Sydney Royal Easter Show, March 19, 2004

This was my second trip to the Sydney Royal Easter Show (after first going last year). I was invited along by some of the girls in the Knitters' Guild - thanks girls! - and we all headed off in the hopes of seeing some inspiring needlecraft. Unfortunately we were pretty much disappointed. Everything was so daggy! I soon broke off from the pack and spent the day wandering around, snapping pictures of whatever caught my fancy...

I finally remembered what this whole "District Display Competition" reminds me of: decorating floats for Homecoming in high school. People around the country design and build big displays of their local produce, seeing who can be the most inventive and decorative. This Central District one was interesting because they had most of their veg displayed in rows between the grain, which mean that since they were on an angle you could only see up the rows when you were directly perpendicular. Clever.

The Southern District wins my personal award for Biggest Nightmare Inducer in Visiting Children: giant insects made out of vegetables.

It still weirds me out that I live in a place where bananas and pineapples are considered local produce.

A popular feature of each Display is the Wall of Decorative Pickles. I cannot imagine the mindset of a person who'd spent hours cutting perfectly shaped zucchini rosetts and arranging them symmetrically in a jar.

One of the Districts - I can't remember which - seems to have some sort of tenuous "Celtic" affiliation, so they dubbed their Display "Celtic Country." I never quite understood where that came from, but I did like this pixelated Celtic design made out of apples.

And no Celtic Display would be complete without a sword stuck in the prize-winning Giantest Pumpkin.

On to the knitting section... This knitted Advent Calendar was one of the few designs I really liked. I might have to give it a try.

Okay, so as a knitted toy it's not the Coolest Ever, but this dog triggered some very insane feelings of nostalgia in me. Wasn't there a dog that looked kinda like this that - and now I'm going to sound nuts - answered fanmail on the Bozo Show in the early 80's? Or am I making that up?

The sculpture category is always fun. I liked this large welded metal pelican.

Something about this quilted wall hanging just struck me as very camp in a Jean-Paul Gaultier kind of way.