Seasons of Lace

It’s time to wrap up this adventure (so we can start looking forward to the new one).

So… it’s with a lot of pride, a certain amount of joy, and a tinge of sadness, that I present to you the following awards today:  a couple of Raffle Prizes for our most popular raffle categories, a little bit of not quite so Random Joy for an unannounced raffle… and, the most exciting of them all… the Viewers’ Choice Award!

As you may recall, some of the Raffle Categories drew quite a few entrants.  Since we can, because the folks out in the world are so incredibly generous, we decided to do one more round of raffle prizes for the larges two of them.  Without further ado, I bring you Round Four Raffles for Small Lace and Medium Lace.

For Medium Lace, which, as you may recall had 89 entrants from 32 knitters, we have a $25.00 Gift Certificate from

Our lucky winner (eligible for some of the finest hand creams out there as we enter the cold season) is jan229!  Congrats Jan!  I’ll tell Aubrey to look for a contact from you; enjoy browsing her site (and tell us what you pick!!).

In addition, Small lace had a whopping 102 entries from 26 knitters (busy knitters these — and these don’t include the small items that were knit for the Quantity Competition either!).  Once again… resistance was futile, We had to do one more raffle.  And we just happen to have one more Sampler Pack from KnitPicks lurking in the prize vault!  That sampler will be wending its way to littlelena.  I can’t wait to see what she knits up with that yarn for Winter of Lace!!

This round still left a few prizes in the Prize Vault.  So… we thought we’d award one in a raffle to reward the folks who contributed by voting in the Viewers’ Choice Award “election”.  (Yes, the magic of computer polls means that the folks behind the curtain can see who voted.)  I’ll be sending out a skein of a skein of Yarn Place’s Graceful Lace Yarn (the colors gradually shade from one to the next): 100% wool (first grade), 50g, 903 yds.

donated by ShadowDancer and a gorgeous set of stitch markers made by Mary (Banshee ) of the Beading Banshee.  The Random Number Generator tells me that Radarkaty wins!

Finally, and totally deserving of its very own big splashy post… the Viewers Choice Award.  There were a dozen gorgeous items nominated for this award.  I, personally, found it very difficult to choose among them. Seven of them clearly caught the eye of the voting public….  And as between six of them, the running was pretty close.   Makes me wish I could reward prizes for all of them that received votes from you, our readers.

However, the winning entry stands out.  It wasn’t close here…..a full third selected our winner (that’s a good 20% over the nearest competitor).

This Neibling shawl is the Winner of the First Seasons of Lace Viewers Choice Award! (sets a pretty high bar, doesn’t it?)

Congratulations tinker!!  You will be receiving  your very own Amy Butler Madison Bag made just for you by our own Beverly (PoMoGoLightly ).  Way to Go Tinker!!! (and thanks Beverly).

It’s almost the end…. we have one more important thing to do, and one more round of Random JOY to clean out the Prize Vault.  We hope you’ll stick with us …..

Don’t forget!!! The polling for the Viewers’ Choice award closes tonight at midnight CST!!! If you’ve done it yet … please go VOTE

We know who won, but what do they get?

Luscious Yarn of course!

We have two generous donors to thank for the Judged Competition Prizes:

Chris at Briar Rose Fibers will be sending one hank of Angel Face (2500 luscious yards of 100% alpaca lace-weight) to each of two winners.  I have no pictures — because the winners get to choose their colorway from whatever is currently available (or… acquire any other yarn of equal value).

Tina at Blue Moon Fiber Arts sent three luscious prizes:

one skein of Geisha (70 Kid Mohair/ 20% Mulberry Silk/ 10% Nylon, 8oz. / 226g, 995yds / 910m)

(ya know… that not black color? it’s greener in real life (and on my other computer screen).

Anyway… they’ve also provide one skein of Laci (100% Extra Fine 80’s Merino, 8oz. / 226g, 1,750 yds / 1,600m)

AND one skein of Silk Thread II (100% silk, 3.5oz. / 99g, 1,250 yds / 1,143m).

We used our friend the random number generator to assign the prizes…. but I’ve also secretly polled the winners, without revealing the actual yarns, just in case there were strong preferences (like, say, mohair allergies).  In the end, it made no difference.

For her Brilliant Achievements in Conquering Lace Disasters, tinker  will receive a skein of AngelFace in her choice of colors (or, whatever yarn of equal value she wants).  We hope that she’ll post when it arrives!

For her Thorough Documentation of Lace on Vacation, ShadowDancer will receive the other skein of AngelFace!*

For her tour de force performance with a  Lace Extravaganza, lacefreak will receive a lovely skein of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Silk Thread II in Midsummer Night, because she plans to knit something thin for Winter of Lace..

For her artful presentation of Lace on Display, littlelena will receive a skein of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Laci in Blue Moonstone

For her brilliant and subtle marriage of yarn to pattern creating a perfect Lace Partnership, thislittlepiggyknits will receive a skein of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Geisha in Thraven (I love this colorway!)

To the winners …. please be sure I have your addresses so that I can get your prizes to you!!

Meanwhile…

Don’t go away!  Coming up, we have the Viewers’ Choice Award (for which the polls are still open — don’t forget to VOTE - there are over 125 of us eligible to vote for this… let’s not disenfranchise ourselves) and…..

MORE Raffle Prizes!!!

and

a chance to help us make this even more fun when Winter of Lace opens later this year… AND….

One final round of RANDOM JOY!

(and of course, any additional lace knitting you wish to post, and updates from our prize winners).

*and yes… that’s me getting some AngelFace.  I’m more than a little pleased about that result!)

And now, at long last… The Lace Partnership Awards

The full set of the posts Nominated for this award can be seen here, but you can see each individual post by clicking on the link above the pictures.  This time… they’re in reverse order of when they were posted…

And the nominees are:

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Today we look at the nominees for Lace On Display (13 nominees).

Our Judges had more of a challenge with this category than with the prior two, as there were more than twice as many entries!  Once again, I’ve selected what I perceive to be the key photos from the posts, and once again, I’ve linked to each post by title so you can check out the rest of the pictures the author originally listed. The nominees are, in the order in which they were first posted to the Seasons of Lace blog:

First fo

This post featured two projects.  I think that this picture is the best of them for displaying lace…

but I have no idea whether the judges were looking at that, or at the larger project, shown in this photo

I’m the Lame Lace Maven

International Shawl (fini)

This is one of two, quite different, pictures from the blog post.

Waves Finished

There were other shots of this scarf in the original post.  I liked this one best.  The judges may have focused on a different shot… so it’s worth a peek to see them all.

Remember This One?

There were two shots here.   This one is the more … unusual… so I’m using it for this page.  The other shot is more … well… yeah.  Again… no telling which one the judges based their decision on.  Likely the combination… so go take a look.

I’m Back!

This is my personal favorite of the several shots.  The judges may have been focusing on a different shot in the post… it’s totally worth nipping over to the original post to see them all.

Look What the Ravelympics Made Me Do

Again,  this is my personal favorite of three excellent shots of this shawl.  I don’t know which one the judges used as their voting criteria shot.  Go check out the others… in case they liked one of them better.  They’re all great shots.

By Special Request

The Glamour Shots

I’m feeling like a broken record — but the post had other shots, if you want to see them.

il mare ocsuro

One More

Last Official Post

Wrapping Up

I know I’ve said it before, but It’s hard enough to choose from these selected photos… the task is even harder when you’ve got the whole blog post for each of them!  I sit in awe of our wonderful judges.

As you might gather, the competition was fierce …. but once again, despite a tie for third place, we had  a clear winner.

In fourth place …. Look What the Ravelympics Made Me Do

Tied for third were  il Mare Oscuro and Last Official Post

Our runner up is The Lame Lace Maven

And the winner, for Best Photograph of Lace on Display is….

littlelena for Remember This One?   shown here in it’s more conventional shot

littlelena sure has a way with display, doesn’t she??  I just loved the shot with her bearded model!

We interrupt the awards ceremony to invite you vote for the Viewers Choice nominees.

You can enter your vote in this poll only once, and only if you’re logged into the Seasons of Lace Blog.

The pictures you see here are shown in random order.  If you’d like to see them in a different order, just re-load the page!  We’ve included the pictures in the size that the knitters provided — if we could, we’d resize them all so that they were a uniform size, but alas, we don’t have enough time to get that done and still get the poll out this month!  To see more images of each one… click on the picture itself to go to the full post.

So… take a look, choose your favorite by clicking on it’s button…. and then scroll down to the bottom and click the vote button.  Remember… you only get one vote!… so you can’t change your mind later.

You’ve got until Friday, November 7th at 12:00 midnight Central Standard Time (US) to place your vote.

p.s. You have to login to be able to vote.

Today we look at the Nominees for Lace Extravaganza (10 nominees).

Our Judges had more of a challenge with this category than with the prior two, as there were more than twice as many entries! Once again, I’ve selected what I perceive to be the key photos from the posts, and once again, I’ve linked to each post by title so you can check out the rest of the pictures the author originally listed. The nominees are, in the order in which they were first posted to the Seasons of Lace blog:

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We interrupt this raffle fest to bring you the first round of Gold Medal Winners of our Judged Competitions.

You, our members, nominated various posts for the Judged Competitions.  We collected them, and set up screenings for each group, and invited our illustrious judges to go take a look.

Before we reveal their choices, let me introduce our judges to you.

In no particular order, I bring you Joe

He writes the blog Queer Joe’s Knitting Blog, where he generally has great pictures, and lots of lovely knitting.  Lately, he’s been “swatching” for a sweater — by knitting a wonderful  hat.  How he thinks he’ll get away without publishing the pattern for that hat is beyond me…. perhaps he’s already realized the truth.

To be sure we have serious LACE experience on the panel, we invited Miriam Felton.

Her lace patterns appear in places like Interweave Knits, Knitty, in her own books, and on my needles.  But despite such fame, she’s really a very charming person, who was delighted to help us with this competition.

And last, but by no means least, Jared Flood.

He writes the blog Brooklyn Tweed, designs great patterns, and takes awesome pictures.  His blog is worth subscribing to even if you don’t read a word, the pictures are so consistently good.  Of course, if you choose that option, you’ll be missing out on some good stuff… but hey, it’s your choice.

These three wonderful knitters generously agreed to look at all our nominated pictures, and to send me their top three choices for each category.  I had a go at the task myself, just to see what I was asking.  This was no easy walk through the park, let me tell you.  You’ll get to see for yourselves when it’s time to vote on the Viewers’ Choice Award.

A quick note — each of these contestants received multiple nominations (as is true pretty much through out these competitions).  We didn’t really keep track of how many times any given post was nominated, since we wanted the Judges to choose the winners, and didn’t want to weight anyone’s decision based on the number of nominations a given post received.  This also means that, though several posts were self-nominated, most self-nominated posts had “seconds” to their nominations.

But best of all…  it’s quite clear that the competition was close — there was only one category in which the first place choice was unanimous!

But enough of this background stuff, eh?  You want to hear who won… I know you do.  I’ll be doing this in several posts, so that I can have actual pictures for you to see, instead of just a bunch of links.

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Just adding a picture in which Icarus stands alone — I’m told it only appears on colorblocks….

Icarus: Handmaiden 2ply Silk Cashmere (discontinued)

Morning All! One more post from the Admins this morning. First thing I want to thank all of the folks who have submitted nominations for our Judged Contests.  But considering all of the fabulous posts and projects we’ve seen this summer, I think the quantity of nominations is a little low.

Here are the numbers as they stand now -

• Lace Partnerships - 8 nominations
• Lace Disasters -  2 nominations
• Lace Extravaganza - 3 nominations
• Lace on Display - 2 nominations
• Lace on Vacation - 4 nominations
• Viewers Choice Award - 2 nominations

All of the items that have been nominated are fabulous, but we would like to give our judges a few more nominations to work with.

So I and the other admins would like to encourage everyone to take a look at the archives and give someone a chance to win a prize. Don’t forget you can nominate yourself for everything but Viewers Choice Award.