Whitniffic Whatnots

Holy moly. For being complete newbies to the fair, we actually did quite well! I brought home three blue ribbons, two white and one red, plus I forgot to pick up a yellow (?) for a fourth place photo enlargement. Oh well. I think I'm most proud of my little snowflake quilt though... it turned out so pretty! I can't say I had a whole lot of competition for the blue though... mine was the only submission in the long-arm category. In fact, there was only a handful of quilts submitted at all! And most of them were by a 78 year old woman. :) My crocheted bag also took home the "lone submission blue". I'm less proud of this one because I kind of already felt it was mediocre, and I just got a blue for showing up. The same held true for Neil's home brew competition... there were only four submissions total, and all of them were his! He came home with Grand Champion, Reserve Champion, three blues and a third place. Now, I know that sounds a little

I'm still just a little bit behind on my doodles, but I've been working away at them whenever I get a  couple of spare minutes. Last night I sketched a tube of lipstick while I sat on the couch watching Star Trek with my husband... Here's a recap of the last week or so: August 12: SCHOOL August 13: WILD I'm so in love with this pretty, magical zebra! She just makes me happy. :) August 14: BAG And why not put a cat in the bag? Apparently I like to draw animals the most. August 15: KITCHEN There's always some sort of vegetarian stuff cooking in my teal saute pan, so I figured what better to represent my kitchen than a pan of tofu? August 16: PAPER August 17: TOMATO Mmm. I grew these little cherry tomatoes in my back yard, and boy are they tasty! August 18: MAKEUP This one was hard for me... I'm not a makeup kind of girl. Honestly, I think I chose to draw lipstick because of its simple shape, and I was tired so it loo

Oh boy, do I feel like a dummy! The fair exhibitor drop off was last night, and I learned very quickly that I definitely interpreted the instructions for the photo contest wrong. As someone who's never done this before, and who hasn't been to a fair in a zillion years, it was not clear to me that the four 4x6 snapshot photographs on each poster board were supposed to be DIFFERENT. I did wonder why they would need four of the same photo, but I assumed there were four judges or something that all wanted to look at one. I even asked a friend who's done this for years, but I guess she too assumed I wasn't an idiot and didn't specify that they should be a SERIES of images, not four duplicates. Duh. Who wouldn't want four identical pictures of a mermaid tail? Maybe I'll sneak over there once the fair opens and stick some more pictures up. I know it won't help for the judging, which is happening in literally a half an hour as I type (...yes, I franti

Around the middle of July, as I was lying in bed attempting to journal or plan the next day's tasks or make goals... or whatever I was trying to do... words weren't coming to me. I looked over at Howie curled up in his big squishy dog bed and thought he looked so darn cute that I had to draw him. I haven't drawn much since my one drawing class in college, aside from sketches of game ideas and cabinet designs (I'm a concept art director at an arcade game company). My Howie sketch in Shaprie pen on crappy lined paper turned out ok... but it inspired me to attempt to doodle or draw something every day for a month. Just for fun. I do love my Sharpie pens, so I decided to stick with mainly black and a tad bit of color thrown in for fun. I have a few colored Sharpie pens, as well as a pack of Stabilo fine-point markers. Deciding what to draw has always been a challenge for me, so I found a little August Doodle a Day challenge on Instagram to join that lists a prompt for

Oh boy. The clock is ticking for me to finish my fair submissions! Maybe I should have just baked a cheesecake or something. lol... My quilt tops have been ready to quilt for a week or two now, and I've been procrastinating. I've done sample after sample of free motion patterns, but for some reason I'm just terrified to actually try it for real. After doodling around with thread on several scraps, I decided to attempt FMQ on the small "Fizzy" quilt. GULP. I started with the outer background shapes with a light aqua thread... I did OK enough for non-central areas... but when I tried to quilt one of the four-pointed star parts in the center, I failed miserably. I think I just sort of freaked out and temporarily lost all motor skills. I ended up ripping it out... and haven't touched it since. Straight lines are hard. Hopefully those extra poke holes work their way out of there eventually... no bueno. I'll be heading over to my mother in law