County Fair Results

I love the *idea* of the county fair. As a mom, I don’t love the execution of it. Maybe I’m a spoil-sport. Maybe I’m stuffy. I don’t know. I just don’t really enjoy it. We live in a TINY county, so if my kids enter anything, there’s a VERY good chance they’ll get at least one “blue” ribbon. But since EVERY entry gets a ribbon of some sort, I don’t even think that’s a big deal. They do though, and that’s why I do it.

I’ll do 4-H first. I was a “bad mom” and DIDN’T take pictures of the Cloverbud ribbons. They’re strictly participation. No judging at all. They’re green and pretty. And that’s it. Sariah participated in three 4-H clubs. Here’s her projects:

 

In Leatherworking, she got the 2nd place Champion Ribbon (the red rosette) for her dragon purse (and they didn’t award ribbons for the rounders). In Art, she entered her entire sketchbook, featuring the phoenix. And for hiking the leader had each child put together a scrapbook of the photos they took on their hikes.

Ribbon identification for Open Class: White = C Award (participation ribbon), Red = B Award (better than C, but not top quality), Blue = A Award (top quality, eligible for competing for the purple “Champion” and lavender “Reserve Champion” Rosettes).

And now, our Open Class entries. First up, the LEGO creations.

Left, we have the original “sunken ship” creation, by Sariah, age 10yo. Center is the mishmash Pirate Ship, Dragon, and Rocket/Space Ship (from instructions on the LEGO site) by Kent, one of the twins, age 7. Right is the DUPLO “Playing house with the twins” by Erik, the other twin.

Next, we have the watercolors:

Top left is called “Bookshelf and Toys” by Erik. Top Right is “Blackie the Midnight Horse” by Samantha, age 5. Bottom left is “The Dragon” by Sariah. Bottom right (this one I was most impressed with, because of his drawing ability before painting) is called “The Dragon Car” by Kent.

I want to add a sidenote here to state a disappointment in our county fair display and organization. The watercolors were NOT all in the same section, even though they were supposed to be. One was found in the middle of photographs, another was in the oil paintings, and the last two were where they belonged with the watercolors. When we dropped everything off, they were ALL placed with the watercolors, so I have no idea how that separation happened. It was odd, but okay. My REAL disappointment came in the fiber arts (knit, crochet, embroidery, quilting, and weaving). The displays were set in tables about 20 feet long by 3 feet wide (with a “wall” behind the 3 feet section). There were two full lengths of table for the art. When you went around the corner, you got to the fiber art. There was one FULL length of table covered by quilts, pinned to the wall hanging and displayed on the tables. NONE of them overlapped more than about 8 inches. When you turned the other side of the aisle, there was ANOTHER 15 feet of quilts, displayed similarly, with nothing overlapping more than 8″. Then there was the embroidery, very prettily displayed, not overlapping. Then the weaving. They folded my blanket to 8″ wide pushed it against the framed embroidery/needlepoint on one side and the knitting on the other side, and stacked my daughter’s entry ON TOP of the blanket so you could barely see it AT ALL. Then there was the knitting on the end, prettily displayed and easy to see. And my daughter and I had the ONLY weaving entries, there was NO competition and it was visually obvious they didn’t really care about them at all, based on how they were displayed compared to all the other fiber arts.

Here’s the photo of the weavings:

So yes, I won the “Grand Champion” for the category. But considering I was also the ONLY entry for the category (children are in a different category than adult entries) it doesn’t mean much to me.

I’m now contemplating the idea of entering the state fair (which in our state is divided between the east and the west state fairs) to see how my weaving compares to others. It’s hard to “judge” a project with absolutely NOTHING to compare it to!