The Fair

It's been a little crazy the last few days. I'm in the process of transitioning between jobs, so there's a lot of paperwork to do :-). But I did make it to the fair over the weekend and on Wednesday. It was nifty seeing my projects on display with the ribbons.

My two first place projects were displayed together on a side wall. It was tough to get photos (too many people), but this shot didn't come out too bad. Harmony & Tranquility (the top piece) won in the smaller sampler/worded message category. Forget Me Not won the competition for the beaded pieces. I'm really happy with how the framing came out on the beaded piece. This one isn't something I would typically do, but hey how can you not like a blue ribbon winner!On to the second place finishers. First of all I would like to note that I'm sure Willie Whippet would have gotten first place if the other piece in the "original" category hadn't been a tear-jerker piece of some bodies grandparent's portraits. But then, to be fair, I couldn't get close enough to see if the technique was good.
My other second place piece was the Spring Hat. This is amusing to me because it was a teaching project from my March retreat. It was the first time I had ever done ribbon embroidery. I'm thinking about doing more because it was awfully fun to play wit the colors and the textures. This one won in the "other counted work" category and was against the largest group of all of my pieces. So that was a nice little boost :-).
My fourth place piece is the Log Cabin project I completed recently. Now I know a few out there are thinking "she was robbed" because it is super lovely, but I have to admit that I was lazy when I was working on this one and some of the stitches aren't laid as well as they could be. This one was also against stiff competition, so I'm not surprised at the outcome. But - doesn't the 4th place ribbon go well with the project? I think so too! And I'm thrilled with the framing on this project. Now where in the heck am I going to hang something pink in my house?! *rolls eyes*
In other news, I finished off my ort jar lid. I'm planning to put some ribbon or something on the jar to dress it up a little more. It's cheerful. My house is getting cheerful with all this stitching stuff laying about - hmmm, I'm not so sure about this!
I was able to finish quite a bit more on the Abstract last night and this morning while listening to the DNC, Obama's speech and the NPR post-game analysis. I'm thinking that, if the wind blows the right way, I might be able to get through a good portion of the next quarter this weekend. But then I have a couple of parties, a trip to the fair and some tracking with the dogs to get through.