Some Fair Results

I picked up my entries from the Home Arts building at the Alcona County fair Sunday morning. The entries for the fair itself were pretty sad, many, many categories had no entries at all, and many others had only 1 or two entries. However, I was informed by the Secretary and it's printed in the rules that first place will only be awarded if something deserves it and I did see an example of that. The crochet hat category for instance, my hat came in 4th, 2nd and 3rd place were awarded but there was no first place hat that I could see.

So my hat may have had a dismal finish, (I suspect they did not think an acrylic microfiber was an appropriate material for a winter hat) but I did much better in the shawl and sweater categories.

 Sweater, crochet, first place.

 Isolde shawl, crochet, first place.

 This is what it looks like spread out. It's a shame they have no way of hanging things so people can appreciate the work everyone has done. I wonder if that fact keeps more people from bothering to enter.

You were allowed two entries per category and as I had finished the Small Talk shawl earlier this year I put it in as well. It got second place. Feels kind of weird losing to oneself. If I enter next year I'll probably only enter one. I'm also going to try to get the local church ladies to enter something, at the very least my neighbor. She makes mittens and hats and lovely prayer shawls.

Today I went to the Fair

For the first time in the 13 years I've lived here I went to the Alcona County Fair. It was fun if exhausting. I took a neighbor, her daughter and her nephew. We ran into another family unit of 3 and the kids had a blast riding the rides, I even rode a few along with the other adults and occasionally with the boy. I took photos but I am tired. So I will finish this post tomorrow.

And here I am back with a few photos of the county fair.

 There were carnival rides.

 And there was a carriage ride.

 This ride one is known as the Himalaya. It's small. I took this photo while riding it.

There were animals, too. Cute little goats, and pigs and chickens. I'm surprised I didn't take more animal photos.

I Need a Root Canal

How's that for a kick in the teeth? Actually, the way my jaw has felt for the past couple of days a kick in the teeth would feel good in comparison! It started Friday night when I decided to try a new flavor of ice cream, lemon chiffon. When it hit my teeth on the right lower side I about went through the roof it hurt so much! And it kept throbbing for hours. It finally settled down and I slept fine that night. Next morning, forgot all about it till I had cereal for breakfast with cold milk. ACK! The pain! Thing didn't really get much worse and then felt better and I slept fine Saturday night. Sunday was a different story.

Yesterday things just got progressively worse as the day went on. I was eating acetaminophen, aspirin, brushing my teeth over and over with sensitive toothpaste, and using what was left of the topical analgesic I had left from my last bout of tooth pain. nothing worked. By the time I went to bed that tooth and the ones near it just throbbed and by 3:30 am that whole side of my face was in agony so I was online looking for home remedies of which the usual always seemed to be oil of cloves. (I see poor Dustin Hoffman as the Marathon Man running through my head whenever I hear that phrase!) I found another odd remedy of sticking a garlic clove next to the offending tooth. Now garlic I had though it didn't seem to help until I bit down slightly on it keeping it between my upper and lower jaw. I also propped myself up in bed with a extra pillows to keep the blood from pooling in my jaw. It seemed to help, though it was probably more like the sitting up than the garlic. I managed to get through the rest of the night, waking up a lot, but at least time was passing faster till I could call the dentist at 9 am and get in to see him.

I was at the office by 10:15, two x-rays were taken and sure enough the dentist said the roots were dying in #31. So he prescribed a week of penicillin which hopefully will kick in soon and take the swelling from the probably infection down. I got some fresh topical gel at the store and also tried taking one of my back pain pills (I can't take ibuprofen or that other over the counter anti-inflammatory any more). I sure hope things kick in soon because it hasn't been long enough to take more pills and the aching is just miserable!

Oh, there aren't really any endodontists in the area so I have to drive nearly 2 hours to the city of Gaylord, MI to get this done, hopefully next week at the latest. I've been to that guy before, he's very good, just very expensive. No such thing as dental insurance in our house!

One more note to add. I grabbed a bag of frozen peas and placed it against my jawline. INSTANT relief! I don't know what I didn't think of it earlier except that my brain was in a fog due to pain. And as cold hurts on the inside my brain probably figured cold would hurt on the outside, too. Finally, I use for peas! (I still can't stand the taste!)

Hawk Attack

I've been free ranging my chickens and guineas more than I had been, after all it's summer, bugs and weeds are free which is a lot cheaper than the $20 per 50 pound bag of chicken feed. So I took the pups over to visit my friend for an hour so they and his dogs Tink and Mike could play. (forgot my camera, of course).

When I drove back down the driveway at the final curve there were a lot of gray guinea feathers and Killer, my white guinea and a couple of his guinea hens were screaming their heads off just outside the fence. As I pulled up to the garage a very large raptor took off to the east. I parked, walked back down the driveway and there was a silver guinea on her back, very dead but only just dead. I couldn't tell what actually killed her and neither could Hal who came down the driveway withing 15 minutes. I suppose it's possible she had a heart attack. Her neck was very limp but really, I couldn't say it was broken.

But I definitely interrupted the hawk before it could dig in, they seem to particularly love breast meat which is probably why my bird was belly up on the ground. Hal skinned and gutted the bird and as there was nothing wrong with it I stuck it in the fridge till I got home from Alpena this afternoon. It's now in the crock pot and smells great. As the guineas are a few years old I figure it had better stew for a quite a few hours.

Good thing I'm not sentimental about these birds.

Beading the Isolde Shawl

So I started the final row of edging on my purple Isolde shawl the other day. The pattern originally required a triplet of picots but they weren't coming out right so I dropped the smaller ones on either side of the larger central one and changed the dc (double crochet) on either side to a triple crochet (treble aka tr). I've also added beading to this final edge but am not sure I'll leave it this way. I'm alternating 4 shades of purple and I think it's at least one too many.

It's not a very good photo, the lighting is bad and required the flash and it washed out the shininess as well as the actual bead colors. They are all shades of purple but seem to turn the lavender ones pink and the purple ones blue.

I'm hoping this will be done in a few more days because I've decided to enter it in the Alcona County Fair. I've never been and I've never entered anything in a fair before. In fact I've entered 4 items: 2 shawls, my pink pullover and a hat I have yet to make. The items have to be brought in on the 19th so I've got time but I don't want to rush. So back to work I go.