Fair's Fair
Okay - I promised I'd write here yesterday, or the day before, or something like that, but life is kind of blurry and hectic and stuff like that, and I've been busy hospicing my butt off. Seriously, like 300 miles and half a dozen house calls in the last 2 days.
But somewhere in there umbran and I also made it to the Topsfield Fair, because it is a fall tradition and because I need my annual fill of deep-fried Oreos and giant pumpkins, and because this year I decided to try my luck in the crafts contest.
The Topsfield Fair is a big, delightful, traditional county fair, with 4H exhibits and flower and garden contests and sheep-shearing demos and deep fried everything on a stick, and a fairly prodigious crafts competition. They have categories for just about anything you can imagine, and I love browsing and seeing all of the beautiful things people create, and every year I promise myself that next year I'll enter something of mine, and then forget.
But this year I'd finally made a showpiece - a rainbow shawl, from yarn I spun myself, that I was happy enough with to actually look up the rules for entry. And, when I got to the website, I found out that there was a contest for hand-spun yarn, as well. With a division for blends and synthetics. And I'd just finished spinning my first custom-designed blended fiber (I wanted to get a certain effect, so I spun up two different kinds of yarn and plied them together). So, what the hell. I entered that too. It was free, after all.
So we went to the fair yesterday, and we walked through the garden displays and hugged my friends at the forge and gawked at the freaky feather-footed chickens, and stopped by the sheep barn to pick up my yarn.
Where I was handed a 'Best In Division' ribbon and told that my prize money was in the mail, and that next year I really ought to consider entering more divisions.
And then we went to the crafts show.
Where my shawl was sitting next to a blue First Place ribbon. (No; not best in show, but still first place in crocheted clothing).
I am utterly agog. I was mostly entering for the sheer personal amusement of being able to say that I did. I had no thoughts of actually winning, and I swear nowhere on the site did it say anything about prize money. And I still think of myself as a novice spinner; it's only recently that I've even gotten to the point where I'm happy enough with my finished fiber to actually crochet with it.
Yowza.
I am an award-winning fiber artist.
It sounds all fancy and stuff when I put it that way.....
But somewhere in there umbran and I also made it to the Topsfield Fair, because it is a fall tradition and because I need my annual fill of deep-fried Oreos and giant pumpkins, and because this year I decided to try my luck in the crafts contest.
The Topsfield Fair is a big, delightful, traditional county fair, with 4H exhibits and flower and garden contests and sheep-shearing demos and deep fried everything on a stick, and a fairly prodigious crafts competition. They have categories for just about anything you can imagine, and I love browsing and seeing all of the beautiful things people create, and every year I promise myself that next year I'll enter something of mine, and then forget.
But this year I'd finally made a showpiece - a rainbow shawl, from yarn I spun myself, that I was happy enough with to actually look up the rules for entry. And, when I got to the website, I found out that there was a contest for hand-spun yarn, as well. With a division for blends and synthetics. And I'd just finished spinning my first custom-designed blended fiber (I wanted to get a certain effect, so I spun up two different kinds of yarn and plied them together). So, what the hell. I entered that too. It was free, after all.
So we went to the fair yesterday, and we walked through the garden displays and hugged my friends at the forge and gawked at the freaky feather-footed chickens, and stopped by the sheep barn to pick up my yarn.
Where I was handed a 'Best In Division' ribbon and told that my prize money was in the mail, and that next year I really ought to consider entering more divisions.
And then we went to the crafts show.
Where my shawl was sitting next to a blue First Place ribbon. (No; not best in show, but still first place in crocheted clothing).
I am utterly agog. I was mostly entering for the sheer personal amusement of being able to say that I did. I had no thoughts of actually winning, and I swear nowhere on the site did it say anything about prize money. And I still think of myself as a novice spinner; it's only recently that I've even gotten to the point where I'm happy enough with my finished fiber to actually crochet with it.
Yowza.
I am an award-winning fiber artist.
It sounds all fancy and stuff when I put it that way.....