Tulsa State Fair stuff

I dragged the whole family up to the fair grounds and we turned in our fair entries.

I, of course, had tons of last-minute stuff to finish, the most-recent item being this bag:

I put a lining in it (deliberately long, because I'm anticipating that the outside will stretch a little as I use it). It's got a pocket on each side and in the side seam there are two lanyards with hooks for keys and my wallet, so that I can dig them out quickly.

I also (finally) finished my Hey Teach sweater, which is unfortunately too big (but not huge on me) so it's still wearable.

I'm calling this my Ridiculous Doily, for two reasons: 1.) it's done out of size 30 crochet thread; and 2.) it's done out of size 30 thread because the Tulsa State Fair category for "Lace" specified that said "lace" must be done out of size 20 thread or smaller.

Seriously.

It's pretty darn obvious that whoever came up with that ridiculous rule didn't pay attention to the nine entries in the "Knitting: Adult Accessories" category that were lace, and not ONE used "thread."

Thus, this is my Ridiculous Doily, made expressly to enter a knit item into that category:

I think it's around 14" across, although I didn't measure it before I turned it in.


The other last-minute project is my rubber-stamped scrapbook page, entered in the Rubber Stamping division. The rules stated that the entry had to be "70% stamped" so I stamped the brown paper, the tag, the ribbon, and the blue paper in the background.

Last week I posted about the flowers I was making using scrapbook paper, and here's the finished ornament:


I made a tassel out of gold embroidery floss and I think the whole project turned out really nicely. The tutorial can be found here (part 1; part 2 is at the end).

I just realized that I didn't take pics of the kids' Lego entries. Bad Mom! I'll be sure to take pics at the fair itself.

The fair opens September 30, so hopefully we'll hear pretty quickly after that if anything won.


The *best* part of the day, though, was meeting IndigoGentry and Saradippity, two of my fellow Ravelers. They're just as awesome as I thought they'd be.
I hope you're all having a great weekend!

SewFlakes!

One the local quilt shops, Sew Flakes, is having a Great Sewing Room Tour, and I (as Pieceful Stitches Designs) am a sponsor. I've donated two copies of each of my patterns as well as a gift certificate for $25 off machine quilting.

Go check them out!

Speaking of quilting, a while back I made a slideshow function of the customers' quilts I've done this year, which you can see here.


Every so often I get the urge to dye my hair and I did it again yesterday:


You can also see the blue pearl necklace that I made yesterday. It's a single strand, knotted between each pearl, and long enough that I can wrap it around as a choker. I see more like that in my future.

I think this hair color looks more natural than my natural color with my skin. The really funny thing is that the kids didn't notice until Greg said something. LOL! [This stuff is supposed to wash out after a month or so.]


Speaking of Greg, he's started building a bed for Gillian and she's been helping.


Greg has developed an allergy to sawdust, and I'm thrilled that they're wearing masks and safety glasses. YAY!


I'm terribly behind on my blogging, and so I'm going to continue with some catch-up stuff.

Last week was the annual scrapbooking convention, and I took two classes. The first one is called "Boxerpalooza" and is where they give you lots of scrapbooking stuff from their company (Boxer Scrapbook Productions) and show you ideas to use it. I got a lot of excellent tips as well as cool scrapbook supplies. One of the owners is a quilter so we chatted about fabric after class.

The other class I took was "Four Pages, A Bazillion Photos" and it was neat--they had some good ideas for putting lots of pictures on a page. Here are two of the four pages (without pics--I haven't gotten that far yet):



I also did a Make and Take from the Tattered Angels booth, using Glimmer Mist:



It was really cool, and I now understand more of the appeal of Glimmer Mist.

I also did some shopping. I couldn't resist a bunch of clear stamps, especially since the big ones I got were $3!!!


Now I just need to *use* them. LOL!

On the knitting front, I finished a pair of socks:




The yarn is some that my wonderful Aunt Louise sent a couple of years ago (I don't use sock yarn all that quickly, but I sure enjoy making socks!).

I also made a headband to use up some of my leftover sock yarn:

That's Mountain Colors sock yarn and it bleeds read like nobody's business, which is why I didn't send it to my Mom to use in her sock yarn blanket.

And I finally found a project that would successfully use the Disco yarn that started to be two different pairs of socks:

That's the Lacy Baktus, with an edging I stole from something else (I think a stitch dictionary--I'd have to look to be sure).

And last up on my catching-up list, this basket that we made in spinning guild at the August meeting:


It was fun to make! The teacher had the bottom and first round one for us or we would've been there all day. :-)

I think that's about it for the moment. I've been doing customer quilts but you can see those in the link at the top of this post.

I hope you're all having a great weekend!

I bought myself a present

My birthday is coming up, but I couldn't pass up this when I found it on the clearance shelf at WalMart for $15:


I used one at scrapbooking night a few weeks ago and I was hooked! I know, they've been around for at least two years, but I'm tragically unhip.

Speaking of birthdays, Greg's birthday was last week and all he really wanted (besides his two front teeth, hahahaha Greg) was a steak dinner.

Since I don't work the grill, he had to cook his own dinner.

They were SO good! Gillian wanted a sausage, but both kids finally tried the steak and decided that it was really, really good.


The next post will be about the fair and booties. (NO, I'm *not* pregnant, these are for some of my sister's friends.)

Fair Entries

I managed to get all of the fair entries delivered, at last! The kids' stuff was due last Saturday, and my stuff was due the previous Saturday. I swear I was working on fair stuff right up to the last minute.

Here's what I entered:

Hyrna Herborgar from handspun, in the "Adult, any other clothing or accessory, knit" category


My second Quilted Lattice socks, in the "Socks, knit" category


My broomstick lace-ish scarf, in the "Adult, any other clothing or accessory, crochet" category


A trivet, in the "Any other crochet article under 24”" category


"Rubber stamping, scrapbook page" category

And a quilt that'll go to my sister after the fair:


Now comes the waiting to find out how I did! The fair opens the day after tomorrow, although I doubt we'll be going that night. I know a few of my friends are going then, so hopefully they'll report back.

Bad Pictures ;-)

I've been working on a couple of projects but neglecting to take good pictures, so I'm going to go ahead and post the bad ones. ;-)

First up, the scarpbook pages I did last week at our monthly scrapbooking session:

That one is going to be my entry in the fair, for the rubber-stamped scrapbook page category. I'm sure I won't win as I don't do as many cool things with stamps as some people do, but it's good incentive to get scrapbook pages finished.

Here's my two-page spread of when we went to Bartlesville for a WONDERFUL outdoor concert. One of my Ravelry friends, who is in the Amici New York Orchestra, got us tickets. It was amazing!


I wish I could figure out how to make them bigger when you click on them. It used to be set up to do that but if I don't want duplicate pics in my picture storage, I can't make them embiggened when clicking. :-(

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I'm almost done with my Trachtentuch A. I've now run out of yarn *twice* but luckily my Mom got 8 ounces of fiber and I still have two ounces left. I just need to ply it and give it a bath and I'll be ready to finish the bind off. You can see the needles still attached at the upper right of the shawl. I only have about 18" more to bind off, but I ran out of yarn!



This is the scarf I've got going, which is my first broomstick crochet project. I'm loving the yarn/stitch combination. It's going to have two identical ends, with a square (or something) in the middle.

In the comments for my last post Eva pointed out that I could work bottom up and not have to do any grafting. She's exactly right! I haven't really planned it out yet, much less tried it on the knitting machine, and that'll be the first step on that project.

That's all for now! I'm going to go attempt to ply the singles to finish my Trachtentuch. I probably won't manage to actually finish them until tomorrow, but you never know. :-)

I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend!

Scrapbooking -- lots of pics!

On Friday of last week Marci and I went to the Creaking Keepsakes Scrapbooking convention here in Tulsa. It was a blast! We took three classes and shopped to our hearts' content.

Here's some of my loot:

That's not all of it, but it's a good sampling. I got a sheet of Technique Tuesday stamps that was on cleareance, some neat gel pens that are really really glossy and raised, some grossgrain ribbon, and a couple of neat paper kits.

The classes were really cool! I especially enjoyed the results from the Jacob's Ladder class. We did two layouts, and I took three pictures of each so you can see how they work.

Layout #1, closed:


Open to the left:


Open to the right:

So you could have a total of five different pictures. (The picture on the smaller striped paper changes, as you can kind of see because in the first picture it's grey, and in the picture above it's tan.)

Here's the smaller version, whic I really like:



Cool, huh?

Here's Marci in the Jacob's Ladder class:


And me!


The first class we took was making a clear acrylic album, and here's the finished (except for pictures) project:

There wasn't as much to it as I'd thought there would be, which was cool. My only problem is that I don't really want a bunch of little books around, as it's so much easier to keep things contained/together if they're in one or two albums. These might be nice to giving to people though.

I took another class on using clear stamps and learned a lot more than I'd thought I would, which is always great. Of course I don't need any help in my addiction to clear stamps, but that's all right. LOL!

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I'm trying to finish up some things to enter in the Tulsa State Fair, and hopefully I'll have a bunch of pictures of the projects in the next few weeks. They're due on September 18 so I'd better get going on them.

I hope you're all having a great week so far!

I'm thrilled with myself

I love figuring out things, and I'm pretty proud of myself for my latest project.

It's a decal of a drawing I did of a yarn ball with needles!

(And yes, I really did clean only the area where I put the decal, not the whole window--it's raining outside and I figure the rain will wash off the window for me. LOL!)

Here's a close up:


I got vinyl in black, white, and silver, and if it holds up well then I might attempt to sell them. The vinyl I got is supposed to last for 5-6 years in outside exposure, so it should stay looking nice for a while.

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I've had more customer quilts to do lately so I haven't been doing as much knitting as I normally do. I'm closing in on the toes of my Monkey socks, which is good. I'm also getting very low on yarn which is not so good, but I'm trying not to panic. If all else fails I'll just buy another ball and do the toes in a different color or something. It'll all work out!

I also have two other knitting projects going that I can't blog about (yet), but hopefully I'll be able to show them soon.

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I hope you're all having a great week!

Strange Weather

In my last post I promised pictures of the snow, so here they are!

First, a picture taken from Ryan's window of one of the garden areas:

This is between downpours.

Here's the same area, less than 24 hours later. It continued to snow for about five more hours.


Here's the neighbors' dogwood with snow:


And a view from front porch during a slight lessening of the snow:



And finally, Greg's truck. By the time the snow stopped, there was about 9" of snow on the hood of his truck.

By Sunday afternoon almost every bit of it was gone and it was 70º! I saw kids throwing snowballs at each other while wearing short-sleeved shirts.

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In other happenings, I made some progress on my Monkey socks:


And here's one of them on my leg:

I'm ready to start the heel as soon as I finish this pattern repeat.

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I'm also testing a pattern for a friend on Ravelry. They're about twice as long as in this picture and I'm really enjoying this design.

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A while back I participated in the Crop Scene Investigation that was sponsored by some scrapbook-supply companies. It turns out I won one of the weekly drawings, and here's my prize:


The item on the left is a cleaning tool and I'm looking forward to using it quite a lot! It sweeps up small things like glitter, small pieces of paper, etc and if I can steal it back from Ryan I'll get a lot of use from it.

The item on the right is for un-sticky-ing things like stickers and pop dots. I'm not sure how much I'll use that, since that's not usually something I do, but we'll see. :-)

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I've been hard at work on a customer's quilt and hopefully I'll remember to take some pictures to post before she picks it up. :-)

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I hope all of you are having a great week!