Off to the Fair

I volunteered at the weaving booth and spun this yarn on my new drop spindle. The store I bought the spindle at was so happy to get rid of it. She said they’d had it for a very long time and she won’t carry them again. A week or two after the fair I found my old drop spindle sitting in a box in the yard. Honestly, it is so hard to keep track of everything. 

When I didn’t finish my planned entry on time I substituted this instead. Next year I’m going to be much more organized and only pay the advanced entry fee on things I have in a box, that I know are done. Some of the things I paid to enter I couldn’t find and others I paid to enter and I didn’t finish them on time. It was very frustrating.

I’m already working on things for next year’s fair. All the things I wanted to enter but didn’t get finished in time are the first things on my list. I’ve been working on the sock monkey for one thing.

I’m also working on a Serape/ Boho Style Poncho that is Tunisian Crochet. That is getting pretty warm and heavy to work on during our triple digit weather so I’m going to set that aside until the weather cools off.

I was at the .99 Store and picked up 10 backpacks to use as project bags. I’m only working on the projects in the bags. If it is not in a bag I’m setting it aside. When I finish something and the bag is free again, I can add a new project or rescue an abandoned project.

My Art Gallery is closed until the heatwave passes or I get an air conditioner. All the fan does is blow hot air around.

I’ve been knitting in the air conditioned library instead.

I didn’t reach my goal of entering 20 items in the fair this year. But I did enter 8 and to my surprise, I won 8 ribbons.  Two items didn’t win anything, but two other items won 2 ribbons each, a blue ribbon and a judge’s choice ribbon. My laptop is full so I can’t show you the photos until I hook up an external hard drive and then I’ll post all the ribbons and everything. And my friend is going to sell me a display case and then I can put them all in my art gallery for people to enjoy. 

I also volunteered at the knitting and spinning booth for 3 days and met a lot of talented and fun people. I bought a new drop spindle and either worked on spinning the wool I bought at the Caid Pentathalon or I worked on my kumihimo necklaces. I picked up all my entries yesterday and I’m glad the fair is over because now I can go back to my usual schedule of running Zoots Art Gallery in Jack-O-Landia.

Knitting has been interesting. Last night I went to bed early so I could turn on the electric blanket and knit. I did four or five rows on my Wood nymph scarf and realized I'd lost some stitches somewhere. I tried and tried to frog back row by row. Finally I decided to rip (frog) the whole thing out. But being mohair, it didn't want to come apart. I ripped out maybe half of it (about 10") and decided to try putting it back on the needles. I thought I had about a 1% chance of that actually working but by some miracle it did.

Earlier this morning I finished re-knitting all the part I'd ripped out plus a few more rows besides. But what was nagging me was knowing that my Pumpkin Kal for the Knit-a-long had to be done by Thanksgiving. So I went to the car to get it out and see if that was even possible, and I couldn't find it. Yes, I've lost my socks! I looked in the house too. Well phooey.

I was going through a small tote bag of projects that I'd found a few days ago, and in that bag I found a crazy netted scarf made on giant needles, so I did four rows on that. It is cherry red and silver metallic yarn so if I can finish it, I can wear it for the holidays as it looks very Christmassy. I still haven't found the pattern or project notes for it but it seems to be 3 rows of red and one row of silver. Then repeat.

I have the patterns, needles and yarn ready for two shawls. One is a shawl done in a square and the other one is a pi shawl. But I want to finish some things before I start those. It is hard not to let knitting take over my whole life.

I got up at five in the morning and my head was cold so I started knitting an envelope hat that I’m making up as I go. My hands are freezing. This cold snap caught me completely off guard. It is 44 F in my living room right now. I need to spend this weekend repairing my wood burning stove. It needs a new gasket and firebrick repair.  Until then it’s hats, blankets, and gloves. Brrrr. 

Many of my projects have fallen through the cracks due to some health issues I’m struggling with. So today I was very happy to be able to get my Trapezoid Throw out of its box and knit four rows on it. It’s probably been 2 months since I got to work on it.  By the time I was ending the 4th row it was getting too gusty to knit and the wind was making my ear hurt so I called it quits for the day.

While waiting for my boyfriend to get his hair cut I worked on a recently started project. For my wardrobe this month I decided to celebrate House Slytherin and wear green and gray (silver) all month.  In fact I just realized this very moment that I’m wearing a gray jumper dress and green t-shirt under it. So I quite accidentally wore the Slytherin colors today.  

My cell phone is dying so I haven’t been able to get photos of each outfit. Right now when I plug it into my laptop to download photos it only works when it wants to. 

The Yucca Valley Gourd Festival sneaked up on me and I have nothing ready to enter for it. I’m sad about that.  But hopefully I’ll get to go see everyone else’s gourds next Sunday. 

Some yarn I bought for teddy bears turned out to be way too thin unless I want to spend the rest of my life making tiny stitches.  So instead I found two shawl patterns the yarn will be great for. So I went to Joann’s to get the right needles for that and to hit up their Simplicity pattern sale. They had the patterns for .99 so I was able to finally get the patterns that have been on  my wish list for months.