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Easter Show judging: crochet
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By Abbey Bongers
Abbey Bongers and Sara Aylett judged the crochet for the second year running in 2023. The show splits the crochet judging up by category numbers, ‘odds and evens’ so there’s an even split of categories. This means each judge does a blanket category and an over 70s category and so on. The biggest category was Class 120: Travel, Knee or Afghan Rug with 37 entries, closely followed by Class 124: Creative Crochet with 32 entries. Creative crochet is tricky to judge as there is a vast array of creativity and a little bit of head scratching… ‘What is this?’ was a common thread.
The Class 120 blankets were tough to judge this year. Our process tends to start with examining each item and starting with a yes and a no pile. The no pile gets anything with unwoven ends, unblocked, damaged (two blankets had holes in them this year) and anything with tension problems. That filtered out about half the entries. Then it’s down to the serious competition where we must pick the winners. We ended up choosing a corner-to-corner artistic blanket (Marisa Stephens of Blue Haven with ‘Farmer and his dog’) as both the Class winner and recipient of ‘Best in Show’, the Marea Terry cash prize supported by the Guild. The crochet in that blanket was PERFECT and the subject matter was so well suited to the show.
Only a handful of entries in some categories meant we couldn’t award the full suite of prizes – only two hankies for example. There are some categories that fluctuate a fair bit like Tunisian Crochet (Abbey’s favourite) which only had four entries this year.
We were both very impressed with the under 20s categories this year. There were a few entrants that would give the adults a run for their money.
We’d like to encourage our members to enter for next year. Why not get your guild group motivated to enter? Dropping off and collecting exhibits is a breeze and other people can do it on your behalf. The public still love seeing the handmade efforts of the locals and be inspired to keep up what many consider a dying art (although we beg to differ!)
