Last Fair

I judged my last fair of the year Monday afternoon, this time at the Martin County Fair judging 3-5th crafts and fine arts. I've judged for this county for prefair entry days before, but never at the fairgrounds. It was a little toasty in the building, but not unbearable. I dressed for the weather and my table was near an open door so I got a breeze. 

Crafts and fine arts is one of the most popular 4H project areas and the judges are always busy. Martin County is a big county with a solid 4H program, so I expected to be busy. There were four judges in my project area including me. Two judges did the older kids and another judge and I handled the 3-5th graders. 

It went pretty smoothly once I figured out that I had missed the craft section in the front of my judge's binder. I thought there was an error and I just had Fine Arts entries. Crafts and fine arts are actually separate categories, and they were on complete opposite ends of the binder- I thought the papers for both would be next to each other. 

Overall, I didn't see too many projects that wowed me. Lots of diamond art, some button art, some drawings, some clay figurines, a few mini wooden scenes from kits. The most unique entries were a felted wool bowl (the 4Her said he uses it as a hat at home) and a gigantic Lego scene set in Jurassic World. It was about 2ft by 4ft and he said he'd been working on it since January. He had a story to go with the scene, so it wasn't just Legos. Very impressive. He ended up getting champion.