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!)

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.

Here is the Goddess Knits Mystery Shawl number 9, in Penny Rose Kona fingering weight, “True Love.” Adjusted the pattern so as not to run out of yarn. total yardage: 1050.

This was a project originally started for Ravelympics, but it didn’t get finished in time. I knitted this project everywhere I went, trying to finish, but oh, well (18 days). Unfortunately, theres a bit of an odd stain on a couple of parts of this table topper. I tried an Oxyclean bath, but there’s still splotches on it. (does that count as a tragedy?)

This is knit w/ a little more than 2 balls of DMC Cordonnet thread #100 using US000 needles.

Btw–the pattern is Lyra, by Herbert Niebling– can be purchased from Lacis in Berkeley. It’ a fun knit. I highly recommend it. Total yardage? 991yds.

I didn´t mean to participate in Ravelympics, in fact I was totally ignorant until one day before the start. Then something hit me and I went and joined. And here´s what turned out, laminaria. Still blocking, will post better pics later. Yarn iZephyr by Jaggerspun, colourway Vanilla and it used up 74 grams, a total of 819 yards.

edit pics

Finally!!!  A finished project.  I test knit Hydrangea for Susan Pandorf.  You can purchase the pattern on her blog

I love this thing.  It has a ton of beads on it, and took a bit of time, but it was well worth it.  For more details, check out my blog post.

I’ll post my Ravelympics project soon.  Or did I do it already?  I’ll check!

An actual finished object!  I was mostly done with this a few days ago; the grafting took a while.  I blocked it on Friday, because my parents were up for a visit, and I wanted to give it to my mom.  I’m really happy with how it came out:

the details, and more pictures, are Raveled here.

This is a pattern that has several names. Sellers on ebay calls it Phoenix Palme. The Lena mag the pattern came from calls it Rosa romantic (but it might be because they have the white tablecloth on pink cloth?). And others have dubbed it Mimosa for the mimosa tree since that’s what the leaves look like. Whatever, a rose by any other name…

Anyway, it’s lovely and large. By my calculations, this took 2461 yds of Colourmart lace weight (cashmere).