Fair Results -- Yes!

We went to the fair yesterday. Talk about pleasant surprises! The County Fair doesn't charge an entry fee, and allows a person to enter two things in each category. Between the four of us we entered 31 things, and we won 46 ribbons. Conspicuous consumption in a rather ostentatious way, eh?
The seven-year-old entered two tiny clay pots and a little sponge-painted canvas bag. She got blue ribbons for the pots and a red ribbon for the bag.
The fourteen-year-old entered a very tiny penguin and a little turtle made of baked clay, an interesting representation of xeriscaping, and a bag she made from a pair of jeans. She won a third place for the xeriscape stone, a second on the bag (but they forgot to put her age on the card, so she was competing with the adults), a first on the pengin, and a first and "high blue" on the turtle. High blue means it was considered in the sweepstakes round.
My sister entered a dress she made, crocheted slippers, blankets and dishtowel sets, and tie-dyed scarves, a baby onsie with hat, long-john jammies, and a sheet set. She got a second place for her slippers, firsts for her other crocheted items and her dress, and a "high blue" for her blue and green baby blanket. She got seconds on her long-john jamies and one of her scarves (the one that's my favorite!), and firsts on everything else. In addition, she got a high blue and a creative arts sweepstakes ribbon for her sheet set. They're so loud, I don't think she's going to be able to sleep if she puts them on the bed!

I'm so proud of them all -- aren't they clever?

Is it Fair?

I won't know until next week. Yesterday we packed our oxygen tanks and headed out to the Equestrian Center and County Fair Grounds to enter lots of things. (We have to pack the oxygen because the place is soooooo far out in the valley the air is thin [thus speaketh an east-bench snob].) I entered two things in every tatting category available, and one in "bags". My sister entered her crocheted baby blankets, shawl, and kitchen sets. They had a difficult time with her tie-dyed items. We thought they belonged in decoration on a pre-made item, but they thought she should enter them as wearable art over in the creative arts section. They finally let her enter her sheets in home arts but sent her to creative arts with her union-suit jammies and baby onsie. The girls entered things too. I think I should win all the marbles -- but then, I lost my marbles years ago and am always hoping to replace them. We shall see. I'm not worrying about it, though. There was no entrance fee, and I don't think there are monetary prizes either. This is just practice for the state fair. These are the earrings I entered (of course, I displayed them differently for the fair:

Weekend Tatting...

We had a 3-day weekend due to a state holiday. Wow! I tatted all weekend -- look what I made:

I've tatted a shed! Okay -- it was a large project so I had a lot of help.

Huh? What do you mean?

Oh, yeah. I guess it's not tatted after all. How sad, and I worked so hard on it.

Actually, it was one of those no time for tatting weekends, but we have a new non-leaky, non-rusty home for the lawn mower and snow blower, the bicycles and wiggle cars, and the snowshovels and gardening implements. Now all we have to do it get the girls to paint the boards around the outside and put in the little brick entrance way (made from the bricks that came off the old chimney when we remodeled the house). That can wait for a bit -- I'm not doing any more manual labor in 102 F weather!

'Nother Modification

Our assignment in the Design-Tat course was to take a snowflake pattern and adapt it into a heart. I used my own pattern (because I already had it in my drawing program). If this looks familiar -- well, it should! This is based on the same snowflake as the butterfly in the previous post. The first incarnation just wasn't working at all, so I cut it off the shuttles. It needed something lower between two of the points, but certainly not the upside-down overly-long chain that I started with. The first complete heart doesn't look too bad, but didn't dip down enough at the top to suit me. Back to the drawing board. With a change in the top and the addition of a couple more little rings, it looked more heart-like to me. This time I worked it in blue Cebelia size 30, because I didn't want to use up ALL my red thread before I got to the final one. It worked, so I was happy and redid it in the nice red Lizbeth size 20. That would have worked better if I hadn't make a goofy right in the beginning. I had to cut that off and start over -- then I ran out of thread at the end. Piffle. Next time I do this I think I will have to use smaller thread to fit enough on my Aero shuttles, or break down and use those two little clovers I bought.

Oh -- I forgot to say that it is worked in one continuous round. That's why I ran out of thread on the shuttles!

Butterfly Exchange

New butterfly, but not really a new pattern. This is an adaptation of the snowflake I designed from the post "Flake-y Tatting" earlier in this blog. This is about the third, or fourth incarnation of the butterfly, and it finally suited me. There are still other possible alterations or additions that I'm going to try. First, though, I need to get this version diagrammed and written down. I'm pretty lazy when it comes to that. I usually keep a piece and just make more by looking at it. That's not really all that efficient, though.

Anyway...

Once it looked like a reasonable butterfly to me, I added forty-bazillion beads to create this turquoise butterfly for the InTatters June Butterfly Exchange.

This butterfly is made with Lizbeth size 20 thread and measures almost 5.25 inches wide (13.5 cm) and 3 inches tall (4 cm).

Betsee Annie and Brenna Annie

Betsee Annie and Brenna Annie are looking for new homes. Cyndi's Distinctive Creations is having a give-away, and the winner will get to choose one of these adorable hand-made dolls. I don't do a lot of give-away entering, but my niece would dearly love one of these. Aren't they cute?

Donation Ornaments

Finally! Picture -taking not being my forte, it took me a while to get out the camera and snap a photo of these ornaments.
(Okay, shoot off about a dozen in hopes one of them would come out unblurry)
This is another attempt at items to be donated for the Festival of Trees. The thread is right (size 20 ecru Flora); the ornaments are the question. I have no idea if this is the right color. Maroon is such a subjective color, don't you think? At any rate, I'll trot these out for the July meeting (because the June meeting is this Saturday and I'll be on vacation -- wheeee!). Somebody will either say they are the right color or they won't. It doesn't matter, because I can always find a home for ornaments! These are both covered in my own split ring pattern. I've got it written down somewhere, but it needs diagrams. Thanks to Sharon Briggs' Design-Tat course, I now know how to do that -- and will once I dig my Roundtuit out from under everything. :)

Still Ringing

Inspired by Jon Yusoff's wonderfully beautiful earrings, these are made from a bit of leftover size 20 Lizbeth thread. They have nylon hooks, which don't have the beads on the shank yet -- they didn't show up in the scan, so I cut 'em off this image. Next time I try this, I'm going to add some beads -- that'll make 'em more attractive, right?

I've been working on other things, but don't have pictures of some and the rest are for an exchange, so I can't show that either.

One Ringy-Dingy, Two Ringy-Dingy

Rings of all sizes -- cover 'em up!

Using adaptations of the center-ring snowflake from an earlier post, I've been covering rings like a mad fool. I've made two of these using Flora size 20 ecru thread (which is acceptable for the Festival of Trees), two with Day and Night Rainbow thread (a size 30), and one with Lizbeth Christmas thread (a red, green and white size 20 colorway). My dad has one of the rainbow ones, and the Christmas thread one. Hey! When he says he likes 'em he's stuck with them! I happened on two sleeves of bangles in a bargain bin, one is just silver-color and the other is silver and shades of green. I've got two hundred bangles to cover -- that's a lot of ornaments!

Not just ornaments, either. With a little more adaptation, the pattern can fit into these smaller hoops for earrings. I need to work on sizing (and counting, apparently) but these are for my sister's birthday -- tomorrow! They are made from the shades of green size 80 thread she dyed for me. You know, they'd look better if I had photographed them instead of squashing them in the scanner, because they bow out from the outer ring a bit. If she wore necklaces, I'd make a bigger one for a pendant. It's a thought for another time.

Ring Flake

See, ecru isn't nearly so interesting. Of course, this is a little busy looking, but seen "live" it's really very nice -- not too busy at all (I think it's the shadows in the picture). This is "Midnight Escape" (DMC size 80 ) thread and an (as yet) unnamed snowflake pattern around a covered ring. Once it was done, I decided to practice that covered ring thing some more, so I fastened it to a covered silver bangle. That worked -- so it had to have a hanger. The only problem is that's it's slightly too big for the bangle. I'm going to solve that by drying it over one of my niece's little rubber balls. Right now, it bows out from the bangle anyway, so I'm going to encourage that. I'm going to make more, with a change in stitch counts to see if I can get it to stretch side-to-side without the bow.