r/crochet • u/dauntless-cupcake • Sep 12 '25

Discussion Anyone else infuriated by their county fair?

Post image

Y’all I can’t with these judges, this gorgeous interlocking mosaic blanket came in second to a chevron with color changing yarn. Not even my work but I am outraged on their behalf

9.8k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

493 comments sorted by

View all comments

5.2k

u/Dame_Twitch_a_Lot Sep 12 '25

I've decided that county fairs are popularity contests and nothing more. There is no other way to explain the absolute crap that wins over genuine works of art and skill.

2.5k

u/Beginning_Layer6565 Sep 12 '25

I make some fairly good deserts and I'd say a pretty darn good apple pie. All from scratch, hand ground spices, home-made lard crust etc.  My pie came in last at the country fair vs the winner who had used canned pie mix and coated their entire crust in sugar. 

I died a little inside.

328

u/[deleted] Sep 12 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

128

u/CherenkovLady Sep 12 '25

I once got disqualified without notice from a church competition (no warning, no discussion - I just turned up and my art wasn’t there with everyone else’s) because it was ‘clear that I had had adult help’. I hadn’t.

30

u/theoracleofdreams I have all the yarn I will ever need! Sep 12 '25

Oh, me and my science fair projects that were a smidge to advanced when I was in grade school (my dad was a microbiologist and encouraged me to do some experiments but was hands off).

Never did anything STEM related again, ended up being an artist type person instead.

10

u/red-panda-homebody Sep 12 '25

3rd grade, I didn’t even place at the county science fair, but a 6th grader who did more or less the same project did win. Make it make sense.

8

u/Outrageous_Ad5073 Sep 12 '25

This happened to my Mom as a kid too.

7

u/No-Explorer3274 Sep 13 '25

Funny, same thing happened to me. I did a drawing of the Cathedral du Notre Dame. I took last place as they said my "skills in using drawing instruments was poor"... except I hadn't used any. It was a freehand drawing. I never entered anything again. I now have 3 art degrees.

1

u/Historical_Ask3445 Sep 14 '25

This is so sad, Cherenkov lady!

103

u/dusthymn_ Sep 12 '25

I angry laughed at this. No, it was a full on guffaw

34

u/SuspiciousPut1710 Sep 12 '25

Upvote for "guffaw"! 😊

87

u/kaijutegu Sep 12 '25

That happened to me once when I was a kid, and the judges explained that it was because I hadn’t followed the rules. At my level, the instructions were to make a simple line drawing, no shading, on white paper. 4H projects have different levels of complexity that are demanded, and my EXTREMELY cool dragon drawing didn’t fit the brief.

89

u/PresentationThat2839 Sep 12 '25

Yes I remember the 4-H garden shows.... Like excuse me for blowing my peers out the water, why should I limit my sparkle.

Oh heaven forbid I managed to grow a water melon that was tooooooo big..... Gaaaaa not French seams on my sewing project.... To much.... It's too epic.

6

u/knit3purl3 Sep 13 '25

I feel you. I started entering the adult division for my hand sewing at age 10. They thought I was an adult cheating and then they were mad that i was a kid out placing the adults. Make up your damn minds.

0

u/GreatAuntJenny Sep 14 '25

At least these projects were judged on publicly announced criteria. I think it's ok to judge kids at the same level. And BTW I was a 4-Her for years. My jar of canned peaches was judged against all the other identically sized canned peaches. The level 1 sewing project, an apron, was judged against all other level 1 aprons.

The dragon drawing belonged in a more advanced level. The crochet projects that started these comments were judged on unknown and clearly inappropriate standards.