A Meandering We Will Go

This week end was the  2009 Meander Upper Minnesota River Art Crawl.  It's a very fun event featuring local artists.  We first headed to Milan to the Milan Village Art School featuring Fabricated sterling silver jewelry, photographs, prints, canvas and cards.  Then we went to a home in Milan featuring Scandinavian decor.   I managed to take one out door picture before the battery in my camera went dead.

The reason my batteries went dead was because I got a little carried away in the morning taking pictures of my fur balls that are just too darn cute.

This is our cat telling Lucy Lu what she thinks of her with her eyes..

This is Lucy Lu being just too cute and wondering why Smokey is such an ol' crab and won't play.

Now try to focus Cindy, and get back to the Meander.  In downtown Milan there is the cutest little shop, that isn't part of the Meander, but we stumbled in there last year so I just had to go back.

I bought this wine bottle cover gnome that I just could not pass up, in spite of her being  over priced. They had both Lena and Ole and I decided on Lena, mostly 'cause I like her hair. When I saw them I thought they were knitted and then felted so I immediately thought of my knitter friend Kathy.  After a closer look I decided they  may be made out of old felted sweaters and perhaps I could make an Ole and maybe even a Sven to go with Lena.  Then suddenly I had a vision of Kathy and me cracking open a bottle of vine and making gnomes for all of our Scandinavian, gnome loving, wine drinking friends.
Back to reality and on the road again, our next stop was Ortonville where we found landscapes with water themes, drawings and watercolors, then sculptures in various shapes.  I just don't have a great appreciation for nudes so we moved on quickly to a wonderful artist featuring Kindred Spirit Dolls.

I spent quite some time there before purchasing this adorable doll.  I loved all her dolls and all the sayings that went with them.
Then we went to the Red Barn where we found more jewelry, pottery, watercolor, porcelain dolls, and some very intriguing bentwood baskets. I just had to buy this cute little Norwegian Tine.

That pretty much sums up our Saturday travels.
Sunday we stayed closer to home traveling to Granite Falls and Montevideo. I can't show pictures of my purchases since they are gifts, but I will show pictures of the things I was coveting.

These baskets are very cool and if I had the perfect place and unlimited funds I probably would have bought one or two, but I don't have either so they stayed behind. 

Then there is the willow artist.  Now these I really really love and didn't just hint, but came right out and told my husband which ones he could buy for Christmas and my birthday.  They are somewhat more spendy than his usual budget, but I can always hope.

I didn't buy this bag, but I did buy the pattern for it.  I don't know why, since I have not had very good experiences when it come to knitting projects, but for some reason I thought perhaps I could handle it.

Now this was a very interesting display of art.  I had a hard time focusing on the art because I was so intrigued with the barn doors.  I just took a quick picture of one, as he was shooing people out the door.  Some had a window with chicken wire and they were all very unique.  I was very tempted to tell him I would pass on the art, but could I buy a barn door?
That was our last stop and we were out of time so that concludes the tour.