Seasons of Lace

Thank you so much to those of you who participated in our poll.  We will use your input to improve Seasons of Lace.

As promised…. we’re raffling off the last things in the prize vault.

Kristina (GrandmaKiss ) has donated a skein of Skacel Merino Lace: 100% fine merino, 100 grams, 1375 yds. color 831 dye lot 3307. The color is a very pale ballet pink which she says would be attractive by itself or overdyed.

She’ll be sending it to sfknitty.

Crimson Orchid will be sending some of their lovely stitch markers to SusanS.

Amber of KnitMyWorld has made us a set of fifteen stitch markers, which she’ll be sending to Vicki (Minstrel Spinner).

Ronda (RondaBen ) has agreed to make a row counter for one lucky winner — one like this, except that she’ll make them in the winner’s choice of colors:

She’s sending it to greich (who, as it turns out, participated only on Ravelry).

(Shadowdancer ) from Fiber Dancer’s Design Studio , is sending  a skein of Yarn Place’s Touch to YarnSpider

This yummy stuff is 5% Cashmere, 85% Merino, 10% Tencel 62 1/2 g ~800 yds

So, winners, if I haven’t reached you yet… please contact me with your snail mail addresses so that I can ensure that your prizes get to you!

And thank you all, once again, for your invaluable help in making Seasons of Lace even better next Season!!

We’ll be doing a bit of house keeping, and will soon open sign-ups for Winter of Lace 2008-09.  Winter of Lace runs from December 21 to March 20 (thus, from the Winter Solstice to the Vernal Equinox).  We will, of course. let you know what you need to do … and how to convert your current registration for the new season so that you needn’t start over again.

It’s been a glorious season… and we’ve learned a lot.  We hope to see you in December!

Here are my beautiful price yarns from Andie at Renaissance Dyeing and Freyalyn

Cobweb…. Propably my next challenge for Winter Of Lace Either of these might end up as the “Fern garden scarf” that Andrea at Bad Cat Designs graciously donated.

THANK YOU ALL, now I get to continue knitting without running out of food for the family!

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 …..

So…. there are more raffle prizes…

We’ve done a Round Three Raffle for four of our Raffle Categories.  These four had plenty of players… and we just couldn’t resist.

First up… Wee Lace JustdotChristina is our lucky winner.  She’ll be receiving a kit for Maureen Mason-Jamieson’ scarf Whimsy

from Shelridge Farms.

Christina… contact Buffy at Shelridge Farms to choose your color!

Buffy will be sending in the color of the winner’s choice.

Then… Small Lace  Birgit She’ll be receiving some luscious a hank of cobweb yarn from Freyalyn of Freyalyn’s Fibers

It’s a blend of merino and mohair, with a slight halo and lovely lustre. Weight is between 80-90g, but the yardage is 1500 yards/1300 metres. The color in the picture below is Murex, but she will dye to whatever colour birgit desires! .

Then  Medium Lace  – dplantlady is our lucky winner — she’ll be receiving three skeins of KnitPicks Shimmer, donated by escr

and finally

Lace Socks. judybll will be getting a hand dyed skein of yarn from Rabbitch!

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!)

I give you my prize yarn.  The color’s actually pretty good for being taken at 10 pm indoors.

I plan to make a circular shawl out of some of it.  Anyone care to suggest patterns and/or color combos?  The balled yarn will be a scarf, which I will start tomorrow during the elections.

Oh, and everyone who’s American should vote tomorrow!

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.

Continue Reading »

And you thought we were done….’

But I still have more yarn to give away!

For example… there are three skeins of Malabrigo lace, just aching for a new home.

Our very own Darla donated this prize, and we’re awarding it now as the Second Round Raffle Prize for Medium Lace.  The lucky winner is …. hilltopkatie!  And she’ll also be receiving a Shawls Booklet from JoyKnits.

in addition, I have this yummy Yarn and pattern combo from Stitch Jones

This is harder still, since I can touch it and everything.  Even so, I’ll be sending it off to the winner of our  Socks Category Round Two Raffle,along with a pattern for Angel Wings socks from JoyKnits The winner is….. vicki!

And finally … for round two anyway… There is this lovely hand dyed merino from our own Vicki (vicki953)

I’ve got to tell you, sending this away — like to kill me!  But even so, it’s been awarded as the second round prize in the Beaded Lace category, so I’ll  be sending it along to bagoyarn, who will enjoy choosing patterns from

KnitSpot as well, since she wins the last of the $10.00 gift certificates.

My Newbie Lace Knitter prize arrived this week!  It’s the DVD “Knitting Lace with Meg Swansen”.  I haven’t had time to watch it yet, but I did look at the charts.  I really like the neck-scarf version of a Faroese shawl, and I think that will probably be my first project from the DVD.

I have also joined a KAL on Ravelry.  We are going to be making the Fan Stitch Half Circle Shawl from Martha Waterman’s Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls.  I still need to find yarn for the project.  So I fully intend to continue my lace knitting efforts, and I look forward to joining you all again for “Winter of Lace”.  And to the moderators, thank you again for this wonderful KAL!

Just a quick note to let you know that I’m running away (vacation again) for the weekend.
I may not have internet access again until LAAAaaaate Wednesday night.

Whichy hopes to announce some more raffle prizes before I come back.

If I owe you email, or something, I promise to get to it Thursday.

And I’m hoping to get to the Post Office today to mail out prizes. If another stupid thing delays me again (long and ugly story, you don’t want to know — trust me), it may be until I get back….