Sweet River Studios

I went and picked up the two quilts I entered at the Ohio State Fair on Monday, August 8. I stood in line with about 20 other people, who were also picking up their entries. I got to the head of the line and a lady asked for my last name and I told her "Oliver." She said, "Lisa Oliver?" My immediately thought was, Oh God, she has to tell me a small child had somehow got a slushy through the building and was running and tripped and her bright blue no bright red slushy had landed on my quilt and its ruined! Ruined!  I dreaded confirming my name to her. "Yes," I said hesitantly. Here it comes the big, giant shoe that was about to step out of my nightmares into reality. Remember, wait until you're in the car to cry, I told myself. "Congratulations, your conservation quilt won People's Choice." What? Really? No giant shoe? Awesome! She took my claim tickets and we walked back to the table where my quilts were already bagged. I c...

I bit the bullet and decided to enter these two quilts in the Ohio State Fair. I've never entered a quilt show before so I pretty much know next to nothing about entering. All I do know is that some are juried and some are not. The Ohio State Fair is not juried. I believe all entries are accepted until they fill their space for each class but I don't really know. I figured, why not? I think my two quilts are fairly unique. I know my sewing isn't the greatest. Not every seam is a perfect 1/4" no matter how hard I try but considering I didn't know what a 1/4" seam was until 6 years ago, I think I'm doing pretty good. I'm not too concerned about winning a ribbon for either of these. This is me just dipping my toe into these waters and basically saying, "See? I entered quilts to the fair and I can scratch that off my bucket list." And I didn't hyperventilate once while they were out of my possession and my control! So if you get a...

River and I attended a barn hunt trial at Dogwood training center in Ostrander, Ohio the weekend of July 30. I believe it was their first barn hunt trial and they did a wonderful job. I know it's labor intensive with all the messy straw, building the course, making sure the rats are safe and well cared for and making sure everything runs smoothly for the competitors and they did a great job. The first day, River and I didn't do so well. She finds the rats fairly quickly but her alert is very subtle and very quick and she wants to move on and unfortunately, I don't always know if she's found a rat so we didn't qualify either trial. On Sunday, I was determined to get our final Q for Open and move up to Senior. I watched very closely and when River sniffed a particular area for 3 seconds I called it and found a rat. The second rat was a bit more difficult. I saw River barely scent one area and she ignored the rest and then she was standing along the gate. She was d...