CGOA 2010 Design Competition...Good News!

 Yesterday, I got some amazing news!  The winners of the design competition were announced at the annual Chain Link conference, and both my entries won prizes!  My "Kyoto Coat", a baby jacket, won the Grand Prize and my "Jewels of the Sea" necklace won 1st prize in the Accessories category.  I am beyond thrilled!  I really wish I could have been at the conference, for the award ceremony and to share in the fun.  Congratulations to all of the winners!  Here is a complete list of the winners with descriptions of their entries.

I am excited that I can now show photos of my entries!  Here is the necklace, and I am in the process of gathering photos of the baby jacket.  I will post those soon.

The idea for the necklace was inspired by shells I found on the beach in Kuwait.  I like to include found objects in my freeform crochet, and I loved the colors in these shells.  They formed the basis for my yarn selection.  I made several scrumbles with a beach theme in mind.  Then, by the process of trial and error, pinned them to a form until I had an arrangement I was happy with.  I used a little more than half of the scrumbles I made.  I like to have a large pool to choose from.  I think I get a better result when I am not forced to use everything I make.  I have a large bag of unused scrumbles, which is actually very useful for adding to other projects or for making a quick gift of a brooch or a greeting card.  I also like to include wool felt pieces in my work to break up the crochet, so I embroidered a few pieces and added them to my freeform puzzle.  I carefully stitched them all together and then, there it was, a lovely souvenir of my day at the beach!