Fair Finishes

The Ramsey County Fair starts today and I dropped off my entries yesterday morning.  Dave and I will go tomorrow and maybe my brother John will come with us depending on the time.  Here is what I've been frantically finishing the last couple weeks...

Here is my finished Lucille sweater.  I was so pleased with the way this turned out and I have a full skein of yarn left over.  In a last minute executive decision, I opted to knit the smaller version of the sweater due to gauge concerns and I'm glad I did.  The wrong side of this diamond lace had me constantly thinking about a Victorian Pineapple Bag and I think I'm going to have to tackle that for next year.  Hmmmmm.....

I'm entering the sweater as a 3 piece baby set along with this matching bonnet.  I used my last meter of Sajou ribbon I purchased at Liberty's of London back in 2012.  The third piece of the set is the old reliable ribbed booties but I didn't take a picture of those.

I didn't actually knit this in the last few weeks but I threw it in the blocking bucket once I had it out.  I thought it was cute after I first knit it, but boy what a difference blocking makes!  This is a Baby Surprise Jacket knit from some Liberty Wool Light I bought at a yarn shop in Cannon Falls a few years back.  We were on our way home from my niece's baptism as I recall.

Here is a little scalloped cotton bib I knit out of some Island Collection using this pattern.  It is a pale mint green finished with a streaked pearly mint and pink button.

On our last trip to Fargo, I bought 2 skeins of this Malabrigo colorway and knit a Windschief hat out of one earlier this spring and I just finished this pair of gloves out of the other.  One skein had a little more white showing through so I was lucky to finish this pair out of the single remaining skein.  I had about 24 inches left over!  I also bought a slate blue/gray/navy colorway for a manly pair so I might have to use a neutral color for an inch or two of cuff when I ever get around to knitting those.

Last year I happened to have the baking entry day off so I got up at the crack of dawn to bake raspberry hand pies.  I'm proud to report I won the grand champion in baking with those and I also took home the blue ribbon in the chocolate chip cookie lot.  This year I am working every evening of entry day so I'm not going to break my neck scrambling with baking.  I am going to branch out by entering some photography.  I've never ever entered photography at the fair, even as a 4-H kid.  I'm submitting a photo of Jock the cat from Chartwell--Winston Churchill's home, a photo of the baptismal font and reflection of the ceiling of Salisbury Cathedral, and Dave is entering a photo of the spring bunnies we had in a nest in the garden.  I'll make a 4-H kid out of him yet!