Elizabeth, I would give you a blue ribbon for both. How will the sweater/shawl be displayed? Here in the only instructions I've read recently, which were for a county fair, they said if it was a garment it had to be on a hangar. Wish yours could have a mannequin, or that you could photograph it flat as well, since that is so interesting to see. Barbie looks great, and much more sophisticated with the custom tea dye, I'm sure.
Again I didn't realize how early you have to be to get entered in our neighboring county's fair. The deadline moved up this year as well. I don't mind missing it so much for me, but I think dd would win if she really studied some categories. On the other hand, it is a good drive away and only a county fair, and then the state fair would be almost impossible to attend it's so far, so a bit of difficulty just being a part of things.
FFriend, you probably just missed the chat about new threads in PWYC on the first day of the month. The Cleaning thread and Holiday Plan thread were the only two new ones that had been mentioned for Sept.
Our target for getting our Holiday Plan thread up each year is to start at about the time HGP and the Houseworks plans start, and link to them, but we also link to The Christmas Countdown, which won't start until late October. (I like the fact that the existence of the CC plan keeps anybody from being "late", LOL!) On this same index page of Creative Home forum, It just so happens that the 2013 and 2012 threads haven't scrolled to the second page yet, so everybody will have an easy time seeing any wisdom you were wanting to send to your future self. If you think you were wise in earlier years, you'll have to go to the second page!