perhaps combining "exotic" and "eastern Ohio" seems an unlikely union but any place that you are not frequently seems exotic when you visit.  To be sure, there are places that are intrinsically exotic like the Ngorongoro Crater, Tibet, London, Rome, Mumbai etc.  And perhaps eastern Ohio doesn't quite fit into that category but a place can certainly become exotic, even momentarily, just by encountering unexpected beauty, bustle or a unique experience. For example we (DDS, DC (Dear Children?) and myself) were wandering around Target shopping for school supplies and encountered ladies in starched white caps, dresses in shades of a ubiquitous blue-black, dark socks, black sneakers and speaking a dialect of German. That was exotic and prompted quite a few astute questions from Erin regarding the role of religion and dress. Earnest questions from a 6 year old can be challenging and providing non-judgemental answers, filled with potential pitfalls  -- "What if they didn't feel like wearing a dress today?"  "Does wearing a dress make them better at being Amish?"  Yipes.  Eastern Ohio is home to the second largest population of Amish in the US so it's not surprising that they were there but unusual experience for our family.   

We also went to the Trumbull County Summer Sizzler event which, despite its less than descriptive title, was an agriculture fair .  It was all geared towards kids so everyone stayed interested and had fun.  Here was our first exotic encounter.



Really.  Skunks?  As pets?  I didn't even know that was an option.





Aidan loved the antique tractors.  I didn't take a picture of the farmers (all older men and presumably the owners of the tractors) that were sitting and talking by the tractors but any Norman Rockwellesque picture from a faded Saturday Evening Post that you remember would do.




And what farm fair would be complete without the "hunt-for-the-little-rubber-tractors-in-a-kiddie-pool-of-feed-corn" game.  Actually, I dug around in the feed corn too and it was....cool, tactile and very pleasant. 


See... a bit of the exotic in Ohio.

On the fiber front, I took this


did this


and made it into this.



I'm extremely pleased with the outcome.  

Spinning details:
Fiber: 4.3 oz of BFL wool from All Spun Up
Method:  Drop Spindle
Final Product:  About 260 yds of 2-ply DK weight
Knitting Plans:  Maybe a pair of mittens