Edina Art Fair

Last weekend, the first in June, was the Edina Art Fair. Each year, several dozen artists set up booths at the busy intersection of 50th Street and France Avenue (which are closed for the occasion) selling all different kinds of art. This is at least the third year I've gone over and checked it out. I think my favorite thing about the Edina fair is that they have a good blend of kinds of art, including paintings, photography, jewelry, and fabric, and a nice range of price ranges. While you can certainly buy a piece for $1000 during your visit, there are also lots of things under $20! You can also even buy a piece of pottery by former Minnesota Viking Carl Eller who I spotted during my visit.

In past years, I've gone in the late afternoon on Saturday. It's better to go later in the day when the sun is a little less fierce. This year, I had other plans on Saturday evening so I decided to go after work on Friday. YES! It was so much less crowded on Saturday, I'm pretty sure I'm going to adopt that as my new tradition. It was a little hard to take pictures of what was going on, but here's one:

As you can tell from the photo, the weather was simply perfect! I wandered around and found one thing for myself and one gift I'll need later this year. When I saw this little bitty, I knew I'd be bringing it home!

Can you tell what this is?

It's a checkbook cover!!! I've been wanting a cool checkbook cover for a long time now, and I was so excited to see this one. Until Friday, the only time I'd ever seen a neat one was at Vera Bradley. While I love (some of) her patterns, I didn't know how well a plain cotton fabric checkbook cover would hold up to the stresses of everyday life. So, when I saw this one, which is made of oilcloth, I knew I'd found what I truly wanted. The fact that it was about half the price of a Vera only made the decision easier!

Going to the Art Fair reminded me of one of the purchases I made there last year: my spoon ring. The "spoon ring" is a ring made out of the handle end of a piece of flatware. Here it is:

I haven't been wearing it recently partly because it's gotten sort of tarnished. (It's also a little bit big to be comfortable for everyday wear, but I've even stopped wearing it on special occasions.) I figured that this was the perfect time to test out the new sterling silver polishing cloth I received as a birthday gift. While I couldn't get a great picture to show just how tarnished the ring was, I think this picture basically sums it up:

Yep, I removed all of that black stuff from the ring. Yikes. I then quickly polished it up with the attached gray cloth and it was ready to go!

And one final shot of my good-as-new ring!

All in all, it was a great trip to the Edina Art Fair!