Seasons of Lace

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!)

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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I was almost finished… only about twenty more rows to go.

I was going to be able to finish this scarf in time to give it to my sister for her birthday….

The yarn had surprised me by just being wonderful!  Easy to work with…soft…scrunchy…

And then….

I realized my puppy was in the house….

Where was she….

Oh no!

I ran to the bedroom and saw that my worst fears were realized…

Of course, I didn’t get a picture of my darling puppy doing the dirty deed.  but this was the result…

Thankfully, it was salvageable.  The scarf - not the needles!  You can see the finished object here.

Oh, and, the puppy was not harmed.  It wasn’t her fault.  You can’t blame her for liking my knitting!

I completed the latest Forest Canopy Shawl, used  440 yds and decided to block it aggressively in an attempt to get it large enough for myself. Well apparently I missed the class on wet blocking silk.. WAAAAAAAAA

I think I can fix it but I am so angry with it right now we are not even on speaking terms.

In the meantime I have cast on the Elm Row by Ann Hanson and will hopefully be casting on the Goddessknits July Mystery shawl later today as the first clue is due today.

Yay, finished Peacock Feathers from Fiddlesticks. Instead of the triangular shawl, I went with the stole version, using the original pattern as guide.

What a lovely fun knit.

This took me a little less than 4oz of zephyr, and a tad under 2 weeks to finish.  I knit this by provisional casting on 128 stitches, and then when done with the one side, picking up and knitting the other side. I also added clear #6 beads. Here’s a pic of the join.

There is a disaster associated with the stole. My two year old beautiful daughter somehow thought it was okay to play with the ball of yarn and proceeded to bite into it like an apple (sigh). She broke the yarn at the needle, and several places in the ball mess. Here’s that picture:

I finally decided on my 1st project for SOL: the Mystic Meadows shawl by Anna Dalvi (http://knitandknag.blogspot.com/), using some 100% silk I found in Kyoto a few years ago. The yarn was dyed to be used for weaving a kimono or obi, but was either an extra skein, or a mistake. In any case, it’s been in stash, waiting for the right project.

I wound the yarn using a swift and baller, but the ball got so big it flopped around a bit, so I took it off the baller to finish by hand - and this is what I got. There are so many tangles, and the yarn is so thin, I’ve managed to make some progress, but I don’t see me starting to actually knit for a while longer.

Lizabeth