The State Fair is over and I'm starting on entries for next year. So far what I have are really ambitious ideas!
I demonstrated tatting at the Bonneville Tatters table in the Home Arts building four times during the Fair: twice with Tonya, another Bonneville Tatters member, and once with my sister and my niece (and once with Judy, but I don't have a picture with her). My sister has been tatting for 5 days (not all this year!), and when we went to tat on the last day of the Fair, my niece, who is ten, had been tatting for about 2 hours. She made a lot of little short chains -- she called them worms. Some guy asked her what their names were. She gave him a strange look then said, "Wormy and WormyTwo." She proudly placed them under the clear plastic cover on our table with all the other tatting bits and bobs.This is the first year I've entered as "Advanced Amature" -- according to the Fair rules after entering for five years you've got to move up. I did it a year early because I figured if I was going to enter stuff I'd designed, that had to be advanced. I entered eleven pieces of tatting and came home with nine first-place blue ribbons and two second-place red ribbons. It cost me $11 to enter, and I also came home with a check for $31. Not a high-paying proposition, but certainly a lot of fun.
The ornaments and the butterfly are the same ones I entered in the County Fair, but I had to add a bookmark tail to the butterfly to enter it in the State Fair. I added a coil-less safety pin to the back of the Grapes from Karey Soloman's class at Shuttlebirds to qualify it for the wearable (flat) tatting category.
There are more categories in the state than the county, so I made some new things for the State this year. In the jewelry category I entered a necklace and matching earrings which are really Patti Duff's lanyard pattern with smaller thread and bigger beads. I found these beads that look like crumpled tinfoil, and really like the way they turned out. For the Halloween suncatcher, I used the center of Linda Davies' new Classic Doily fitted into a bangle with black thread. Then with invisible thread (it was 3:00 in the morning on entry day!) I sewed on my Ripley the Ghost made from Jeff's Hamilton's pattern. (Thanks so much for sharing, Jeff!) It turned out really well (especially for 3:00 in the morning).
The other new things I entered were a Tatted card (I sewed the Celtic motif on a card with invisible thread about 2:30 in the morning), and the swirled square motif I made up a few months ago. The comment I got on the card was that white on white was not a good idea (lots of things seem like good ideas at 2:30 in the morning), and it was not evenly blocked -- too true. The comments on the motif were that I pulled some of the rings too tight. It probably looks a little warped, but second place is still cool.
The Classic Doily by Linda Davies that I test-tatted for her was large enough to enter in the centerpiece category. It was very well received by the judges -- they like classic and white, and they liked the pattern of this doily. Thanks, Linda! I also entered the two-toned purple doily in the "doily" category. Unfortunately the pretty sunset doily I entered in the County Fair was in the same category as the purple one in the State Fair and it's one entry per category. I would have entered the other as an edging, but the only edgings categories are for hankies and pillowcases. (Gotta get working on those for next year).
The lovely Utahraptor got a nice blue ribbon. I got a note on that one, too. It said if I'd done a better display it would have been considered for sweepstakes. Well, rats. I didn't do this display. The people who took in entries at the fair pinned it to this board with big "T" pins -- I didn't have any choice in the matter (boy do I sound grumpy and unappreciative and sour-grapeish or what?!). Anyway, next year I need to make a stegosaurus and put it on a proper display board with invisible thread, not with "T" pins. 
Finally, there's my lone piece of crochet. I chose the pineapple doily after fussing about it for a while. Pineapples are my favorites, after all.
There now. Aren't you glad I'm done blathering?
Oops, not done -- someone asked if there were any categories I didn't enter. Yes. I didn't enter the ones with the red "x" on them in this list. I need to get busy if I'm going to enter in every category next year!
