Purls: Day Two

When you visit a city for a workshop, you never get to really see the town, unless you meet a wonderful woman like Nancy. I sat next to her at Friday’s lunch and we got chatting. She has lived and worked in Minneapolis for years working, I believe, with museums among other things. I asked her what I should try to do the hours I have on Sunday before my flight home and she asked me what I was doing that night.  

We ended up driving, along with my roomie, Teena Crawshaw, around the twin cities seeing places most tourists see. This lovely street is Milwaukee Avenue which was a blue collar neighbourhood built for railway workers and their families. They now face beautiful laneway which is like a long narrow park with lots of gingerbread and flowers. These small houses are restored and are beautiful, the one with the lighted front porch and the realty sign is up for sale at $347,000, the whole place was magical.

Then there are the ‘cobbles’ in the Warehouse District, or what we thought were stones. Nancy pulled the van up in the middle of the street and told us to open the doors and look down. They are wooding cobbles!!!! You can see the wood grain and were from the time when this district was paved with dirt or wood.

Loved this bicycle stand at the site of a children’s park and some benches for weary parents. I saw them in front of a couple of health food stores. Minneapolis is a big bike town, racks on the front of buses, bike spaces on the Light Rail I took into town from the airport. Lots of cyclists.

Back to work today here is this morning’s group of buttonmakers, keen and learning to dig up their creative side, one lady made lovely flowers that she wants to turn into ‘SweaterSticks’.

It’s all over and here sit four of us in Applebees for supper, Mary Slattery, April Mills, demonstrator,  me and Teena Crawshaw, another demonstrator.  We  really had a great time winding down here, and when we got back to the hotel three others who also were staying over were sitting in the lovely foyer and we joined them for a chat and a giggle.

Very tired I turned on the ‘box’ and got first the end of ‘High Society’ then a Marx Brothers flick. I was trying to work on a fish fin for my last part of my Kollaboration effort…need to start again.

Night, night.