First Fair - Sort of.

When I was little I made a salt clay on plywood map of Egypt during homeschool and entered it in my state fair. I remember winning a few blue ribbons and one Champion ribbon for similar projects, though I don't remember which ones I won them for. Despite these early positive memories of fairs, I hadn't entered anything in one since I was about 8. This year I finally changed that!

I wanted to enter the doily I am currently working on but was only about 2/3rds done by the time the entry deadline came around. So, deciding to save that for next year, I went through my overflowing tin of small motifs and tried to determine which ones I had completed in the past year and which fair categories they fit. Here's what I came up with, on display during the fair:

As you can see they both won blues. It was nice to hear that the ribbons are awarded based on objective quality of the work, not just on comparative quality. I'm pretty sure that there were no other pieces entered in these two categories, which were both specifically for tatting, so comparative quality wouldn't have told me much about my work. 

Here's the bookmark up close. This comes from an antique edging design that I love. I figured out how to turn it into a cross, coming up with adaptions to turn the corners both on the ends of each arm and in the center. This is one of my few forays into design and I was ridiculously proud of myself afterwards.

And for the Holiday category I tatted one of Frivole's beautiful snowflakes. This is Regal, with one small adaption -- I substituted small rings for the beads. 

Finally, here's a shot of what I spent most of my time at the fair doing: 

My square dance club has a great deal with the fair organizers. We square dance every night of the fair and square dancers wearing their badges and square dance attire can get in free to the fair! So I go every day of the fair. Check out the floor we are dancing on. That is about 20 eight foot square wooden pieces, cunningly fitted together by slots. It all comes apart and stores on a trailer. We set it up and take it down every year, and boy is it an operation. It takes ropes, sledgehammers, and a lot of muscle. But it's worth it.

Next year at the fair: Square dancing and a Jan Stawasz doily!

Tatters

For once what I have to say is not about me and my tatting, but about other tatters. This weekend I went to a square dance festival. Square dances are organized in 'tips' with breaks in between. Usually during the breaks there is round dancing, which is somewhat related to square dancing but not the same. I don't round dance, so I pulled out my tatting during these breaks, which sparked several conversations with interested observers. One of these was a gentleman who had learned to tat himself a year or two ago. He told me about the projects he had completed, including the WIP that did him in. Unfortunately he hasn't tatted for months because he is stuck on a confusing diagram. It was great to meet someone else interested enough in the craft to have taught himself, and I can only hope he gets unstuck soon.

The other tatter I want to talk about is not someone I met but someone I read about in this article. She has been tatting for NINETY-THREE YEARS. Ninety-three years. Ninety-three years. Can you imagine? It's amazing.

Bright and Cheery

I tatted four or five hearts this Valentine's Day, but they are all as yet unphotographed. They were enjoyable, but as the cloudy skies cleared up to bright sun and crisp winds this week, my mood turned to BRIGHT BOLD SPRING. I couldn't wait to get the heart thread off my shuttles so I could put this cheery crazy color combination on. It's not at all something I would normally choose, but it's making me happy right now.

A Small Flurry

Well, I stopped tatting a snowflake a day after Christmas, because I had something else to focus on. But that doesn't mean I stopped tatting snowflakes! Here are a few more that fell from my shuttle at a slower pace in the last two weeks:

The top left is a Vida Sunderman flake, called Jingle Bell Snowflake; the top right is the trusty Minaret (also VS); and the bottom is a lovely vintage design which Gina the Tatting Goddess rewrote in modern terms. I love this pattern so much that I can only find one problem with it: it has no name. Since I'm tired of describing its origin every single time I refer to it, I have decided henceforth to call it "Gina's Snowflake".

TIAS Days 1 and 2

I decided to do Jane's TIAS in a bright and cheery yellow. Here's the first two days:

I flipped them upside down to show you my guess at what it is: A bicycle! See the first wheel, and the bar for the seat going along the top? On to the handlebars or the second wheel next!