Roll up, roll up...

It's the Sydney Royal Easter Show!

Roll up and see these amazing feats of knitting...death defying lace that your eyes will hardly believe!

I didn't put anything in the show myself, but you can see the work of Meg in the bottom left hand corner there. You can see a more revealing photo of it here. We were shocked that the judges didn't award her a prize or even a commendation. She was robbed I tells ya! On further inspection we decided that the main prizes went to items that included more than one lace stitch in the pattern and that also had very accurate blocking of edges. So now we know what will be required of us next year (yes I am hoping to enter something next year- I'd better start now!).

I do have to ask what the judges were thinking though...why did this "Feathers" yarn blanket get a prize...

...when some poor person slaved away at an entire rug-full of intarsia and still came away empty-handed?

There were loads of other nice things to see though. Here's a quilt that I thought earned its ribbon:

And although as a rule I hate crochet and don't find this piece appealing at all, even I have to admit that this is one damn fine piece of work. Such tiny stitches, and so much detail.

So far all this work was very serious. But wait...here comes someone with a needle and thread and my own bizarre sense of humour:

This suave-looking fellow had a label identifying it as the "cat-a-pillar"! There were plenty of other handcrafted toys there too, with a category for knitted toys - I think that might be the category for me next year, rather than the lace. Here's the competition:

But yes, if you were wondering, we did leave the craft pavillion eventually! We made a stop at the woodchop:

...and in the horticulture pavillion:

...and saw some fine barnyard beasts:

Goodnight...oink!