Sad News and Show Pictures

This past weekend I received more bad news while I was at the Big Fish Festival show.  The grandchild of my friends Joyce and Carol was born on Saturday but died on Sunday.  Her parents named her Annabelle and she was full term -- 8 lbs. 2 oz.  Complications arose quickly and the doctors were unable to save her.  So hard to hear this sort of news.  You just don't expect to hear things like this with full term babies in this day of better medicine.  The wind was completely knocked out of my sails.  I felt feel such devastation.  All the exuberance that comes from anticipating the birth of a child and now everyone is left with a hole in their heart where the love of a child should have reined.  There is little you can say to the parents, grandparents and other family members to ease their sorrow.  If you could, please pray for Erin and Jim and their families as they work their way through their grief.

I would have to say that the Big Fish Festival show was a dud.  The weather was drab and rainy and the crowds were much less than anticipated.  I sold a few more things on Sunday but no where near what I had hoped.  On the other hand, it just means I don't have to knit and felt like a mad woman before the Mt Bruce show at the end of September.  I noticed that I need to make some plain black items -- hats and bags.  I'll just keep knitting all month and hopefully have enough stock to get me through the season.

I tried to use Photoshop.com to enhance my pictures before putting them on my blog but I still haven't figured out how to do that.  So I'm back to using the old software for now.  Add that to my downloading the new BETA version of Blogger and I'm struggling to put this post together!

Here's the tent set up (most ably by my trusty and tall friend Tanya) ~~

 

Here are some of the items Tanya cranked out in her 'sweatshop' last week ~~

Her totes were fabulous -- many were reversible and had pockets to store all of the necessities.

Here are a couple of close ups of my bags.  I did get a lot of finishing work done while I was at the show.  Needle felting always attracts people to the booth since many have never seen it done before.

And a close up of the flower ~~

 

I liked the way the bobble bag turned out and will try to add them again to a bag in the future. 

We had a visit from Tanya's 5 month old puppy, who also drew people to our tent ~~

  

She's so pretty and well-behaved.  I'm completely jealous but don't tell Maggie I said that -- I'll deny it!

Tanya started working on the body of the Philosopher's Wool sweater for Jackie.  Here's the lower band ~~

She had already knit enough to switch from size 4 to size 8 needles and began the Fair Isle part of the sweater by the time we were done Sunday.

We were both quite productive thanks to the diminutive crowds.

Next door to me was a dulcimer player who left early when she was drowned out by the Big Bopper guy on the WPON radio booth.  We were also graced with the Oakland County Homemaker of the Year (she's sporting the green sash and tiara) ~~

You couldn't buy a good time like this!  At least the fried perch and chippers were tasty.