The California State Fair, 2022

NOTE: I will be traveling next week and won’t have a blog post. I may be back Aug 4th…or maybe not. I will be teaching at the Long Beach Quilt Festival then. Please stay tuned. I’m running as fast as I can!

It was the first California State Fair in 2 years and I was having withdrawal! I’ve attended state fairs in Illinois, California and Texas, as well as smaller fairs, and I’ve loved them all. They’re fun, cheesy and interesting. You can count on lots of aggressive vendors selling mostly useless but interesting items, agricultural exhibits, artery clogging food, hot days and a wide variety of attendees. And the free stage is so interesting – ethnic dancers, local musical talent and stuff you just don’t see anywhere else. It’s just fun!

I had to do the required selfie in front of the Golden Bear, the iconic symbol of the California State Fair:

The fairgrounds are long in the tooth, with some water areas drained, cracks and pot holes, buildings closed and large areas closed off. It was kind of sad. The fair was lightly attended. You NEVER saw this in previous years:

It was always hard to find a spot to sit.

Having attended the fair for years, I have worked my way through all the “fair food”:

I used to consider it a treat to indulge in some ridiculous food, but this year I was over it and got ceviche with a bottle of water. I was such a Good Girl!

The first thing I do is go to the buildings that house exhibits. Bet you don’t have this building at your state fair!

Only in California….

The building with all the more educational exhibits was shockingly empty. Only 2 out of 58 counties put up a display this year. I used to enjoy looking at what each country put up to represent their area. This display represents the agricultural offerings of the various counties:

For all it’s faults, California does produce lots of vegetables, fruits and nuts. And yes, I’ve heard the joke many times about California being the home of “fruits and nuts”.

One of the buildings housed an exhibit that was aimed at kids, with lots of candy and a variety of “selfie stations”:

Now to the good stuff, the Craft and Fine Art buildings, my favorite part of the fair.

First, the crafts building:

The fair is limited in terms of space and funds to make the exhibits viewer friendly. This year the quilts and crafts were displayed much better than in previous years. I am not a fan of hanging quilts up high like this, but again, they have limited resources. I am not posting any photos of the quilts hanging up high, as the quality of the photo was too poor to publish.

Let’s look at some quilty highlights:

Looking at other mediums besides quilting:

 

There were shockingly fewer Fine Arts entries, but what was there was excellent. A few of the entries:

I may have misplaced some of these entries between Fine Arts and Crafts.

The fair was definitely smaller and less well-attended this year. I fear that the state fair may be a thing of the past. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, it’s something I look forward to all year. I hope you enjoyed my tour of the fair.

Meanwhile, I’m still slogging along on “Yellow Silk Quilt”. I’ve put about 30 hrs into this grid so far. You can see the contrast between the 2-pass section (on the right) and 3-pass section (on the left). It takes a ridiculous amount of time for each pass, but I think it’s worth it. But geez, this is taking forever:

I’ll share at:

Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday
and
Finished or Not Friday