Gettin' Ready for the Fair!

So I haven't been doing much sewing the last few days.  I did finish cutting up all the scraps that were culled from my folded fabric and did some cutting for another project.  A couple of months ago Emily Hardwig from Red Button Quilt Company did a trunk show for our guild and we had the opportunity to shop.  I picked up a cute little kit to make a snowman wall hanging.  At our workshop on Saturday, someone asked if anyone had started any of the things we had purchased from the trunk show and no one indicated they had, so I decided it was time to get started.  I hadn't realized just how small it was going to be.............1 inch pieces!  I still have to draw some lines before I can start carefully sewing them together.  

DD has been working on 4-H projects for her last county fair.  Normally, she works throughout the year and has several things ready by this time.  However, with senior year and now a summer job, there just hasn't been the same dedication to the 4-H projects.  So she's cramming stuff in as fast as possible.  I helped her list and tag the things that are done, and was pleased to find that she only has about 5 left to finish before July 12th.  She is trying to create a BB-8 Cake for cake decorating (for those who are not familiar with Star Wars, BB-8 is the new droid from the recent movie).

Here is the bottom part with the base layer of frosting on it.  As I was weighing powdered sugar on the kitchen scale for her frosting yesterday morning, I was thinking how we never use the kitchen scale except when preparing for the fair.  We had just used it Monday evening to weigh the meat rabbits again (it was sanitized before cake decorating!).  This got me to reminiscing about all the 4-H projects we have worked on for the last 12 years.  When she was young and I had some input on the projects she picked, there were things like foods, sewing, quilting, scrapbooking, knitting, crochet.  Over the years, those have gone by the wayside to make room for her picks like filmmaking, reptiles and amphibians (yes, we had a turtle one year), computers, robotics, rabbits, etc.

Tuesday evening as DH and I were waiting for DD to get home from work so we could have supper, we spent time in the yard brushing her dog (now a retired 4-H project), and grooming one of the rabbits.  I got to thinking about all the 4-H activities we had done.  There were several summers when we had dog project meetings in our yard with 10 kids and their dogs, trying to get them to behave (kids or dogs, take your pick!).  We also had robotics project meetings in the basement with 10 kids, mostly boys, building underwater robots.  I wrote the grant to get the kits for them, and then turned the project over to DH since robotics is definitely not my thing.  I just handed out the band-aids at project meetings.  We even went to the YMCA pool so they could try them out and brought a cattle tank into the building at the fair to fill with water so they could show them to the judges.  DD's room and our house are filled with an array of projects from her years in 4-H.  Probably the most unique would be the rabbit skeleton that sits on her dresser in her bedroom.  She took a rabbit that died of natural causes, had the DH clean it and we boiled it to get all the meat off, then she cleaned all the bones and reconstructed the skeleton.  This took many days of glueing and waiting for it to dry..............and as with any toy that has to be put together, there were a few bones that didn't make it back into the skeleton!  I'm not including a photo of this one as it really doesn't look like a rabbit since there are no bones in the rabbit's ears.

After some fondant work yesterday afternoon, this is where BB-8 stands now.

There is still a lot to do, and his head is resting on a cup so still has to be attached.  DD has a rare day off work, so this morning will be devoted to a rabbit project meeting (not at my house!), and then more cake decorating this afternoon.  She has also made plans for DH and I to go see the movie Finding Dory with her this evening.
Christi