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!