Sweepstakes x2!

The Tulsa State Fair opened today and so I dragged my family (practically kicking and screaming in DH's case) to see if I'd won any ribbons.

It turns out I did on four of the six items I entered, including two sweepstakes ribbons!! I'm pretty proud, I have to admit.

Here's the Shetland Tea Shawl. I wasn't sure this was going to win anything since I had a bit of a tension issue on the border. I started a lot tighter than I ended but didn't realize it until I blocked it (two days before the entries were due). It still got a sweepstakes though so I'm thrilled!

The other sweepstakes was on my Augsburg doily, from a Lena magazine my Aunt Louise sent last year. I entered it in the "miscellaneous items" category because they had one for crocheted doilies, but not knitted ones.


I got a first place on each of my two skeins of yarn. In the pic below they're the blue ribbon on the left and the one just below it. The funny thing is that the ribbons almost totally cover the skeins! LOL!

This isn't mine, but it does belong to one of the ladies in my Panera group, Penny. I LOVE this sweater! She wore it to the very first K.N.I.T. Guild meeting she came to and that's how we all remembered her: "the woman with the beautiful fair isle sweater." Yay Penny!


My friend Kim (also from the Panera group) also got a ribbon or two in the photography section, but I didn't have time to really look for her pictures. I know she got at least one ribbon and I hope to have time to really look at the pictures later. Both kids were pulling on my pants, telling me they were hungry and WHY was I looking at all those pictures?!? Didn't I know they wanted to eat??

We also explored the livestock area (after eating), and found a totally different section than we'd been to last year. They had a large petting area with all kinds of exotic animals, including some Zebu (two different kinds), a zebra, a kangaroo, some caves (looks like a cross between a rabbit and a horse, kind of), an alpaca, two camels, some sheep, lots of goats, and some baby chickens. I'm leaving out a whole bunch of animals, but it was fun!

Here are the kids feeding the freshly-shorn alpaca:


And Greg helping Ryan feed a Jakob Sheep:


There were lots of goat kids and very pregnant goats, as well as some new lambs. The kids (ours, that is) had a great time!

Truck, Chairs, Fabric

Another highly descriptive post title. ;-)

First up, the "new" truck:


It's a 2000 Ford Ranger, and DH LOVES it. I'm not so fond of it but since I'm not the one driving it every day, that's just fine!

-----------------

Today I went on a fabric acquisition expedition for some more blacks and light greys for my current quilt project.

The large brown bit on the right will be the borders, the ones on the bottom will be added to the darks, and the ones on the top will be added to the lights. The bright fabric on the top left is one my boy picked out and I'll probably add it to my fat-quarter drawer--I'm sure it'll be the perfect "zinger" in another quilt.

This quilt is just flying along--I figured out that it takes me 45 minutes to choose, stack, cut, sew, press, and trim 10 blocks. Not too bad! I've got 58 blocks finished right now, with another 10 to press and trim. The goal is just under 200 blocks for a queen-sized quilt so I'm more than 1/4 finished. Not bad for having started less than a week ago!

-----------------

On our trip to get the truck we stopped at Ikea.

I LOVE Ikea and could spend hours and hours there. Luckily for my family, I managed to restrain myself this trip. We came away with two chairs, two trash cans, an easel and some finger puppets for the kids, and a set of dishes which are totally awesome.

Here's the easel in use:

It's been a huge hit with the kids, especially DD. Here she's drawing a pirate ship on the ocean, complete with sea creatures.

Here is one of the chairs with its slip cover:

There are two chairs but one is in the living room at the moment. They're very comfortable!

-----------------

On the knitting front, I made some progress on the socks for Rebecca:


I'm actually much farther along than that, but I didn't manage to take any pictures today.

I'm a little concerned that they're going to be too big, so I'll probably hold off on going much farther until Rebecca can try them on.

-----------------

Hopefully my next post will have some fair results, and it opens tomorrow afternoon and I'm dragging the family over there tomorrow night.

Quilting Again

It's been a long time since I've actively worked on piecing a quilt, but I'm getting back into it again.

Yes, I'm still knitting, but the quilt I started this weekend has grabbed my attention in a big way. Here's how the current quilt top looked as of last night (the blocks aren't sewn together--that will wait until all the blocks are made up):

And tonight, 10 more blocks finished:

I actually have 28 blocks right now, so three of them aren't in the picture above.

I'm really loving this pattern! It's called Trident Crossing from the book New Cuts for New Quilts and I love it! There are other books in the series by the same author, but this book is the only one that inspired me to get fabrics out of my stash immediately and start cutting. It's going to be queen size (or at least that's the plan) but hopefully it won't take to long at the rate it's going now! It would've been a lot farther on if I hadn't rotated the center section of 10 of the blocks and subsequently had to rip out two long seams per block. Le Sigh.

This is such a fun, satisfying pattern because there are only two seams to match per block, and that's it.

Hopefully tomorrow (or sometime in the next few days) I'll post about some of the excitement we've had around here.

Mystery Stole 3 blocked

I finally got off my duff and blocked my mystery stole today.

Here it is blocking.


And my wonderful hubby took a pic of the shawl in action:

I love the shawl! The wing is a really cool feature and I'm so glad I followed the pattern.

-------------------

Tonight at Panera I finished the Spring Things Shawl that I started two weeks ago. Two weeks exactly start to finish. It's a little on the small side but I used smaller needles than called for. Between what's left of the first ball of Zephyr and the other two ounces I can probably get a much bigger shawl so I 'll probably make another of these. It was a fun, quick pattern. I'll try to block it tomorrow and post some pictures.

-------------------

My mom sent me some beautiful roving but I haven't taken any pictures yet--it's been really windy outside and I was worried that it would blow away! Maybe tomorrow.

Happy knitting (or whatever)!

Fair Entries

After a bit of a scrapbooking marathon yesterday, I got all of my fair entries finished and delivered this morning. Woo hoo!

Here are the scrapbook pages:



The pictures were taken late last night under artificial light so they aren't as good as if I'd scanned them, but for now they'll be all right. I don't hold much hope of them getting first place, although it would be cool! My scrapbooking style doesn't seem to be what the judges like enough for first place (which gets $50 gift certificates to one of hte local scrapbooking stores) because I don't use enough "product" in my pages I suspect. That's all right though--I'm happy with my style.

Here are the two skeins of yarn:

The top one is called King's Ransom, made from roving from my sister sent to me a while back. She really spoils me! The top one is entered into the "novice, novelty yarn" category and the bottom is in the "novive, 2-ply yarn" category.


The two other things are the Augusburg Doily and the Shetland Tea Shawl. I didn't get a good picture of the shawl before I took it to the fair, but I'll get one once it's back. Here it is pinned out on a blue sheet, so the color balance is all wrong:


So now comes the hard part, waiting until the fair opens to find out if I got any ribbons! :-)

Red in the Face

It's been quite here on the blog front, but I've got a good excuse. Really, I do, better than usual even.

I've got Fifth Disease.

I seem to have a talent for getting what are supposed to be childhood diseases. When I was 23 I got chicken pox, and now at 33 I've got the fifth of the common childhood rashes. (That's where it gets its name, I guess since all the other childhood rashes already had names.)

My DD had the rash a few days ago, so I suspect that wherever we got it, we picked it up at around the same time. Benadryl helps a lot but I've got too much to do (or at least I'm flailing around trying to do) that I don't feel like I can zonk out for a few hours. Not to mention that DS wouldn't let me do that anyway! At least my wonderful, fabulous husband has been picking up the slack of me not doing much around here. I truly am a very fortunate woman to have such an awesome man.

Really, it's not that big of a deal, but the fever I had for three days was the worst I've had for years, and the achiness/join pain is not a picnic. It's kind of like having a sunburn on my arms, back, and legs (mostly areas that never see the sun) that hurts all the time. Direct sunlight definitely hurts though, interestingly!

That's enough of a pity party for Kat, but now you know why I've been so quiet. I haven't even gotten much knitting done!!

Since the fair is coming up and entries are due this Saturday, I pushed myself hard yesterday and got my Shetland Tea Shawl blocked. I took a picture of it blocking but I'm feeling kinda pathetic so I'll wait until tomorrow to get it off the camera and post it.

Speaking of fair entries, I still have to *do* the two scrapbook pages I've been planning to enter. Luckily I'm going cropping with Marci tomorrow night so hopefully I'll manage to get them done. I've got some mental plans for them but I need to get the photos printed still, so I'd better get moving.

Pictures tomorrow, hopefully....

MS3 is back on track

My Mystery Stole 3 was in time out for a little while. I'd taken off the wing and added more length to the cat's paw section, but when I spread it out to admire it (and check the length) I saw this:

Something is not right just above the lifeline. I thought I'd picked up the pattern at the right place, but in reality I was around three rows off.

I just couldn't leave it like that, so I decided to rip it back:

Of course both sides were messed up but I only photographed one side.

It took me about an hour per side (maybe--that's being generous) to fix them, and here's the result:

MUCH better!! The tension issues from working back should mostly come out with blocking, and I'll tweak any of the stitches that don't cooperate.

So as of around 11:00 last night, here's what I had:

And right now I'm working on re-attaching the wing, then I just have to block it!

This has been a fun project (except for my mistakes of course) but I'm ready to have it finished.

------------------

I also finished the knitting on my Hanging Garden Stole while this project was in time out, so that needs blocking as well. It's nice to be finishing up a few things!

I also have to block my Shetland Tea Shawl before the fair--it's due next Saturday so I'd better get my act together! I've been waiting to block it so that I didn't need to re-block it before the fair--it's been extremely humid here and things don't hold their block all that well under those conditions.

------------------

Have a great weekend everyone!

Quill Lace Socks finished, with Pictures!

Today I managed to finish the Upside-Down Quill Lace Socks!

Those are the finished socks, with the amount of yarn left over from each ball. The small pile on the far left has only 1.5 yards!!! I weighed the larger one and by my calculations it has more than 17 yards. That's quite a discrepancy! The socks are just a tad shorter than I'd like, but I still really like them.

The kitties had to come and investigate, too:


And then they had to "help" because of course I wanted them to help model the socks, didn't I?!?!

Right sock, with Lenny making sure the camera wasn't going anywhere (by rubbing on it, of course).

And Squiggy, making sure that he's not left out. (Lenny is behind my feet).

I'm pretty excited to have these finished because now I can start on the Scroll Lace Socks for Rebecca!