Every summer I try to urge my friends to enter the NC State Fair. Usually I can convince them to do so. This year many told me (publicly even) that they were going to enter and beat me, so I would not get a good ribbon (first place....my goal always). Then we had problems signing up for the contest and getting our entry tags through the mail.....would you believe they sent the entry tags in UNSEALED envelopes!! One friend got an empty envelope!!

Anyway, their plan worked. I really upped my attempts to knit projects I liked that were completed to the best of my ability. 

There were 7 potential categories for machine knitted items:

    Clothing: Adult garment, child garment, and accessory

    Household Items: Afghan (including baby blankets), full sized afghan (to fit a bed), tablecloth or placemats, and one of the afghans or table linens enhanced (something not machine knitted added to the item). 

I filled out the form to enter all 7 categories. I finished 6 items. I won 6 blue Ribbons (first place) and also got the Triangle Machine Knitters award for best of machine knitted clothing and also the Triangle Machine Knitters award for the best of machine knitted  household items. Each ribbon or award came with its own small monetary award. 

So I am tooting my own horn about my winnings <G> Here are the photos. 3 are garter carriage items, One is a Passap afghan lovely, the green blanket with the lighter edging is double bed racking enhanced with crochet edging. The baby sweater is my favorite from Bramwell Baby book, which I have knit 3 or more times with different colors over the last 20 or more years. 

The last 2 are the same blanket (Passap Afghan Lovely) to show its size (almost King Sized) and its texture. 

I am glad I did my best work for this event. Yes I should have started before the last 6 weeks before the fair, but I do best under pressure <G> 

By for now

Rita

 Yes, I am still machine knitting. I did complete another 100 hats for Country Knitting of Maine Hat contest and sent them to Maine in September. My favorites this year were my garter carriage hats, I mean those knit by my garter carriage. I used both the punchcard machine and the electronic brother machine. On Facebook I even found a pattern by Anita Cornell for a gc hat which was written from start to finish in one DAK pattern, so I knit one to donate this year and one to enter in the NC State Fair 2021. That hat won a blue ribbon (first place). 

I did a few in fairisle. 

I did my usual ribbed hats too and some of those easy bucket style hats. Here is a pile of the hats. 

There are even some fisherman's rib hats. I still love doing stripes!

Sometimes I get on a roll and really churn out hats<G> It is a lot of fun and by donating them to charity, they keep a lot of people warm. 

By for now. 

Rita

Still machine knitting

 We are lucky here in Raleigh, NC in that some of our machine knitters are knowledgeable about using zoom to set up our zoom meetings. So we have been able to continue our regular monthly meetings, now on zoom, and sometimes even an in-between meeting just for socializing and encouraging others to keep on knitting. Thanks to Phyllis in our Triangle Machine Knitters group for setting up our zoom meetings and helping us to learn how to use this medium. 

I have a friend who volunteers at an animal shelter. She loves working with the kitties and let me know that those kitties need small blankets to cuddle with and sleep on. I finally got my act together and found a pattern for animal shelter blankets at https://annsroost.wordpress.com/animal-shelter-blankets/  

The size my friend wanted was not exactly the size Ann had written up so I adapted it. I knit the width of the 12x12 blanket but used the 20x20 inch length. I have not taken these to my friend yet, but others I donated were close enough to what they needed. 

I like the double bed slip stitch pattern, as it makes the blanket sort of stable and not so floppy. I have been using up ends of cones or balls of yarn or even the unraveled yarns from false starts I have had with many projects. The yarns are all acrylics but some are 2/24 (which I use double) or up to British 4 ply. I wind similar weights of yarns into balls, just tying on a new yarn when the old one is all used up. I have found that I can USUALLY knit right through the yarn knots! 

I say USUALLY because sometimes the machine balks and drops the stitch where the join is. If that happens I just keep on knitting. After the blanket is off the km I latch up the hole and fasten it with a short length of yarn (not necessarily the same color!) and weave in the ends. Neither the cats nor the workers care if the blankets have mistakes or funny colored sewed up holes!

My animal blankets are ending up approximately 12x20 inches. If all goes well, then there are only 2 ends to weave in....and I just thread them through the fabric between the front and the back of this double bed fabric. 

These are fun to make and I love getting rid of those mistakes and bits of leftover yarns. 

The purple blanket was knit with 1 strand of  pink and one strand of lavender knit together. They had been stacked so one fed through the other. In that photo you can see the design. In the multicolored blankets I can see the colors in waves (the result of slip stitches) but I cannot see the design. Also sometimes I forgot to set the carriage to slip, so I ended up with full needle rib instead of a slip stitch design. It all works for the kitties!!

The blanket above with the many colors and the thin aqua strips on the pale aqua.....well the yarn I was knitting with grabbed a loose thin strand of aqua and just knit it in!! Anything goes with cat blankets!!!