Busy Weekend

I had Saturday off, so I decided I was going to trek down to Crystal Lake, IL to go to the Midwest Fiber and Folk Fair at McHenry County College. It was a nice little fair, quite a few vendors but few live animals like Shepherd's Harvest or Wisconsin Sheep and Wool would have. Two Suri Alpacas and two angora bunnies, that was all. I wandered around the grounds twice, and stopped to see my friend Mia twice. Mia has a business called After The Sheep, and she sells hand-dyed yarn and fleeces and other natural fibers in various stages of preparation. I bought a pound of Colonial fleece from her, which has been washed but not carded. It is time I went past the "buy the already prepared roving" stage and started doing my own carding. Step by step I am learning the whole process from sheep to shawl. I'm not sure how well my husband would appreciate having big bags of raw fleece around, so that part of it may have to wait until we get a bigger place and I can have my own sewing/knitting/spinning room.

Sunday, after work, we went to Festa Italiana at the festival grounds. We did what we typically do for these festivals--we attended the Sunday Mass in order to get free admission afterwards. We genuinely do want to go to church, so this fulfills both spiritual and financial purposes. The mass was nice, with hymns easily recognizable to even Protestants in the audience, snippets from two Marty Haugen masses, and a wonderful choir from St. Sebastian, which is just up the street from us. After the mass, the organizers had planned a traditional religious procession through the festival grounds. The various Italian societies from Milwaukee, as well as a couple from Chicago, the Chicago Sicilian Band, and a drum/bugle/flag-drill group from Italy participated in this event. Some of the societies carried statues of either the Madonna or other saints (St. Rocco, St. Theresa, St. Rosalie) and spectators gave the societies money to pin to the statues, in return for pins, prayer cards, or rosaries/chaplets. This was the closest I'll probably ever get to such a procession, which has roots far back in history. I've read much about Italian and Sicilian immigrants adapting these processions to their American homes, and it is neat to see these traditions still carry on in some way.

The thing about Festa is the food. Pizza, pasta, calamari, tiramisu--it was everywhere! My choice for lunch was barbecued chicken cacciatore-style with homemade potato chips and a slice of Italian bread from Pitch's Restaurant and Barbecue. It was different, and delish. We also stopped in the Cucina Stage (sponsored by Piggly Wiggly) for a couple of cooking demos and to sample stuff. DaVinci Pasta had a delectable antipasto salad for sampling; Due Sorelle (Two Sisters) makes seasonings and dressing mixes and their pasta salad with Old World Italian Dressing was excellent as well. Another vendor sampled things like muffaletta salads (hot and mild), pickled garlic, pickled Brussels sprouts (which are actually better than non-pickled!), olive salads, and other Italian-style condiments as well as pasta sauces and meal kits. We got to see PBS chef Nick Stellino demonstrate two simple dishes, a strawberry sauce made with balsamic vinegar (again, better than it sounds!) and a shrimp pasta, and they had samples for everyone who attended. I want his cookbook. If all his recipes are as simple as those, I could do real Italian food and not destroy it. I made a snack of a Hawaiian Shave Ice (strawberry daquiri flavor). Supper was an Italian sausage sandwich with "sharp" peppers (slightly less hot than jalapenos). City Mouse bought me a brownie for dessert from his favorite Italian bakery, Sciortino's.

We spent the afternoon wandering the grounds, looking at the various exhibits. The best one was a photographic history of the Old Third Ward and its Italian heritage. It was fascinating. Half of it was just wedding photos, as early as 1897 and as recent as the late '60s. There were also photos from St. Rita's School, Cass Street School (where City Mouse went to pre-kindergarten), Our Lady of Pompeii Catholic Church (which used to stand on part of what is now an interchange to I-794), and various other landmarks of the Italian neighborhood, some of which still exist (Grappi's Market, Glorioso Deli). City Mouse says that this used to be an Irish neighborhood until a fire destroyed it in October of 1892; the Irish moved out, and the Italians moved in.

We wanted to listen to some of the music that was happening later in the day. We sat through a Barbra Streisand/Frank Sinatra "Concert that Never Was" with two excellent impersonators (though the Barbra impersonator got a little annoying at times). Then we moved on to Chicago Gold, which featured former members of a number of 1960s Chicago-area groups like Climax, The Buckinghams, The Cryan' Shames, Shadows of Knight, and Sonny Geraci, but a few songs into it, the 3am wake-up call for work had caught up to me. We left before the fireworks, so we didn't get to see Bobby Valli's tribute to his brother, Frankie Valli. No work today, so I took some Tylenol PM to assure that I did sleep like a rock last night.

The next ethnic festival is German Fest this upcoming weekend. Sadly, due to our work schedules, we probably won't make it. However, we will pull out all stops to make it to Irish Fest in three and a half weeks. Our next festival adventure, then will probably be the Wisconsin State Fair.

Country Mouse wildlife sightings: Robins, cardinals, wood duck, chickadees, and several wittle gway wabbits. And lots of dead raccoons between Lake Geneva and Crystal Lake, and a dead opossum at the top of the off-ramp leading to our house.