Arts and Crafts Festival

Hey all--if you live around here---- my dad, my husband and myself are at the Hutchinson Arts and Crafts Festival this weekend. Come by and see our booth if you can. We are located by the statues of the Hutchinson Brothers.

Our booth consists of photography (mine and my dad's), knitting (mine), leatherwork (my husband's), and a couple drawings (mine).

Anyway-hours are Friday 10-6 and Saturday 9-4

Hope you all have a great weekend wherever you are!

A few pictures of the weekend!

Hey all-now that another weekend is nearly upon us-
here are some more pictures of Red Rooster Day Weekend
(know to the rest of you as Labor Day Weekend)

Dan and Dakota on the porch

The local parade . . . .

Waiting in line for the BBQ chicken dinner (I found out that we serve between 3500-4000 half chickens every year. Pretty good for a town of about 1250 people, huh?)

Looking out at the ball park.

(Crow River string Band playing, antique car show and bouncy slide in the background)

I'm Back (and a beautiful FO!!!)

Okay, I'm back everyone!! (if your still reading that is . . . sorry, I am a bad blogger sometimes) I hope you all had a great Labor Day Weekend! Around here Labor Day Weekend is called Red Rooster Days (our town festival) and it was much fun--(although much busy fun). Our gallery sponsors a fine art show with local artists. We set everything up, print off certificates for winners and do all that jazz. You would be amazed at how many really good artists like to live in our neck of the woods. Maybe it is the corn fields mixed with lakes and trees--who knows, but we have a lot of people around here who like to do artwork!

Anyway another fun thing that happens on Red Rooster Days is that we have a fireworks show on Sunday night. (One of my favorite events) I took my dad's digital camera along to get some pictures.

Ooooooo, ahhhhhhh



(and everyone clapped and cheered at the end)

Now, for some really exciting news the Myrtle Leaf Shawl is done! And I really like it. I don't know what you all will think, but golly, I think it is purty. We did a quick photo shoot yesterday evening. I may not be the best model ever, but I guess the photos turned out okay!

(this is my favorite photo-I used to dress up as a pioneer girl (like Laura Ingalls) all the time when I was a a little girl and I would go play by this rock-I don't know why it made me think of being a pioneer or why it felt like that was where I should go play, but I did)

Myrtle Leaf Shawl-
pattern: from Victorian Lace Today
yarn: Misti Alpaca Lace (in dark Brown)-Two and a little of a third skein. (if Barney hadn't have chewed threw my first start and some of one skein of yarn, I probably would have just used two skeins)
needles: clover bamboo size 5 circular and dpns
modifications: none, really, except for using a different yarn than called for and the random mistakes I made.
started: oh, sometime in February, but then Barney ate that first start, so I really started it around July 20
finished: August 29

One nice thing about a shawl that has pattern on both sides (rather than pattern on the right side and purl on the wrong side) is that you catch your mistakes right away. Now, that being said, it is much harder to pull out stitches and pick them back up correctly, so I tended to fix the pattern in the following row rather than ripping back unless the mistake was really easy to find.

It was so much fun to work on--now to finish that set of mittens I started on, and my socks, and my dad's vest, and, and, and . . . . .