It is going to be a very busy week, and I hit the ground running yesterday with the turn-in for the Mountain State Fair competitions. My final count is 22 items submitted – 5 in Photography, 4 in Quilting, 7 in Amateur Crafts, 6 in Senior Crafts. I packed it up Monday morning, and took it over to the fair. I got my entries sorted into categories and did one category at a time. The proper tag goes on each one, and I bring my entry sheet with me to be sure I do it right. I put the tag on each one, tearing off my claim tags, then folding it up to cover my name and attaching the right tag to each entry. Even so, I got to chatting with a lady who was entering for the first time and didn’t know how to do the tags and got two switched. I figured that out when my natural materials one was tagged with embroidery. So I knew I had the last two switched. Luckily, there are tables in some of the aisles to I could figure it out and get the tags switched back.

It took two hours to get them all submitted with their tags. The quilting area was hidden in the very back, behind the agriculture shelves, so I had a bit of confusion in finding it. But I did get there, and entered my quilts. I got there fairly early on the first day of turn in, and this area will fill up by the end of the day on Tuesday.

The wire dividers are pretty empty right now, as entries were just coming in. By the time it gets to the fair being open, these will be completely full. I paused to see what else was here as I placed my entries in their proper categories.

Last Saturday, I received a phone call from the superintendent of the Crafts and Seniors Division for the fair. I was surprised when she praised my craft entries over the past 10 years, noting the wide variety of categories that I enter. She then blew me away with her request – she asked me to be the judge for the Professional category of the Crafts Division. Holy crap on a cracker! But I said yes, I’d love to. The criteria to be scored are Overall Appearance, Creativity / Design / Originality, Quality of Workmanship, Level of Difficulty, Suitability of Materials. I have no idea how I will make the choices for Best in Show and Judges Choice. But I’ll take a cue from other judging, and pull out really outstanding work as I find it. I’ll let you know how it goes! This photo is from last year, but you can see the participation is really good. This will be my task for Wednesday morning, and probably into the afternoon.

Then, Wednesday afternoon, My Sweet Babboo and I will be assisting in hanging the quilts for the exhibit. Over the next 10 days, I plan to enter six cooking competitions. I have a recipe ready for all of them, but will see how the competitions go this year, after the debacles last year. The new superintendent let professional chefs enter these amateur contests, and didn’t disqualify a winner who used someone else’s copyrighted recipe printed off the internet. But, I and other contestants gave feedback to the governing board that resulted in changes to the official rules for this year. So, we’ll see. I can’t show you my ideas yet, so here is a pic of my award winning Blueberry Honey Tart from two years ago.

My Sweet Babboo met a friend at our small town airport over the Apple Festival weekend, and spent the day enjoying the car show and airplanes at the airport show. He bought a ticket for a helicopter ride over our little town, and enjoyed the tour. He took a great shot, showing the Apple Festival in full swing downtown. You can see three city blocks on the south end of Main Street with tents and food vendors. It goes on for seven city blocks, with four more to the north (headed to the right in this photo). One nice thing about our small town is that the city preserves trees where it can, and replants when it can’t.

At home, the neighborhood group meeting for the quilt guild is Thursday, and I needed to get back to the pillowcases I had cut out. Since our sew day was canceled, I needed to finish 25 more before then. My dear friend, Gail, helped me out by sewing 10 of them.

That left 15 more for me to do. I set up an assembly line, doing each step on all 15 at once. Rolling the burritos takes the longest amount of time. So I rolled all 15 at once, while watching movies.

The next day, I sewed the first seam, doing all 15 one after the next.

Turn and press, again doing all 15 before moving to the next step. I lay them on the cutting table as I went along.

Next, serge the side seam and bottom.

I bury the tails of both the beginning and end of the serged seam. That mean 30 to do.

Turn right side out, making the corners crisp, and doing a final press. Voila, 15 more done in time for Thursday’s meeting. This brings the total to 40 out of my stash. I counted out 15 on last month’s Stashbusters report, and this month I can count out 25. Even though I didn’t sew them all, the fabric all came from my closet. The next Stashbuster check in is Friday! So gather your totals and get ready to report.

Whew, time for food! Our holiday cookout was brats and corn on the cob. I love grilled food. For the corn, I shuck it and clean the silks off, then boil it for about 5 minutes just to be sure it is tender. Then it is grilled until nice char marks start to show. I have cooked it in the husks before, but I don’t like having to get the silks out while the corn is hot. I’d rather scrub them clean in the kitchen first, and get the lovely char on the kernels.

It is easier to eat off the cob, so I cut it off in big chunks of kernels, and add some butter to the bowl. It is so hot coming off the grill that the butter melts as I’m cutting. So sweet and delicious!

Today, the agenda includes a trip to the produce stand for veggies, drop off a library book and pick up another, along with various other errands. See my Goodreads review on the sidebar for my review of The Embroidered Book. It will be a crazy busy week after that, with a car club meeting, a board meeting, the judging and quilt hanging tomorrow, the tomato competition Friday night and a car show event on Saturday. I plan to collapse on Sunday and watch football all day!