Crafting...and rambling about the fair

I've been working on knitting and crocheting and trying to figure out what all I'm going to enter in the fair...and forcing myself to not sign up for a bunch of things that I might (with very little possibility) get done before October.

Anyway, my sweater is progressing, very slowly, but it is progressing. And I'm also working on a crocheted baby afghan. One of the ladies in our church is going to have a baby, and I usually make an afghan for the new babies. Only problem is that this is a boy afghan (well, I guess the colors could work for a girl too, but it's not terribly pink and girly) so if she has a girl, I'll need to make another afghan, but then I won't be able to enter it in the fair. Oh well.

Look! I took pictures! :p

Back of the sweater:












Front...I'm just starting on the patterned part. Just to remind you, this is the pattern I'm knitting:












And this is what I've got done on the afghan so far...it goes pretty fast though:









I've already got a dress and a skirt done to enter in the fair, but I was going to make an apron too. I should have time to sew one more thing though, I think....I hope so anyway! :p

I have...let's see...40 days to get things finished. Hmm... One thing in my favor is that the days I'm working I'll have some time to get some knitting or crocheting done without feeling like I should be doing housework or something. I think I need to write down everything that I want to get done for the fair and estimate how much time each thing is going to take to finish and see what I really have time for. Like I said, I've got some things sewn already, most of the baked goods that I was thinking about entering I'll get done and put in the freezer, and I picked out some photos and I need to have my pre-judge take a look at them. ;)

It's nice to have a Dad that can tell you ahead of time whether you should bother to enter a particular picture...although sometimes the judges at the fair have completely different taste in photos. I enter in the Amateur Photography section because I don't want to waste money on framing things for the Arts and Crafts photography category, and in this category you just have to have the photo mounted on a piece of foamcore. However, that also means that there are hundreds of entries! I really don't know how they can judge all those photos. I think I've got some options for sunrise, flowers, landscape, other-color, and other-b&w. There's also a people category, both in color and b&w...but I don't take pictures of people very much, so I don't think I've got anything to enter in there...I think when I was looking through my photos the only people photos I had were just some I took of my 2nd-cousins in IL, my cousins when they came to visit, and Colin...and I really don't know what's a good "people" photo. I'm not sure if they're looking for artsy candid shots, or studio-like, or what.

I was looking at the fair webpage to see what sort of entertainment they have this year...well, we have the usual two country singers and two Christian singers. For country we get Mel McDaniels, and I didn't think I knew what he sang, but I looked him up on Wikipedia and I do know a few of his songs I just didn't know who sang them. And then we also get Bucky Covington. Oh boy. I don't know if he's gotten better since he was on American Idol, or if he got some help speaking more clearly...because when he was on AI, all his songs sounded like: *first word of song, mumble, mumble, mumble, last word of song*. Maybe he's learned to enunciate....or maybe there's a reason he's performing at our fair where the concerts are free... although I think he's going to be at the state fair too? Oh, ha-ha! They're only charging five dollars there...nevermind. :p

(Wow, they actually get some very popular singers at the state fair...they've got six country singers/groups that I've heard of, and a trendy-looking Christian band called Leeland..who are performing with another rather emo-ish Christian group called Skillet...Skillet??! Anyway...) Sorry...should have put a link in so you can see the bands: NC State Fair

For Christian singers at our fair we have Mandisa and Matthew West. I was hoping maybe they'd have Jars of Clay come again. They were at our fair one year, but that was before I had heard any of their music and realized I liked it. :(

Oh and then there's the Demolition Derby, and rodeo, and tractor pull, and all that sort of stuff. :p Hmm...yeah, the best things about our fair are winning prizes and eating a funnel cake...other than that it's kind of lacking in much of anything terribly thrilling. :p

I need to figure out for sure what I'm going to enter this year, and figure it out soon, because you have to get your entries in by September 1st...and that's a lot closer than I realized!