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 …..

I see that there is a final competition entry form.  We’re getting so close, what is supposed to be done with that form?  Do we attach the htmls from all our entries to that one form, or what?

thanks,

Does anyone else have a love/hate relationship with lace?

While I am new to this, I find the following scenario being repeated over and over and over again:

Casting on with lace weight yarn for the first time, there was immediate intimidation.  A few rows into the project, my confidence began to grow and I thought:  “I love lace, isn’t it pretty?”

An hour later I noticed a mistake and ripped back to my life line swearing quietly:  “I hate lace. I HATE lace.  I freaking HATE lace!”

Two hours later the mistake was long forgotten and as the pattern developed I smiled and said to myself:  “Oh, look how pretty.  I love lace!”

Until, of course, I made another mistake and I then I was back to the “I hate lace” mantra.

I guess that makes me officially a schizophrenic would-be lace knitter who is still trying.

sigh

All of this has my husband asking:  “You actually do this for fun?”

I´ve casted on for my next project, although I don´t think this will be finished in time as it is quite big, over 1000 yards. It´s another test knit for Julia and the pattern seems nice although there are lots and lots of nupps. If anyone has a good trick to manage nupps with 7 loops I´m eager to hear them! The yarn is 2/28 nm, 100% cashmere from Colourmart

I’ll be taking a trip to the “big city” (Portland, OR) next weekend and will have the opportunity to visit a few yarn shops. I will also be going to a couple of fiber festivals this summer and will be surrounded by lots of yarn. I was wondering if anyone has a favorite lace or sock yarn that they really love? I’d like to try some new things and just wanted to know what I should be looking out for. Thanks.

Testing pictures again

This is a picture (hopefully) of my Icarus shawl progress.

One problem I’ve had with Icarus is that periodically I screw something up and I then ladder down the stitches and  reknit them back up but this has led to several areas where the mistakes when they are fixed look like this:

See the place where the stitches are kind of loosey-goosey? I’m really hoping that these will block out smooth but I worry. Has anyone had experience with this before? This may be complicated by the fact that I’m using a silk and cashmere yarn and I know that doesn’t block the same as a wool yarn would. Suggestions? Reassurances?

Elizabeth

First of all, let’s test this picture thing:

This is an old picture of Swallowtail (that isn’t much farther along now than in this picture) but I didn’t want to go to the trouble of doing new pictures if they aren’t going to show up in the post.

I’ve been pretty diligently working on Icarus. So much so that I’m starting to hate it a little The problem is I pretty much knit in front of the tv. So one has to strike a balance between mindless and interesting for tv knitting. One problem with Icarus is that it’s easy (and boring) but also that I’m knitting it on smallish needles (3’s) and so it’s a little harder to knit while not looking which I can usually pull off.

I guess I’m just getting a case of the summer knitting blahs. Plus in looking at all the posts, there’s no way I’m winning for yardage. I am just not the fastest production knitter in the world.

Anyone else have knitting enuii?

Elizabeth

PS: ok, in the preview of this post I can’t see my picture. I put in the url to the Flickr page where this pic supposedly lives under the “add media” option. Isn’t that supposed to make it show up in the post? I’ve seen some of you putting pictures in your posts. *How* are you doing it now that we can’t upload? Help?!

I´ve finished the first sock, got inspired of the red yarn and let the stole sleep for a while and cast on for Fly away home-socks. Now the first is finished, isn´t it gorgeous? The yarn is Chakra from The knitting goddess.

Did I say I love it? Hope I don´t get ill with sss (second sock syndrome) before the next one is finished. By the way, do socks  count for one or two finished small objects?

I have been over at Knit Picks looking for a book of shawl patterns to buy while the sale is still on. Has anyone knit any of the patterns from this book?  I saw a few patterns that I thought looked very pretty from the photos that were on the site.  So far I have restrained from buying any more lace yarn, but the new colors are hard to resist…

Just wondering–I’ve been coming across them, without a definition, in my lace reading, and figured one of you could give me a quick answer.

Thanks