MIA, Bohus and Turnblad

Over the past few days I have been experiencing some of the things my immediate neighborhood has to offer. It started with an impromptu visit to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts with Jerri and Zoe on Thursday afternoon.

Admission to The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is free thanks to sponsors of the museum. The museum is so big that we spent nearly two hours there and only saw a small portion of it. Jerri and I both agreed that taking in museums in small doses is the best so as to avoid sensory overload. The great thing about free admission is that it doesn't make you feel guilty for spending short amounts of time per visit.

Part of the reason we kept it short was that I had to get home in time for my at-home dinner date with Paul. We tried an Ayurvedic recipe for a dish called Kitchari. The dish wasn't very photogenic, so instead I will represent the meal with a photo of the fruit plate we also ate:

After dinner, I spent a bunch of time casting on for new, small projects. I am working on projects exclusively from stash yarn at the moment. I don't have a stash that involves sweater amounts of yarns, so I am having to get creative to find uses for the stash yarns I have. In addition to the small projects, I am toying around with some stitch patterns in hopes of developing something I like enough to turn it into a short sleeve, t-shaped sweater.

Today Jamie and I met at my place and then walked the few blocks over to The American Swedish Institute. As many of you know, the ASI is currently displaying a collection of Bohus sweaters. The Institute is housed in the Turnblad mansion. I was equally excited for the mansion as I was for the exhibit.

Check it out! Blue skies and only mildly bundled pedestrians!

I sometimes walk past this building on my dog walks and I love to look at it. It holds a mighty plot of land for being located in the city and the building has a really solid appearance.

They don't allow photography inside of the mansion so I can't show you the insanely tiny stitches of the Bohus sweaters, or the wonderfully warm and sunny solarium, or the abundance of carved woodwork, but take my word for it, it is a decadent building and the sweaters are stunning.

Jamie and I took a tour given by a volunteer who has been with the Institute for over 17 years and clearly has a passion for all things Swedish and/or Turnblad. We were part of a very engaged group of visitors, so our one hour tour was stretched to include more of the mansion than usual and an extra half hour. Luckily I had brought a sock to knit while listening to the tour or else I might have been a bit antsy.