Fair Results (mine and others') *VERY LONG*

We made it to the Tulsa State Fair today, and we all had a great time.

We got smart and took the free shuttle. That is DEFINITELY the way to go! Not only was it fast and easy, but we didn't have to pay $10 for parking then still have to hike to the fairgrounds. I highly recommend it.

I was so proud of the kids--they made it for 3 1/2 hours! We started at the Sugar Art Show, then the Creative Arts display, then we got corn dogs and a yummy cherry-aid and strawberry-aid (lemon-lime soda with cherry and strawberry juice) before heading to the Just for Kids area. After that we went to the petting zoo, then back through the midway to the Sugar Art area where the kids decorated two graham crackers. I didn't get any pictures because I was in the middle of the cake display. That's the quick summary, and what follows is the long version with pictures.


Here's Mattie's cake, (DJ's daughter). She did great!

This is DJ's entry. It's all from sugar! No real flowers. Isn't it beautiful?


These two cakes cracked me up. I assume they're for a baby shower. Not quite what I'd want, but it takes all kinds.


The flowers on the cakes (and the cakes themselves!) were amazing.


These aren't real roses, if you can believe it.


From the Sugar Art Show we went to find all my stuff. Here's my Black and Tan with a Little Spice quilt, which got a first-place ribbon:


My Floral Fantasy got a second:


Here's Rori's Ice Queen, which got a third. The "Adult knit clothing/accessory" category is a FULL one and she should be really proud!


Here's my Rose of England shawl, which got first and Sweepstakes for Hand Knit articles:


And my handspun got first and Sweepstakes, but I think it was the ONLY entry in the handspun category. That makes me really, really sad because we have a lot of very talented spinners in this area.


Here's Gillian's Wallaby sweater, which took a second place. Hey now, whose sweater got that blue ribbon? RORI!!! YAY, RORI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


My socks got first place. Those are Dawn's socks in the background (you can just see the toe) and Emma's socks took second. (I'm not sure why mine got first and hers second, because I think that pattern is more difficult than the one I did.)


Here you can see Rori's socks (top left) as well as some of the crocheted entries:


Here's my necklace, the one hanging over the edge of the table:

It got a second place, which I'm quite happy with. I hadn't ever entered anything in that category.

Rounding out the entries, here's my rubber-stamped card which didn't win anything. The ones that did win were spectacular!


After the Creative Arts building we headed out to the Just for Kids building, via the midway where we got corndogs:


and then went to the Just for Kids building where they had a great time building:

They added onto something that had been started at 10:30 that morning. Quite impressive!

Then we found the kids' entries.

Here's Gillian's artwork:


and Ryan's artwork:


and finally, Gillian's weaving, which took a second place. I'm so proud!



After the Just for Kids building we headed over to the barns and the petting zoo area.

The kids fed all sorts of animals and saw some Cavies, whose pen had a Jackalope sign. I kept hearing people calling the Cavies "Jackalopes" which totally cracks me up, because where I grew up Jackalopes are a taxonomists' creation to fool gullible tourists.

Here's the sign in the pen, just to clarify about Cavies (click to embiggen, as with all the photos):

And here are the Cavies:

Gillian fed a camel:

And her awesome Dad helping Gillian feed baby goat:


They also petted a HUGE cow-like animal although I didn't see a sign on its pen. It was really friendly and obviously loved attention. Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures.

After the animal pen (and thorough hand washing), we headed over to where Dawn, Janae and Brittney were working and the kids went through the Fun on the Farm. They were thrilled to have "earned" a bag of chips and yogurt bar.

We slowly made our way back to the Creative Arts building (we ran into Donna Titsworth and her daughter on the way) and the kids decorated a graham cracker with icing. It turned out that they got two of the last three graham crackers! I didn't get pictures of them decorating them or eating them, but they told me all about it.

After that we headed back out to the shuttles, hopped on a bus and got back on our way to Broken Arrow.

After dinner we had a little fire in our fire bowl outside and really enjoyed it.

Now we're tired and I'm heading to bed! Have a great Monday, everyone!

Button Shawl Pin and Some Fair Results

At the August K.N.I.T. Guild meeting one of my friends, Linda Young, gave me some glass buttons she made. I immediately thought they'd be a wonderful pin, and here's what I came up with:

I can tell I'll get a lot of use from it.

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I finished another small quilt:

This is one from a couple of years ago, when some gentlemen from the quilt guild came to our stitch group and we had a mini workshop.

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The big news from the Tulsa State Fair is that my Rose of England got sweepstakes!

Rori and her family went last night (opening night), as was kind enough to notice some of my things.

So the tally so far:
Rubber stamped card— unknown
Beaded necklace— second or third
Hand spun novelty yarn— first
Knit socks— first
Gillian's Wallaby—second
Floral Fantasy quilt—unknown
Black and Tan quilt—unknown
Rose of England shawl—first and sweepstakes

I can't wait to go and actually see them myself.

Rori got some ribbons, too! Her baby sweater got a first place ribbon and her Ice Queen (which is gorgeous!) got a third place ribbon. YAY, Rori!

A finished object or two

It's been a long time coming, but I finally finished a UFO (unfinished object) from 2002. It's definitely not the best quilting job but I was in "get it done NOW" mode.

This is a 14" pillow with a 16" pillow form so it's a bit overstuffed.


I'd written up this pattern but it didn't sell very well so I took it out of my pattern catalog. The other version has a tree instead of a candle. (Yes, that IS a candle--get your mind out of the gutter Rori!)

Maybe I'll give some of these patterns away. Hmm, I haven't had a blog contest for a long time.

Anyone interested?

I quilted three other small, long-neglected projects at the same time and I'm working on getting them finished up as well. Photos of the finished objects coming soon hopefully.

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Saturday was the monthly Tulsa Hand-Spinners Guild meeting and I really enjoyed it! There was a lot of stuff for sale at this meeting, including some fabulous hand-dyed roving from two members. I couldn't pass up buying a little bit. The topic of the meeting was picking and drum carding fiber and as usual the generosity of the spinners was amazing. I came home with a little bit of 100% angora fiber that I spun up in the meeting and it's just sinful how soft it is. I'll probably get about 5 yards of two-ply yarn but it's so pretty!

Here's the roving I got from Rebecca of Heartknits Handpainted.

The picture doesn't even come close to doing it justice.

I also spun up 16 yards of two-ply yarn of a wool/mohair/silk/firestar blend that came from the drum carder demonstration. That might become a little bookmark if I can get my act together.


I couldn't pass up 4 ounces of "South American wool" in the same color:


(The color isn't right--it's a little bit more purple.)

It was a great meeting! I figure I could make up for missing the October meeting by picking up a little roving. I'll be at the Sally Melville workshop with the knitting guild instead of at the October spinning guild meeting. (I'm so excited about the workshop!)

Here's what I was working on during the hand-spinning guild meeting:


It came from Chimera on Etsy. I'm planning to spin the other half close to the same then ply them together. I'm hoping for a DK to light worsted but we'll see. I didn't do any testing before I started spinning, but I'll be thrilled with whatever I end up with.

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I've been working on testing a pattern for Sivia Harding and it's looking fabulous! The scarf portion is complete and now I'm on to the glove portion. You can see her pictures here, and this is my scarf as of a few days ago. I've now finished the end but I won't come back and make it longer until I'm done with the gloves. The yellow line in the scarf (thanks for the yarn scrap, Lynn!) is where I'll pick up and work more length, then graft the finished end onto the new section.


The yarn I posted about previously is what I'm using for the gloves. So far they're gorgeous, but I'll have to wait for daylight to get a good picture.

Here's my progress on the glove so far:


The color isn't quite right in that picture. The yarn in the previous post is true to life.

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The September Cotton Spice magazine is up, and Karen did a great job as usual! Of course I'm a little biased since I quilted one of the quilts in the magazine. She features the quilting on pages 30-35, so go have a look! There are a bunch of other neat things in the magazine, too.

It's a very pretty quilt and I've added it to my list of quilts to piece.

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The Tulsa State Fair starts on Thursday afternoon and I'm finally starting to get excited about it. The kids each entered something this year so they'll want to go. Poor Greg, I'll probably drag him along also. LOL!

Yarn

Wow, how's that for a post title? Yeah, not feeling real creative at the moment. :-)

Let's start with the yarn:

This is some KnitPicks Bare in fingering weight that I dyed. I love the colors, they're exactly what I was shooting for.

A gratuitous close up:

I'll be using it for Sivia Harding's Dué Amore fingerless mitts, which I'm way excited about. I got beads yesterday and I hope to cast on tomorrow.

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Here are some pictures from earlier in the summer that I don't think I posted.

First up, a Black Swallowtail caterpillar.


We had a TON of them this summer. They only eat parsley and one other plant (I can't remember what it is, but we don't seem to have any in this area) and as you can see they ate a lot of parsley. It's been neat to see more butterflies around.

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This was an awe-inspiring cloud and moon that we saw when my MIL and niece were here.


And last up, one of the three black widow spiders we (read Greg) uncovered when moving the landscape block to make the island in the front yard.

Be sure to click and embiggen (if you can handle a large spider picture!). Each of the three he found were about 3" from tip of leg to leg.

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That's all from me for the moment. I hope everyone is having a great week!

Fair Entries and IndiaFest

Today I took my entries over to the fair, so I thought I'd post pictures of what I'm entering. I'm kicking myself though because I forgot to enter my handspun Victorian Shoulderette! I'm terribly disappointed with myself.

Here's what I did enter:

That's not the world's best picture because it's been really rainy here so good natural light has been non-existent. I entered eight things:

A stamped card (color is more accurate in pic above):


The necklace I made to go with the beautiful bracelet Greg gave me for Christmas:

I didn't enter the bracelet, just the necklace, since the category was "any other handmade jewelry."

Here are my two quilt entries:



And my handspun entry, in the "any other animal fiber, novelty" category.


The Rose of England is going in the "adult knit clothing or accessory" category.

And I had to enter a pair of socks since this is the first year they've had a hand-knit socks category. I did block them before I dropped them off so they look a little nicer than in the photo below.


I'm not as thrilled with my entries this year as I was last year, but it would be great to come home with some ribbons again.

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This afternoon, after dropping my fair entries off, we went over to another part of the fairgrounds to IndiaFest. We had a good time! I got a henna tattoo on the back of my hand, and the kids each got one, too. Greg rolled his eyes at us be we had fun. :-)

Gillian was being silly for the camera:

Here's mine:
And here's what Ryan chose:


The kids had a great time, and I really enjoyed all the wonderful fabrics and outfits. We didn't end up trying any of the food since the lines were really long and Ryan wasn't going to put with waiting that long. It was really neat, and the dancing was very cool.

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I hope everyone is staying safe and has a great weekend.