Prizes! and Winners! and Chickens!

I'm giving away this little (~2-1/4" across) tatted motif. And the black netted bag I started earlier.

The motif pattern is in Tatting Patterns, edited by Julia Sanders and still in print from Dover. I've always found this little motif interesting in the way it starts with a five-ring center and ends up tri-cornered.

I must have tatted this quite a while ago, back in the days when I still ended with visible knots and thread ends, because these days that just isn't done, my dear.

The winners:

Tatted motif: Sharon in South Africa.

Black netted bag (which I'll be netting on frantically today!): psammeadred from the Knitty coffeeshop.

Sharon, I have a snail mail address for you if the one from your blogs is still good.

Psammeadred, you can send your snail address to the contact email in my blog profile.

And did I promise chickens?

Wednesday I posted about doing a drawing, and since then I've been quiet.

Thursday after school, my husband and I took our son and went to the county fair.

I didn't enter anything in the fair this year, mainly because the fairgrounds is a good half-hour drive away, and given the price of gasoline, if everything I had ready to enter took a blue ribbon, I would still have ended up in the red. Kind of a thin reason, I know.

But I did take my new camera and take pictures of what would have been my competition. Then I had my annual pecan pie and coffee at the 4-H booth before I went and took pictures in the animal barns.

I'm not allowed to give the title to this photo that it obviously deserves. But I think you can guess.

I have a fondness for the big draft horses, Percherons and Belgians and so on, but unfortunately I missed their events this year and could only take pictures of them in their stalls.

Another thing I like to try and get pictures of is the chickens. Chickens have a lot of personality, but it's a challenge to get a photo that reflects it.

I liked this guy's nice feathers, but I wasn't 100% satisfied that I'd captured his intent expression as I took the picture.

But this last photo I think is the best chicken picture I've ever taken in my LIFE. Words fail me. I might have to get an 8 x 10 glossy of this one: