The best kind of Road Trip day

When we were planning this trip, my hero had envisaged today as one to be spent exploring the river a little more.  However, driving up the Mississippi over the last couple of days led us to think that the river itself isn’t that interesting.  Maybe we should think again?

Whilst picking up leaflets here and there yesterday, I’d spotted that John Deere tractors are built here in the Quad Cities and that it was possible to visit them.  So, starting out early, we crossed the bridge over to Rock Island (humming the tune as we went, of course)

Once in Moline, we entered a new world.

We really had no idea what we were looking at, but we received the warmest of welcomes and the reassurance that we had only to ask and everything would be explained.

Like, how do you move a 35ft wide combine harvester from one place to another?  Yes, the wide “front bit” unclips …oh my, can you tell that we don’t know much about these things?  Even so, this machine is HUGE.  Half a million dollars worth of huge.  I might say that the answer we got when we asked the question was much clearer, used the proper terminology and was really well explained!

Of course, I just had to climb up into the biggest digger there, which, when viewed through the windscreen looked as though it could scoop that house up in one go.  Enormous.

Not everything was huge.  Some things were quite small.

But they were boring

It was the big machinery which caught our imagination.

 

And the names, of course.  I mean, what mischief could you do with a Feller Buncher? (It’s for use in forests, by the way!)

And returning to the subject of clipping the accessories on and off, well, of course, it’s a five minute task isn’t it?   Perhaps not.

This is just one of sixteen spray units on a wide crop sprayer, computer controlled, of course, with GPS for use in the dark too. 

We loved it all!

In the adjacent shop was everything one might want with a John Deere logo – including what looked suspiciously like the old Osh Kosh dungarees we were dreaming of back in Wisconsin – though these were pink, not red and instead of the OshKosh B’Gosh logo, there was the JD leaping deer, of course.

Eventually, we had to drag ourselves away from these monster machines and head out into the Iowa countryside again.  Our next stop was to be the small town of West Branch.

We chose the metalled roads this morning.  None of the gravel dirt tracks, thank you.

It was a lush, green landscape with farm dotted about here and there.  Now, we were on the lookout for quilt barns and, of course, John Deere machinery!

We’d almost passed this one by when I snapped it – we learned later that it’s the Iowa block, too.

Thankfully the next one was a little easier to spot and to photograph.

So, why West Branch?

US President #31 Herbert Hoover was born in the small town and there’s a museum and Presidential Library here – and of course, you know how we love to visit such places.

So, firstly into the visitors centre to get an overview.  I knew nothing of the man and what he did, but soon recognised him for his tireless humanitarian work and also for his simple beginnings.

He was born in this simple, two room wooden cottage in West Branch though by the time he was nine, he’d lost both parents and was packed off to live with family in Oregon.

This little cottage was simple but homely. His father was the blacksmith in the forge over the road and his mother a devout Quaker who encouraged a strong work ethic in her three children.

I liked the basket of fabric strips and the rag rugs which would have been made from them.

The one room school across the way was where Herbert Hoover began his education.

 

We were about to move on to the Presidential Library but caught a glimpse of the Main Street and, feeling peckish, decided to go in search of a sandwich.

Ha!  A different type of sandwich in this shop!

Quilt sandwiches…  Well, I couldn’t pass by this cute shop without taking a closer look inside, could I?

Of course, we found the coffee shop a little further on and satisfied our hunger

Returning to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, we watched the introductory film and made our way around the exhibition.

There was a really clever mixed media timeline as an overview – just as well because I had no idea of such things before we arrived!  

Oh, and look who is giving a presentation here in September!  (None other than the Professor of the online course Mary and I just completed and author of the recent biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder)  We’d be in the audience, given the chance!

Rather than go into all the details of Herbert Hoover’s life and work, I’ll simply suggest you take a look here and see why we all left feeling that there is so very much more to the man than his presidency during the Great Depression.

With plenty to think (and talk) about, we hit the road again for one last stop.

Another quilt shop!  This one was so very different from the store in West Branch and yet was just as attractive.  Here were some really interesting bits and pieces, new techniques to find out about and the most beautiful, softly coloured reproduction fabrics.  What a great place to round off the afternoon.

Tractors, combines, quilts and a bit of history thrown into the mix.  The perfect Road Trip day!

Checking off the must-sees

Everyone who knew we were heading for Minneapolis told us we should visit the Art Institute.  So, this morning, we did.

It’s a huge place, chock full of every kind of art from all over the world.  Name an artist and there’s surely at least one of their works here.  What’s more, it’s free! 

The hard part was finding our way around.  For some reason, the map was particularly tricky to interpret.  So, we just jumped in and followed our instinct.

We saw classical sculpture – this is The Lost Pleiad by the American sculptor Randolph Rogers.

When we arrived, I asked one of the volunteers at the desk which particular exhibit was a “must see”.  She replied that there was a piece in the modern art collection that was so horrible, we’d recognise it immediately.  That was the one we really should see.

Here it is.  Yes it’s horrible – the more so because it’s a posthumous portrait of the artist’s mother!  (by the American artist Morris Kantor)  Maybe it’s as well she never got to see it?

I enjoyed the modern installations, particularly this one by American street artist Swoon, called Alixa and Naima.  I liked the way the textures interact with one another and the composition of the collage as a whole.

And we all loved the Magritte “Promenades of Euclid” which played with our brains so! 

I must have been particularly receptive to collage today, because this piece made of driftwood from Lake Superior, by George Morrison, hit all the buttons for me.

There’s just something really satisfying about the neat patterns, the blend of colours and those lovely textures too.  Love it!

But actually, there were two truly memorable exhibits which left us all thinking.  The first began with these small figures on the landing and continued into an extended exhibition of work in the next few rooms.

I’d not come across Mark Mothersbaugh before.  The title, Myopia refers to his own shortsightedness and refers to this mixed media exhibition of his work.

The first room was filled with a musical instrument made of a strange collection of tubes and frames which soon sprang into action, playing the weirdest, most kooky music imaginable.  Difficult to describe but suffice to say, everyone was walking around with a smile!

The adjacent room contained a collection of 30 000 postcards created by the artist who draws at least one postcard a day.  Hmm.  Dodger friends, are you listening?  I mean, if we all kept up this habit, what would we do with such a collection? 

Another room was concerned with symmetry and yes, of course we loved the car .  So, Mark Mothersbaugh, we need to know more about you and your work!

The other exhibit which touched us all was the recently discovered office of the first curator of the MIA, Barton Kestle.  Full of a curious collection of bits and pieces, the office had been locked closed following the mysterious disappearance of the man during the McCarthy era.

The story was outlined on a nearby panel and explained how the office and its contents had been rediscovered recently, bringing the tale of the curator and the mystery of his disappearance to the fore once again.  Sitting in the cafe later, we decided we wanted to know more about this brilliant young man – we googled and came across this

So, time to go, by means of the 1950s Otis Lift, another exhibit really but this time, a working one.  What a great place to spend a morning – well, of course, we could have spent the week here, but we thought we’d quit whilst we were hungry!

We’d intended to pay a visit to the Minnesota State Capitol whilst we were here, but our plans were thwarted – renovations until 2017, we understand, so the place is closed.  Never mind, we still hit the road to St Paul and made alternative plans.

Just around the corner from St Paul’s Cathedral was Summit Avenue, which was – is – the place to live in this city.

On Summit Drive, there is the largest of houses.  Not only the largest in the city but the largest house in the state of Minnesota – The Hill House, built by the railway baron James J Hill.

James Hill and his family lived here in considerable style and we looked forward to taking a look around the mansion.  We booked our places on a tour and waited the half hour in Mr Hill’s art gallery – formerly the home of many old masters but now, used for temporary exhibitions.

Right now it’s a show of H’mong quilts – right up my alley!

Beautiful contemporary examples of the traditional H’mong embroidery techniques were to be found here, including this one, which brought back memories of a small elderly H’mong lady working on her indigo resist patterns high above the Mekong River in Laos…

No worries about waiting for our tour with such lovely things to see.

When the time came for our tour, we were delighted to find the chatty lady in the reception was our tour guide – first class!

So, if my favourite room in the house is the lavish entrance hall, perhaps my least favourite was the laundry.  Actually, the house was a beautiful design on a human scale and most of us could imagine living here rather well!

OK, we’d like to have the help of staff, just as Mr Hill had

OK, enough culture then, let’s hit the shops!

Fawbush’s had popped up on my Pinterest page a couple of times and knowing we were headed for Minneapolis I noted the address.  Mary and I left with couple of purchases each, aided and abetted by my hero who was simply looking forward to supper.

A good job Good Earth was right next door, then.

The Road to Minneapolis

We set out immediately after breakfast for what was going to be a fairly long drive to Minneapolis.  We’d identified a couple of highlights along our route however and we hoped that these would prove interesting enough to avoid any use of Roadside America!

The Wisconsin countryside continued in the lush, green style and a callout alerted me to this particularly pretty quilt barn.  Isn’t that a fine apple tree block?

Shortly afterwards, as I was craning my neck to catch a first glimpse of the great Mississippi River, we followed a signpost to “Lock and Dam #5A”, to what Mary described as “some kind of water operation, I expect”.

There didn’t appear to be much to see, apart from boys’ stuff – statistics about the dam and the lock and…

a huge train with two engines all fired up and ready but for the moment, just puttering there with a couple of miles of wagons behind them.  Every so often, there’d be a whoosh of air as the brakes were released but for now, these engines were going nowhere.

But just in case, we didn’t walk over the crossing but used the underpass, as recommended.

Our reward was an unimpeded view of the dam.

And a huge, but dead, dragonfly on the steps – the wingspan was easily four inches and those lace wings were so pretty.

Time to move on, driving alongside the railroad and passing several stationary trains, each one a mile or more long.  Why none were moving, we had no idea, but someone was glad to see them and have a small diversion from the straight road ahead.

Not quite a quilt on this barn but interesting nevertheless.

Another dam.

More straight road, through the big woods.  Can you guess where we are heading?

I must say, the signs didn’t bode well, but here we were in Pepin, birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the nearest town to the “Little House in the Big Woods”, the first book in the series Mary and I have been enjoying recently.

Actually, there’s not a great deal here, since the books were written many years after Laura and her family moved away from Pepin, taking their belongings with them.  But the town features in the first book and clearly, the place of her birth warrants some commemoration.

I’m just not sure this does her justice, however.

Perhaps it’s a “work in progress”?  This information panel suggests that someone is working on some changes.

But I think that post it notes are possibly not the most visitor friendly way of imparting information – and of course, none of these things are original or particularly historically accurate.

Oh my.  Here’s hoping that changes are afoot and that someone can do something better here, sooner rather than later. 

Having said that, I’m not sure the exhibits at the train museum are that great either!

Anyway, here we are by the historic marker, a little further along the road.

Where a clearer, more attractive information board summarised the life of Pepin’s famous daughter and gave directions to the Little House Wayside, about seven miles from here.

It’s along the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway, needless to say.

The historic marker and the cabin are situated on the land owned by Charles Ingalls, but it’s not the original cabin and it’s not necessarily in the exact place either.

But hey, it’s a Little House in the Big Woods!

Yes, of course we went inside to take a look – and to try to remember how it was described in the book.  We both recalled how the family had gone into Pepin just before Christmas to choose presents from the General Store – that would have been quite a journey.

And as we drove back towards the river – which opens out to become Lake Pepin here – we drove through the Big Woods again and recalled the words of one of the guides at Old World Wisconsin the other day: She explained how settlers would be dropped off in a patch of native woodland like this with an axe and a spade and just have to manage.  First, a well to be dug.  Then the trees to be cleared and the stumps taken out before seeds could be sown for the first crops.  All of that needed to be done if they were to survive the first year.  And those big woods were not neatly planted rows of tall conifers, but these smallish, scrubby deciduous trees and bushes which were so dense it’s impossible to walk amongst or between them.

They must have been tough souls.

We are nothing of the kind and we were getting hungry.  The information board in Pepin had suggested that Stockholm, the next town along the road could be a good bet for something to eat, so we parked up and went in search of a bakery or similar.

We spotted another Statue of Liberty too!

My hero’s eyes were elsewhere though…the magic word, PIE!

Looks promising…

The Stockholm Pie and General Store was perfect!  Great sandwiches for two of us and a chicken pot pie for the driver.  Delicious.

What a lucky find!

Stockholm was a cute kind of place, with blue bicycles to borrow, free of charge (we didn’t) and a real community feel.  We stepped inside one of the other stores to browse and received a recommendation for a shop/gallery in the next town.

Cultural Cloth was right up my alley and there were some really interesting pieces in there.  My favourite was a crochet/beadwork necklace from Turkey – but at $169 it wasn’t an impulse purchase, sadly.

What joys there are to be found along America’s Byways!  We love it!

A short time later, we were crossing the river and I was getting out my camera to try to snap the next sign – I nearly got it!

Welcome to Minnesota.  No “ker-ching” until our feet touch the ground though

The skyline of St Paul passed by – or rather, we passed by the skyline.

And eventually, finally!  We arrived in Minneapolis.

Ker-ching!!!   US State #40 for my hero and I!

On our way to find some dinner this evening we found no roller skating waitresses, but we did find Mary Tyler Moore throwing her beret in the air outside Macys.  We missed the fun of the drive-in diner, but actually, the margaritas in the Mexican restaurant we chose made up for it in some way

A day off. A day out.

I’d seen the notices about this exhibition here and there.  When I pinned an image from Laura Kemshall’s blog to my Pinterest board, it provoked a couple of enthusiastic responses from friends who had already visited and who recommended it highly.  So yesterday, my Hero and I took the day off to visit Wolverhampton.

As you do.

Bilston Craft Gallery is an interesting place to visit regardless and from the minute we stepped inside, we were glad we’d come.  It was friendly, very accessible and there was an interesting permanent collection to see and in some cases, handle.

Amusing local relevance too, like this canal boat full of polar bears – legend has it that some polar bears escaped from Dudley Zoo!  We were captivated and hadn’t even seen a quilt yet!

When we did turn the corner and see quilts, we were equally delighted.  Quite a few of them were right up my street, including this piece by Alicia Merrett inspired by a map of a port.

If I move right along to this piece by Clare Smith (“Bitter Harvest”), you’ll get an idea of what’s floating my boat right now.  If you follow my Pinterest boards, then you’ll have noticed a lot of pojagi appearing and this clever, clever piece was the one which provoked my interest in this exhibition.

It’s actually part of an installation, with small dyepots dripping dye into the white, seamed cloth.  The piece is a commentary on the environmental damage as a result of textile manufacture and dyeing and is so original, so thought-provoking.  Love it.

Other exhibits which really caught our eye were Olga Prins Lukowski’s Maya Temple, where the exquisite stitching and geometry pressed all of my Hero’s buttons!

What textile artist couldn’t love the sight of Annabel Rainbow’s “studio”?  It made me feel right at home!

I enjoyed Susan Lenz’ I do/I don’t installation too – imagine creating that for a significant wedding anniversary?  Once again, there was a “handle carefully” label on her sketchbook, so of course, I did!

Love it.

Lettering is another interest and the idea of free machining all those phrases onto tulle sends a shiver down my spine, even if it was done with water soluble fabric as well.

So the detail of Sarah Impey’s “Stitch by Stitch” had me peering at it with my nose to the fabric.  The regularity of the lettering and the even stitches would have you believe that a computer was involved….but every bit was free machined.  Wow.

Of course, there were other works which provoked our curiosity but there are so many reviews and reports online, I’ll leave it there.

Suffice to say that, if you are at a loose end and within travelling distance of Wolverhampton/Bilston, then there can be few better ways of spending the day.

Just don’t go car cruising whilst you are there, will you?

What a show!

I was mixing with the fashionistas yesterday.  They’re not my usual crowd, but hey, what an inspirational bunch they are.

I’ve written before about the collaborative project which has been going on between the students of Kingston University and a group of expert WI craftswomen.  Yesterday was the start of the grand finale; the end of term show at the university and the chance for everyone involved to see what these clever women have created.  We gathered in the Fashion department amidst photographers, press, proud family members and the artists themselves and awaited the show.

It was rather exciting!

I chose a seat at the end of the back row amongst my friends and colleagues, thinking that I could stand and take a photo without impeding the view of anyone behind me.  But then, a bunch of students arrived and squeezed in to stand behind us – oh oh.  Thankfully, one of them accepted the offer of my camera and I gladly handed it over to her – leaving me to focus fully on the exciting things which were happening!

The music began – full volume – and the first model hit the catwalk.

Wow.

Though I’ve been to fashion shows, they’ve usually been to showcase ready to wear clothes on sale somewhere and though some have used professionals to show their garments, I probably wouldn’t have described these people as “fashion models”.   But yesterday afternoon, we were treated to the real deal.  The professionally gorgeous, impossibly slim, remarkably confident and extraordinarily aloof models that I would only associate with Vogue or similar.

Oh my.

The first creations we saw were the main collections designed by the eleven fashion knitwear students who have been working on the project.  These were solely the responsibility of the students themselves and each collection of six outfits had to fulfil the particular brief of the syllabus as part of their final degree project.

Though their creativity had been taken to the limit occasionally, there were many garments that we’d have given our eye teeth for – not that everything would necessarily have been totally practical for shopping in Waitrose, of course.

After each student had shown the individual garments, the collection was shown as a whole to much enthusiastic applause.  I can only imagine the roller coaster of emotions these young women have experienced in the last few days and know that at least one was finishing into the wee small hours in order to be ready.

Though all the participants were women, two of the students chose to work on menswear.  This particular collection had a theme of shopping (surely not inspired by WI members?)  The fabrics had been printed with store logos – ASDA in the case of this jacket and an all over print of TESCO on the trousers.

Who says fashion can’t make a statement, too?

Finally, there was the eleven collaborative garments to see.  Each student had worked with two WI members and utilised their technical handwork skills to develop their concept further.  The results were altogether amazing.  Sadly, it was only at the end of this part of the show that Kate told me the battery of my camera had died, so these last few photographs are quick snaps taken on my phone (because I just couldn’t resist taking pictures!  Just as well perhaps…)

This is the resulting garment designed by the student whose inspiration came from the button man, shown in pictures here  (third and fourth picture down)  Featuring a collection of hand made Dorset buttons and embroidery, it was clear that this concept had been successfully followed through to conclusion.

Here is the original design sheet from an earlier meeting, which I didn’t feel able to share before.  Isn’t it interesting to see the finished garment?

I realised too, the importance of styling and wonder whether the Aran knitters quite expected their garment to be modelled with such spirit?

One each garment had been shown, the students each came down the catwalk with their model and in a spontaneous demonstration of the links which have been forged between students and members, they sought out their partners and grabbed them by the hands, culminating in the most amazing, emotional finale imaginable.  I am sure it’s something none of them will ever forget.

And it’s only the start, too.  Next month when the WI comes together in the Albert Hall to celebrate the centenary of the organisation, there will be another chance to see the collection modelled and I, for one, can’t wait to have another look (and hopefully get some better photos!)  Then, the work will be on show at the Centennial Fair in Harrogate in the Autumn and once again at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Ally Pally (and maybe beyond?)

But really, how lucky was I to be in on the whole shebang, from start to finish? And though that’s the conclusion of this particular collaboration, who knows where the next one might take us?  One thing is sure, I’d love to be in on it!