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!

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 hope you all had a great weekend while I was frolicking about with my family on a bit of a sneak long weekend.

It’s great to see these prize winners posts of their goodies — especially the ones that I haven’t seen in person yet.

Meanwhile, we have the voting in from all but one of our judges, so I’m hoping that we can announce Judged Competition winners soon.

In the interim…I think it’s about time for Round Two of the Raffles, except that I do want to explain how we’re doing this, because not all of the events will have multiple rounds of prizes. You may have noticed that for each of the first round raffles, I identified how many “entries” there were (posts that qualified as entries either designated that something was cast on, or finished), and how many knitters there were. We decided that for categories with fewer than ten players, we’d do a single raffle; for those with between 10 and 17 players, we’d run two rounds of raffles; for those with 18- 25 players we’d do three rounds, and the one with over 30 players would get a fourth raffle. We considered doing 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, and 30+, but one category with 18 knitters had over 50 entries… and we just “had” to reward that.

So, for Round Two, we have some duplicate prizes, sort of.  The second round Raffle Prize For Newbie Lace Knitters, and for Small Lace is a KnitPicks Lace sampler.   We have two colors left — and our winners will get to choose!  There’s one sampler pack in “Sea View” (blues), and two in “Sunset Picnic”.  Whichever winner contacts me first gets first choice.

And our Newbie prize winner is……… Melfina!! who will also be enjoying a $10.00 gift certificate from

And our Small Lace prize winner is ……. nolaboard!, who will also be receiving a Hearts & Hugs sock pattern from JoyKnits

Congratulations!

But wait… that’s not all!!!

We also have another gorgeous shawl pin  from Designs by Romi to raffle off for the Second Round prize in Self Designed Lace!

thislittlepiggyknits will be receiving this pin as soon as Romi can arrange it!  She’ll also be receiving a sock pattern from the Knit Foundry

And finally ( … well, for today anyway)

We’ve raffled off another $25.00 Gift certificate from

as the Second Round Raffle Prize for Wee Lace

alittlefuzzy will be receiving this… and will enjoy free shipping on her goodies if she’s in the U.S.!  She also has a $10.00 gift certificate from KnitSpot

Tomorrow??

More Round Two Raffle Prizes!!!

And… for the last of the Round One Raffle Prizes ….

For Lace Knit with the Knitters Own Handspun (for which we had five entries from three knitters), yarnpro is our winner! She gets a $25.00 Gift Certificate from

(and in case lotion isn’t her thing, Aubrey also has great stuff to help take care of yarnpro’s spinning wheel too!).

She’ll also be receiving the Paws in the Catnip pattern from JoyKnits

Then, for Doilies, those miracles of lace knit on uber-tiny needles, (for which we had four entries from three knitters)  knitsbyteri is our winner.  She’ll be getting a cone of yarn from

She has her  choice between Article 2025 (Rayon PetalSpun, 100% Rayon, Sport Weight, approximately 1680 yards per pound) Article 74C (100% Mercerized Cotton Size 10, approximately 2700 yards per cone – in choice of colors shown in Article 74P ), Article 950C (100% Cotton yarn in 3 Ply Baby Fashion weight, approximately 1680 yards per cone) or Article 984C (100% Cotton yarn in 4 Ply Fashion weight, approximately 1680 yards per cone) or any other 1 pound cone of yarn they have!

She will also receive a pdf pattern from Baxterknits

And finally, for Bulky Lace (for which we had 11 entries from 6 knitters)… our prize goes to birgit!

She will be receiving  125g (nearly 1500 m) of indigo dyed lace-weight yarn, subtly dyed varying hues with indigo exclusively for the Season of Lace group from Andie at Renaissance Dyeing and a pdf pattern from Bad Cat Designs

There will be more Raffles…. more Random Joy…. and of course, Judged Competitions, and soon, a chance to vote for the Viewers’ Choice Award!!

Here are a few more of the Round One Raffle Prizes:

For the Self-Designed Lace Raffle, we had 24 entries from 11 knitters.  I had hopes here, and got Whichy to do the drawing, but NightlyKnitter won the first round.  She’ll be receiving 8 ounces of hand dyed lace weight from

I’m not sure what the colorway is… and hope that Nightly Knitter will show us what she receives!

Nightly knitter will also be getting a pdf pattern of her choice from Baxterknits

Also receiving an eight ounce skein from A Colorful Yarn will be … the winner of our First Round Raffle for Large Lace (who is one of 6 knitters, who between them made 9 entries to this raffle). Our winner? tinker!

Along with her yarn, she’ll be receiving a pdf pattern from Bad Cat Designs

I can’t wait to see the pictures. (Okay, I’ve seen some of her dye work — and I’m totally biased).

In the First Round Raffle for Beaded Lace (for which we had 28 entries from 14 knitters), sligo was our Winner.

She’ll be choosing her favorite of the newly dyed lace-weight yarn from

And of course, sligo will need a pattern to knit, so we’ll be sending her one from Fiber Dancers’ Design Studio

Tomorrow, we should be able to finish up the first round winners…. Are you ready?

Whichy and I got together today and worked through Round One of the Raffles.  We agree that each prize deserves equal time…so we’re going to torture you all by spreading out the notices over the next couple of days.

Today, we’re going to tell you about the Raffles for which there are going to be at least three rounds.

For the Wee Knits Raffle (in which we had 82 entries from 22 knitters playing), the First Round Raffle Winner is tammyknits!

tammyknits will be receiving a skein of yarn from

Artsy Gal , (who was also one of our sponsors.)  In addition, she’ll have her choice of pattern pdfs from
We hope that tammyknits will post a picture of her prize when she receives it.

The Small Knits Raffle was next.  We had 102 entries with 23 knitters playing.  The First Round Raffle Winner is escr, who will be choosing her favorite one of the Knit Picks lace samplers.

Next, we have Medium lace, with 89 tickets for 32 players.  The winner for the first Round Raffle here is wenat!

Wenat will be receiving two skeins of delicious Wagtail Yarns (100% fine kid mohair, 375 meters), courtesy of The Fairy GodKnitter.

and a copy of JoyKnits Shawls booklet .

And finally, (for now), for the Raffle for Socks/Mitts/Gloves (in which we had 51 entries from 18 knittes), our first round winner is marinemom! (This seems fitting somehow, she finished NINE pairs of socks this Season!!).  MarineMom will be receiving a skein of yarn and a pattern from Jen at

Wool Girl is also one of our sponsors with 10% off lace yarns.

We hope that Marinemom will share a picture of her prize when it arrives!

Soon to come… More Round One Raffle Winners!!!

Drum roll please.

Ladies and Gentlemen, as we promised before the Summer Season began,  today we announce the results of our Quantity Competitions.

Congratulations! to our winners!

We hope you’ll post about what you’ve bought with your winnings!

The judged awards will take a bit more time.  We seem to still be collecting nominations, and then we have to give our esteemed panel of judges time to consider the nominees.

While we wait for the Judge’s decisions….— RAFFLES.

And…. a chance to vote for your favorite of the Viewers Choice Nominees!

Oh…. finally, for the record,  Here are the final rankings for all competitors posting numbers for these Competitions:

Most Small Items

lynnzpickles 2 (plus many started projects)
vicki 4
birgi t  6
Marinemom  10
nolaboard  12

Yardage Competition

KnatteringKnitter 1000
textilejunkie  1412
Melfina the Blue 1419
alittlefuzzy 1428
kcatt79  2000
escr 2267
yarnpro 2560
birgit 3680
sligo 5260
tinker  6893
littlelena 8246
thislittlepiggyknits 11,855

Ok, finally…here’s the picture of the bag I made to be a prize.  Hopefully, soon I’ll actually post a picture of some lace knitting!!  :)

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/amyknitts/2823433288/” title=”sol donation bag by amyknittsnow, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3076/2823433288_c554cd0938.jpg” width=”375″ height=”500″ alt=”sol donation bag” /></a>