Sorry this post has taken so long. First the sad news: I did not win the 2008 Kentucky Derby Hat Contest at Lincoln State Fair Park. The horror, the shame!

I thought we had plenty of time to get there, and I thought in past years we showed up 1.5 hours before the race. We did the same this year, and just missed the contest. When we got upstairs, it was obvious the contest was over, because no one was wearing a hat! Many people liked the hat, and we even ran into one of the judges, who made me feel better about it. Here is the finished hat:

This weekend, and today, Ty and I have been digging around the dome and scrubbing off all of the dirt. We got a lot of sun and fell in a bunch of mud. Ty dug through the roots of the Japanese Sumac, I spray washed and scrubbed:

Our polyurethane contractor is going to mix the paint with the foam so that it is coated and painted at the same time. The dirt doesn’t hurt the outer layer, but does make spraying an even surface very hard to do. The stripes you see are green, darker green, a gray color that is really textured, and the white is the poly vinyl chloride tent.Now we’re cleaning house for Ty’s parents and getting ready for our garage sale Thursday May 15-Saturday May 17. We may try to sell some stuff on craigslist.org first. People seem to be having luck with that.

I’ve been running around putting fliers up in Lincoln for the Mister Baby show on Friday night! I didn’t know not having a job was so expensive AND such hard work. We’ve made some nice money off of some shows before, but nothing that would cover how much we would spend on new strings, drum heads, and wardrobe. (OK, mostly wardrobe.) Here’s an invite for you (click to enlarge):

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon crafting with my friend Sarah Skean, author of the Great Plains Foodie blog, and leukemia survivor. She made me leftover meatball sandwiches, and I posed with one with my best Angelina Jolie lips interpretation.I also finished my 2008 derby for the hat contest at State Fair Park. Last year, I placed second, but this year I planned ahead, and I’m going for that $100 first prize money.

The derby came out to party with the rest of us at the dome last Friday, but was far from finished. I may add a wire to help balance it on my head.

I’ve got my next instructable up!

Now you can make one for yourself. Just in time for summer cookout season!

I won the $50 second place prize on Saturday. Last year first was $50, so I was a little shocked. This hat is a combination of the hat from last year, and multiple knitted and felted flowers from our wedding. We have about 20 left. I had mounted them all on floral wire with floral tape, and the openwork on the crochet hat made it easy to interlace the two.

Overall, it was an awesome day. Tyrone and I went to Peru for Jari’s graduation, where we met up with my parents and other family (HI AMY!). On the way down and the way back, I read off all 20 entries to the Kentucky Derby for Tyrone. Hard Spun had been standing out for me with those blinking lights of intuition. Besides, this is supposedly a craft/fiber arts blog, and Hard Spun was the most knitter-friendly name in the pack. I wrote down 2 other horses before we went in, and tried not to look at the sheet again.

The State Fair Park Clubhouse was packed, as usual for Derby Day. We met up with friends, talked, and people watched (best part). I ended up doing an across the board bet on Hard Spun, and an Exacta with Hard Spun, Scat Daddy, and Street Sense. On the final leg of the race, Tyrone and I thought the #1 horse was the one pulling away, but no, it was Street Sense, making my Exacta complete!

Got Cinquo de Mayo margaritas for everyone in our group afterwards with my winnings, and then we all went to Ruth’s graduation party. Her fiance Dan had made some mean brisket.

To commemorate such a wonderful Saturday, here is a gratuitous picture of my favorite industrial carpeting, ever. From the clubhouse:

In the 4-5 years I’ve been reading knitting/craft blogs, it gets super annoying when the author doesn’t update the site. Of course, this is only second to, “I’ve been working on ultra-cool project X for the past three weeks and I can’t show you any of it.” The only remedy is to show a picture of a portion of the craft taken out of context.

There are any number of reasons why a project may be secretive. The best reason is because it will be gift, and the crafter doesn’t want to spoil the surprise. The other reason is because the recipe/pattern has been submitted for publishing to a site that has a strict secretive content provision.

On my site, the only way you’ll see 100% of a non-given gift, is if I’m 100% sure the recipient isn’t on the internet, AKA Grandma Shirley or Grandpa Dave. That’s it really. SOOOO….If you are a friend and/or relative trolling for gifts, you can be sure this site is safe for you to view. If you are a craft publisher (haha), I’ve got an entire backlog I’m holding back.

That being said, let’s move on to Secret Gift 2007 #2!

another view






Secret Gift 2007 #2 is 100% wool creweling on fuzzy ribbed and felted base of 40% silk and 60% wool. Still looking for the perfect device to transfer patterns with. So far, taylor’s chalk is supplying straight lines that only last for a day. Otherwise, I hate to say it, but I use fine-tipped sharpie on dark mediums like this.

About 2 months ago, I started cutting up a felted sweater into a oblong purse shape. Since then many things have happened. My sewing machine needed a tune-up, I went on a plastics recycling craze, and considered 20 different embroidery ideas for this purse.

I took the sewing machine to the shop, and asked the kindly repair man for the “tune up” service, that they give for free to set up all of the machines they sell. What was wrong with it? It wasn’t sewing thick felt and jeans like I wanted it to. The man gave me the, “Well, DUH!” look. They suggested I had purchased a “toy” machine, and would have to purchase a $400 machine to get that sort of capability. I said, “just fix it”.

I came back a while later, and they had tested it on thick material (not felted sweaters, but two-ply denim and thin felt), and it had worked. I got my precious sewing machine home, and it cut through the thick felt like no other. Whipped out the rough construction for this purse:

After considering too many witty sayings, and after experimenting with the Birthday Wishes kit from woolandhoop.com, I decided to free-hand it. The pattern is a 1.5 x 3 inch rough eyeball of that design.

The handles are your-run-of-the-mill-craft-store-handles. I used embroidery floss to stitch in the handles. The purse is unlined because the sewing really turned out neat, and I like the pinked wrong-side edges. Finally for the finishing touch, the label:




Victory Garden 07 continues: The herbs are continuing to come up. Planted some lettuce and jalapeño peppers last night in planters (indoors). Called up my mother, and she says she has radishes ready to pick outside already. She also suggested just planting the lettuce directly into the ground now, or erm, tonight.

This is the time of year sweaters go on sale. My goal is to “harvest” natural fibers to recycle at $1/sweater at the most. I really want to work on some shibori techniques: tying/puckering/manipulating the wool so that it resists shrinking in parts. Here’s a before picture of a failed shibori attempt:





Tyrone has asked me to make some sort of arm-covers for his slowly disintegrating computer chair. Last night, I finally followed through. I took the arms off of the failed shibori sweater and eyeballed a pattern for the arms of the chair. Here is a top view:





The openings of the arms were hemmed together with a blanket stitch. There was a hole in one of the arms, so I used an eyelet hole stitch in orange to liven it up. Here is a writer-view:

Here is a side view:





Click on any of the thumbnails for a larger image.