Hello Readers!
I forgot to look at the date of the last post. Been a week or more though, I'm sure.
You might get a cuppa somethin' tasty and settle in cause it's gonna be a post of length I'm fixing to write here.
Mr. Kitty and fp7 both took a ribbon at the Rooks County Free Fair.
My fish picture was the only mixed media piece entered in my class so this was lumped into another division and took a red ribbon, giving it second place. With a red ribbon comes a whopping premium of $2.00.
Mr. Kitty was the only paper mache entry in my class so Mr. Kitty was judged against some ceramics (as far as I tell). He took a blue ribbon, giving him a first place rating. What confused me is that ceramics in another class had blue ribbons also. And the grand champion, which I think Mr. Kitty was judged along with, had only its grand champion ribbon attached to it. I'm not sure if the grand champion has to take a blue ribbon to qualify as grand champion. The judging rules confuse me! I'm happy with my blue ribbon though! VERY HAPPY with it.
The premium for a blue ribbon is $3.00.
There were many remarks around town from folks about my kitty. I went to the phone office and the girl behind the counter asked me about Mr. Kitty cause her three year old daughter fell in LOVE with Mr. Kitty! Then there was the girl who works at JMart who asked about him. On his trip to be entered, Ma carried him inside. As we walked the length of the building to get to the far end, there were remarks from those in our path favorably of Mr. Kitty. One elderly lady stopped Ma with her hand reaching out toward Mr. Kitty's whiskers, proclaiming, "Oh, Look! He's even got whiskers!" Mr. Kitty produced a good many smiles during his visit to the fair.
I covet the ribbons much more than the premiums. I enter only to see if I can get a ribbon and to show off what I sit around doing each and every day.
I got to see the bunnies, chickens, ducks, turkeys and their kind twice this year.
Ma and I went on the 13th and then Terah and I went again on the 15th.
Terah brought Annie up to Stockton so she could go to the fair. She told us she had never seen a bunny before. Terah confirmed that it could very well be true she has not seen a bunny that she remembers seeing. She LIKED the bunnies!
This one has a funny hairdo.
This bunny had air conditioning. It wasn't overly hot the day I took this picture but a bottle of ice is a great idea for the animals in the bird barn. I know, those are bunnies but for some reason bunnies and birds go together.
A not so good picture of calves in one of the cow barns. I love these old barns on the fairgrounds! They were built by the WPA back in the thirties. The stone was quarried close to home. They will stand almost forever. It quite cool in the stone barns as well.
A fat red hen.
All of the chicken pictures will get MUCH larger if you click on them.
This hen is beautiful!
This rooster posed nicely for his portrait.
Rooster. No clue what breed any of these chickens are.
There were a few ducks in competition as well. Many more than just these two.
Turkeys. The only turkeys at the fair. Not the best looking turkeys I've ever seen though. I don't think they liked being cooped up for six days. These birds more than likely are free range at home.
Pretty black and white hen.
Some fancy black chickens with white cheek patches.
I took many more pictures in the cow barn and in the bird barn but I'm not showing them all to you cause you would get sick of seeing chicken after chicken after chicken! I do love me some chicken, whether on the foot or in my belly! Lovely to look at, character to spare and oh so tasty! If the good lord did not want me to eat chickens, I do believe he would not of ever given them to us.
That being said, I'm totally against industrial farming where chickens are not allowed to be chickens.
I used to have an insect collection. A very nice collection with upwards of 200 specimens. My husband gave it away to a little boy at a yard sale we held back in 1983. It wasn't even for sale, let alone to give away. I went to the store to pick something up and came home to find my prized possession was no longer in my possession. The man knew how much it meant to me. He did. And he gave it away because he hated it. The thought of insects in the house, even dead ones, he just couldn't handle it anymore. The opportunity arose and he thought of only himself. I wanted to kill him! I had spent two years of my life putting that collection together. My hope is that that child grew a passion for insects from the generosity of a stranger. I got over the loss of my insect collection but I never pass up the chance to study one when I come across it.
The tag to the left says this is a 10yr old's insect collection. In the vials are bugs too tiny to pin.
This one belongs to a 10 yr old too. Not the same ten yr old as the first one. The two bugs that are circled are cicadas. Right now the cicadas are mating and dying and singing at the top of their lungs till their last second! The cats love the cicadas. Annie hates them! I've had a lot of entertainment with the thousands of cicadas singing in my trees this year. Tippy delights in catching the cicadas and bringing them in the house, only to let them loose so she can chase them some more!
One came in with Tippy the night Terah and Annie were here and Annie freaked out! She jumped up in her mama's lap and wouldn't budge till that thing was out of sight! It landed in the spider plant in front of the livingroom window. I got it out of the plant half an hour later and she freaked again! She found a dead cicada under the sofa and freaked out about it too! Did you know if you give a cicada a gentle squeeze, it will make all kinds of noise! And a cat WILL come running!
A nice start to a collection by a 7 yr old.
Terah called me in the afternoon of the 15th to see if I wanted some company. Of course, I wanted company! She and Annie showed up around 8:30 in the evening and we headed to the fair to see the critters, buy a blooming onion, a funnel cake and a lemonade.
The blooming onion was tasty, but a bit greasy. The funnel cake was a funnel cake. I like funnel cake, it's just not as special as a blooming onion. And the lemonade was a waste of money! It was far too weak. The turkey leg I had on the 13th was excellent as was the bbq pork sandwich I ate after we came home from the fair on the 15th. I carried that pork sandwich around in my purse for an hour before I ate it. It was still tasty! Though I really should have told them to keep the bbq sauce cause I couldn't eat the bun it was on. It was way too soggy! Fred enjoyed it though.
Annie really liked the goats and sheep.
These two goats were tired apparently. They let Annie pet and pet them.
She wanted to know why the goats had horns. Terah nor I had a good answer to that question that a four year old would understand. Terah told her, 'That's just how God made them." Annie was cool with that answer. This brown and white goat tried to eat my shirt and Annie laughed and laughed about it!
Guess I didn't get any sheep pictures cause I didn't find any when I went looking for these pictures.
Annie and a pig. The piggies are my favorite part of the fair every year! LOVE the piggies! That's my cane in the far right of the picture. I petted this pig's nose and had to talk Annie into doing the same. She giggled a lot with the pigs.
This is the only recognizable picture I took of Annie and Terah while Annie rode the carousal. Annie enjoyed her ride on the carousal.
You look straight down the midway to that tower in the background, which is a ride of some sort....I used to live half a block down that street. It was noisy in that neighborhood during the fair.
I made some baskets.
There's the whole lot of them made since the last post. I get stuck on one thing and sometimes I can't be stopped! These baskets take so little effort to make!
This is the very first one I made. I wondered if beings you could make it with a square base, what would happen if you used a hexagon or an octagon?
I have enough magazine sticks left to make a small hexagon basket. I got sick of rolling sticks so there probably won't be any more of these basket for awhile, if ever. I do want to try another basket made with sticks like this but made from newspaper so they're longer. I'd like to make a square basket with a totally different weave.
You end up with a round basket if you use an octagon base. All my bases except for the first basket are cereal box chipboard. The first basket has a floppy disk and a piece of chipboard for a base.
The place circled in the picture is a stray end sticking out. I should have glued that down. The only glue used in this basket is the glue holding the starting sticks in between the bases and the glue holding the ending sticks to the spiral braid at the top of the basket.
I'm not sure why this one is smaller at the top than at the bottom. I suppose it has to do with the tension on the braiding. None of the other octagon shapes are like this. They all have straight sides, more or less. Maybe it shows up cause this one is spray painted silver? Not sure.
A circle base did not work out so well. I tried to trim the base and you can see what happened to that!
And the circle base basket is all wonky too.
I was tired of weaving the same old basket and the base of that last one hadn't been glued together (still hasn't been) so I tried a different weaving technique and ended up with this tiny little basket that is just as cute as it can be!
I drew an ATC on the 15th of August.
Haven't picked up the pens since.
Ma gave me a shampoo bottle (at my request) and I turned it into a few different things. This is a container that will be embellished in some way and a magnet attached to the backside to hold pens on the refrigerator.
From the sides and front I made two scoops and a stencil. That other thing up there is a stamp made from the top of the bottle.
I took duct tape and covered up the hole made by cutting the top off the bottle. Out of wire I fashioned the abstract flower and covered it with foil tape. I squished all the foil tape down around the wire. It needs a little work to actually make that image when you stamp it, but it does make marks and that was my goal, sorta. Not a success, but by no means a failure!
The next shampoo bottle I get I'll made another stamp with something other than wire and foil tape.
That's what I've been up to!
Thanks for coming by!
Be good to one another!
It matters!
Peace
831
No comments:
Post a Comment