Monday, Aug. 1 marked the first day of Chelsea Update‘s extensive coverage of the 79th Annual Chelsea Community Fair.
I love fair and of all the things I cover each year, this is my favorite.
Officially, fair takes place from Aug. 23-27 this year, but the fun begins on Sunday, Aug. 21 at 9 a.m. with the dead weight on cement tractor pull in the Main Arena and the Kiwanis Club concession stand will be open.
In addition, all agriculture, antiques, baking, canning, floriculture, arts and hobbies, photography, machine sewing and needlework exhibits must be entered between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Sadly, I will not be entering anything this year. After taking home a champion ribbon last year with my cows, I started a new piece with a fox in the forest right after fair last year. And, I spent about five months on it. And although I really like the design, I just didn’t think it was as striking as the cows.
So, I found a lovely sheep scene in the mountains and got started on it. This one has about 12 full graph pages and give or take a few days, each page takes me about a month to complete. Because, of course, 10-12 hours a day are spent bringing you all the news that’s fit to publish about Chelsea.
I tried to speed up the process, but doing cross-stitch is not about racing through a design to finish it; rather it’s about enjoying the process as the scene comes to life. It just isn’t going to happen for me this year so, I’ll just pick it up again at the close of fair this year. Because before then, there’s lots of fair coverage to be written.
And yes, I have already picked out my project for 2018. Hint: I can’t help myself. It’s another cow scene.
So, how are your projects coming along? I look forward to seeing what everyone else enters this year. Good luck to you all.
And if not before, I hope to see you at fair.
