Guild Superbowl Competition

My fiber guild is having a Superbowl competition this year since there are no Olympics. We started when the Superbowl was on (well, that Monday before). There are two projects we had the month of February to do and we will have spinning time trials on the day we turn our projects in.

The first event was "Too Many Men on The Field"

The goal of this event was to create a project, any project, that met a number of requirements. You could knit or crochet. But you have to use 3 different stitches, 3 different distinct colors and 2 more fiber arts (to make a total of three). Of course it would be hard to reconcile all of these elements into a cohesive project. But I was doing some searching and decided to do a bag. A Granny Square style bag. Different stitches and colors taken care of.

I decided I didn't want to blind people with the crazy color combos so I went with a simple black, white, grey, red color scheme.

I decided to use the African Flower Hexagon pattern for the individual pieces. I love the way these look. Very cute, but fairly simple. (in fact I like the pattern so much it will be making another appearance on the blog eventually)

I used the Mamy Bag pattern to put them together. I can't read French patterns so I just used the schematic for making the bag. I just love the carpet bag style of the bag. So cute. To meet the requirement of two other fiber arts, I sewed in a lining to make it a bit sturdier and I wove the strap. I could redo the strap before judging, but I would lose points. But I think I am going to do one for after the judging that will be the permanant strap. It will still have the different color warps but the weft will be black.

The second event is "Face masking"

At Guild, we were given a bag of fiber. It contained a small ball of merino roving, a small ball of llama roving, a small bag of mohair locks and a small bag of cashmere bits. I decided to unleash my inner art student and create hat that represents trees going through the seasons of a year. I dyed my fiber. Merino= orange and llama = red. They turned out great. I spun the red and orange up into separate singles. When I plied them together, I started out with just the orange and red. Slowly I began adding the green mohair locks. All I had done to them was fluff them up a bit so they had a good halo. So I had a yarn that transitions from a heavy green halo over the orange and red to just the autumn colors by themselves. So the yarn became Summer to Fall.

I knew the cashmere bits would be hard to deal with (they were yellow and black) so I decided to work with their inherent nature of lumpyness. I carded a batt. I grabbed all the brown and tan fibers I had in my stash and started throwing them on the carder. I have Romney wool, shetland wool, llama, alpaca, camel and cashmere in there. When I spun it, I let it be lumpy and uneven to resemble tree bark. When I plied two singles together I did the same thing with more of the green mohair. So this yarn will be the trunk of the tree going into Spring. And then it will represent Winter at the top of the hat.

I decided since I was off and running with the tree theme, the pattern needed to match. I am making Through the Woods. The lace pattern is supposed to look like trees. I'm not sure how much of the lace will be represented since I have a lumpy yarn and a very fuzzy yarn. But it turned out how I thought it would.

Cross your fingers for me. The event got moved from the February meeting to the March meeting. I would love to at least place with these.