Did you win the giveaway?

I just mailed out today the goodies – Dog Pound Pals calendar, Knitter’s Gifts totebag, and Knitter’s Gift notebook  from the last giveaway but not all the winners have  responded to give me their mailing address and claim their prize.

I emailed privately; the winners were listed in a new year’s blog post; not much else I can do so this is the final warning.  Anyone I’ve gotten no response from, who has not contacted me by the end of the week, those items are mine mine all mine to do with as I choose.  No whining allowed if you haven’t been paying attention – I don’t want an email a month from now telling me you won something. 🙂

Knitter’s Gifts makers – are you ready for the next installment??  You are? heck that means I need to remember to write it up in the next couple of days. LOL I just thought of that today – that this weekend is more joining of things together (of course, not that I’m that far along because I still have blocks to make as usual).   January is really flying by for me – I need to get hopping and get a few more things done!

Happy New Year’s Eve

Wishing you a safe, healthy and happy 2015.  I will be spending the evening watching movies, knitting — nothing exciting or out of the ordinary — but a great way to ring in a new year.

And here’s the winner’s I promised to announce today.  Please email me privately with your full names/mailing addresses. My email is listed below my photo in the sidebar.

Winner of the Knitter’s Gifts notebook — Lisa in Alabama

Winners of the Knitter’s Gifts Totebags — Joanna Perry and Julie Hill McCluney

Winners of the Dog Pound Pals Calendars — Meloree10 and Lhanner

Congratulations to all.

Do you make “resolutions” for the new year.  I  can’t say that I really make resolutions.  I have more of an “ongoing work in progress” list that hopefully I made some progress on. 🙂  Each year brings new possibilities and challenges.  Hopefully your new year is full of wonderful possibilities and no challenge that is too challenging.

Speaking of Challenges — you may have noticed the button in the sidebar that looks like this

 Look at all those lovely yarns.  No that is not actually a picture of my stash.  But it is representative of it.  Every time I go looking through the storage containers I find so many lovely colors that make me thing – “I really need to make something with that!”

Well this is the year I truly concentrate on just that — making something with many of the lovelies in my stash.  I have several sweaters on my “really want to make list” and yarn waiting in the stash.  My last order of 2014 has arrived from Miss Babs and the purple color is so pretty I’m anxious to put it to use but have a couple projects I must complete first. There are various scarfs, wraps and socks on needles that need to be finished.  I didn’t complete a single pair of socks in all of 2014 — I may have added one or two single socks but not a completed pair.  I need to remedy that.     So I will update that page with photos of finished projects and I’ll be tracking the yarn amounts knit.  And I plan to pull some of that yarn to put my loom to work this winter too.

I hope to spend more time actually sewing/quilting this year since last year I did not get to as much as I had hoped, and get some projects that have been languishing out of the closet and get them finished up.  So I’ll be pulling “old friends” out of storage:  swap blocks to make into tops, blocks to be finished and set together, or borders to add, or layer and get it quilted.   As I was searching for a specific photo on the computer I kept scrolling past quilt projects in various stages thinking – oh I love that one – I need to finish it.  Some have languished too long (like one that has the year I was working on it appliqued oh so lovely at the bottom of the border — hmmmm, yep its many years later and it still is not quilted).

My plan is to start going through a storage container and organize them a bit – they are sort of grouped by swap blocks, other works in progress, and quilt tops to be quilted.  I know there are tops I don’t care for so honestly I know they would never get quilted by me but someone else may love them, same with blocks – I keep moving some of them about -left over from projects or ones I’ve long forgotten what I was going to do with them.    So a bit of cleanout/organization/donation and then prioritize what I want to work on first.

If there is one less storage tub of quilting “stuff” and one less storage tub of yarn by the end of 2015, then I will have done very well indeed!

Of course hopefully there will be one more quilt top to add to the “must quilt” list by the end of the weekend. 🙂

I spent today writing up the last of the Mystery Clues – I forgot how long it takes to do that – and I just realized it’s nearly 3:30 p.m. and no one has brought me breakfast nor lunch!  Coffee will only get me so far.  Now to figure out if I want breakfast, lunch, dinner — or all of the above!  I do know that there’s some bananas on my counter just asking to be made into banana bread so may do a bit of baking too.

 

Final Giveaways for DPPAS and Knitter’s Gifts

I’ve cleared out my box of goodies and I still have some giveaway goodies for the 2014 BOM projects.   There are still two large Dog Pound Pals 2015 calendars.

 

 

 

 And there are still two Knitter’s Gift tote bags  as well as one blank notebook.  So time to clean out the final items so I can get them mailed out next week oops – not next week, I’m still on vacation so they’ll be mailed after first of the year when I return to work.

How can you be eligible to win these items??  Glad you asked.

(1)  to win a chance at the Knitter’s gift blank notebook — all you have to do is live in the US and leave a comment on this blog post.  Sorry to the non-US residents but postage would cost more than the actual notebook cost which would be a bit silly.

(2) to win the Knitter’s Gifts, you must have participated in that project, not won a tote bag previously (I have a list) and upload your photos of your blocks to the Justquiltin Flickr group.  You can load multiple photos for chances to win but each photo must contain a different month’s blocks that you haven’t posted previously and/or the larger section we have assembled  to date.  (well some of you have assembled it, I still need to play catch up).

(3) to be eligible to win the Dog Pound Pals calendars you must be a participant in that project, not have won any giveaways in connection with that project previously, and leave a comment on our DPPAS page (not this blog post).  Any comment left prior to 12/27/14 on the DPPAS page  is not eligible to be included for the drawing.  I’ll just use comments posted between today and the day I award the goodies.

Winners will be posted on New Year’s Eve.     UPDATED – 12/31/14 – WINNER’S ANNOUNCED – CHECK TO SEE IF YOU WON

Calendar giveaway winners

    I forgot to pick the winners on Saturday for the DPPAS calendar give aways.  What can I say – I was busy sewing and it totally slipped my mind.

Anyway…the lucky winners for this round are:

Kaye Jeffrey

Theresa Litz

Ella Roof

Judith Higgins and

RFlint62.

Congratulations!  Please email me your full name and mailing addresses.

Dog Pound Plans Adoption Society Block loaded and giveaway

For anyone who was wondering …. where the heck is the DPPAS BOM installment that should have been posted the first Saturday of the month — which yes, was yesterday — well it’s on the DPPAS page now.  I totally spaced it out yesterday.    So you can now download the instructions.  And, in those instructions you’ll see that I still have a stack of these oh so adorable (not that I’m biased or anything)  Dog Pound Pal Adoption Society calendars for 2015 – each month showcasing a different one of the block designs we are using.  They need to find a new home before 2015 starts — and it’s quickly sneaking up on me!!

 

The larger calendar (to hang on a wall) has the images at left and then the lower photo is the smaller calendar  the top part folds into another section so it stands up on a desk or counter (like the kinds insurance agents always used to give out) 😉

Just leave a comment on this blog post and I’ll be drawing a bunch of names —  you have much better odds in winning! — so I can get them out in the mail.    I’ll be announcing the first batch of winners on Saturday, Nov. 8.  You must be participating in the DPPAS and not previously won any calendar in order to enter.

 

ETA  please add just one comment if you are a member of DPPAS to be entered in the giveaway.  If it doesn’t show up right away it’s simply gone into moderation and won’t show up until I approve it.

 

Socktoberfest Challenge results

 

   Although my own Socktoberfest socks have not progressed much beyond this last photo I took of them due to  sweater knitting mania — there are others who succeeded in the Socktoberfest Challenge and completed their pair of socks.

Here they are.

The winner of the Socks that Rocks Rainbow Reindeer yarn is Katie!  I’ve sent you an email.   Katie said this is only the second pair of socks she’s made.  Congratulations Katie!  And thank you three for  playing along on this challenge.  The weather here has turned to wooly sock wearing weather so its time for me to take them out of summer storage and fill my drawer back up with them so they are at the ready.

Katie basket weave rib soc

Mary Rs Ice Cube socks

PeggyGs gravel grid socks

Reminders………..giveaways

Until I saw photos in my email this morning, I totally wasn’t remembering today was November 1 – the deadline to get me your Socktoberfest sock photos to be entered for the drawing for your own hank of Socks That Rock Rainbow Reindeer.  The challenge was posted here and you can see the yarn color on that blog post.

Since I forgot to do my blog post yesterday as a reminder – you have until tomorrow Sunday) morning – at whatever time I decide to get on the computer – to send me your photo of your completed socks to be entered in the drawing. I’ll post the photos and winner at that time.  So far – I have Katie and Mary’s photos so they’ve got a 50-50 chance of winning and their socks turned out great.   I shall be just hanging my head in shame since I didn’t get my own socks finished yet…. but they will not linger in the “unfinished sock” bin — they are sitting next to my chair making me feel guilty for not finishing them yet.  But I had started a new sweater and if you are a knitter you know how a new project can be a bit obsessive..  I just cast off the back of it this morning. 🙂  But my socks will get finished – just a bit late – we had snow yesterday so I’ll be needing them soon. LOL

Also, reminder that I’ll be drawing the name of the  winner of the issue of the Quilts from 100 Blocks that has my Frozen Friends wallhanging in it tomorrow too.  So if you want your name entered, you need to just leave a comment on “the blog post announcing that giveaway.”

ETA:  I believe some of you are leaving comments on this blog post thinking you’re entered in the giveaway — the blog post announcing the giveaway is NOT this blog post – you need to go back a few days to find it and leave your comment there to be entered. 

And for those that won past giveaways – (in connection with Knitter’s Gifts BOM drawings, Dog Pound Pals calendars, and quilt naming drawings — look for them to be arriving shortly.  I finally got them all out in the mail yesterday when I unburied that corner of my desk so I’m caught up on all of them that have been awarded.

Also Spooktacular Halloween Block swappers should have (or will have soon) their swap blocks back.  They were mailed out earlier this week and I know at least some of them have already reached their homes.

We have a winner………

Okay – so if you’ve been reading along you know that I posted a little contest to try to come up with a name for this quilt pattern since I was having trouble coming up with one.

   There were lots of name ideas.  Many were similar to names I’ve given other patterns like City Streets, Cobbled Path, Bricks, various quilts with Garden in the name – not that I expect you to know what my quilt names have been – but I decided to stay away from those. It’s always so fun to find out what other people “see” that quilt as.  Lots of very inventive names.    But none were really talking to me.  🙂  Some were based on the colors I had used or the colors I plan for my next quit from this pattern t but for a project like this, were it would look good in so many varieties of fabrics from floral to solid to Asian inspired to holiday themed, I didn’t want a name that was tied to the colors shown.

Then, as I was looking at all my new lovely fabrics I got at The Loopy Ewe for my next (and larger) version of this quilt, I was mulling over which fabrics I wanted to mix and match with certain other ones.  And then it hit me, I think the perfect name for it is Mix ‘n Match!

And since the prize drawing is just random among all who left a comment, it doesn’t matter that I ended up coming up with my own name in the end.

So this time, to shake it up a bit, I decided I’d use the random LETTER generator (getting tired of numbers and having to count through all those comments) LOL and whoever had that random letter in the position where the commentor’s name (or email, or whatever you are identified as when leaving a comment – it shows up first above your comment) — so whoever, was the first person to leave a comment, starting in date order from earliest comment, with the Random Letter in their name, would be the winner. The letter was “B”.

   a charm packet of Moda “Wishes” that I included in my latest Box of Fun fabric order, will be going

  Congratulations Barbara! Thank you all for playing and sharing your name ideas.  Don’t forget the pattern will be presented on Labor Day Weekend!  I hope you’ll stitch along with me!

Giveaway status and Camp Loopy has opened!!!

First – the magazine giveaway winners announced yesterday — be sure to claim your magazine if you still want it.  The winners were

Judy D in WA, Paula Cox, Judy in OKC, Barbara Winkler, Fran Cummings, Judy S, Dorothy Munger, and Marie Sagers.

So far, Judy D, Marie Sagers, Judy in OKC and Dorothy Munger have contacted me.  Dorothy you still need to let me know what magazine you want.  Still waiting to hear from the rest of the winners next Saturday I’ll offer them to the rest of the ladies who signed up on that giveaway.   And so far, A, B and one of the E’s are gone.

 

And yes – Camp Loopy officially started at midnight and as I’m always up late – even more so on the weekends – I cast on my Ethel Shawl   in my lovely  Shalimar Wisteria yarn…..  and cast on and cast on and cast on….

You start out at the bottom edge so are casting on the longest edge but the lace pattern is so easy to memorize and I’m already contemplating making a CustomFit sweater and using that lace pattern on it – it would make the bottom of the sweater sort of scallopy but I have more than enough to keep me busy right now!   Despite the long rows, which will get shorter as I go and the beauty is altho shaping is done with  short rows, there is no wrap and turn or doublestitch – just a super simple way to avoid any holes – love it.  I didn’t bother to take any photos because it doesn’t look like much so far all scrunched up on my needles.

So midnight I cast on my Camp Loopy knitting project and this morning, I’ve already been busy in the sewing room, cutting my fabric strips for Camp Loopy – the fabric version. 🙂

Remember – this is the design I’m planning to make.

I have done a little more tweaking on the tree (but this is the old version in this image).  I’m going to wait until I get the rest of the quilt put together before making a final decision on the tree — just exactly how big I want it to be.  I also need to check on my supply of fusible since I’m just going to raw edge applique this tree in place.  After my tweaking on it, it will take 25 sheets of paper to print out the whole tree and tape it together to get the pattern!

So here’s the strips – 2-1/2″ wide.  Now to start cutting and sewing segments together.  If I don’t get distracted – or hear my shawl calling to me – I should be able to get the strip pieced background of this done in fairly short order.

I added a couple batiks from the stash in with the ones I bought for the challenge – the ones I added are (from left to right) – the 3rd one (which is actually the background I’m using on my Head to Toe – A Knitter’s Gifts quilt), and the 6th and 7th ones.  I’ve got one or two more blues I’m contemplating adding but we’ll see how things look as I get them up on the design wall – whether there’s the right amount of variety I want.

Magazine Giveaway / Auction quilts

Okay – remember last week’s giveaway offer of some magazines I was sent in error, and some duplicates I found of a couple 100 Blocks issues and the Quiltmaker Boxes and Bows issue which I had extra advance copies of ? Time to announce the winners.

Remember, it will be “first come, first serve” as to which magazine you end up with.  I have assigned a letter to each one  as you can see in the photo at left so when you send me your PRIVATE email with your full name, and mailing address, include the letters A B C D E in your email in the order of preference of magazine from first choice to last (remember my email address can always be found below my picture at the top of the blog).

Winners are:

Judy D in WA, Paula Cox, Judy in OKC, Barbara Winkler, Fran Cummings, Judy S, Dorothy Munger, and Marie Sagers.

Congratulations ladies.

 

It’s a lovely day outside here today.  I was outside before  7 a.m.  planting my little garden plot – three different types of bell peppers, five tomato plants, a row of red onions, and a cucumber plant.   Then I planted some dill in a pot and an extra tomato in another  and a pot of flowers that need sun – hopefully they’ll all  get enough sun sitting at one corner of the building where I put them at the edge of my patio.  Also two pots of various coleus for next to my door in the shade.    I still want to get a hanging basket for my patio and maybe flowers for another pot or two and I forgot to pick up lettuce seeds so may add some lettuce later.  But got the garden in before the rains that are possible nearly every day all this coming week and I didn’t want to have to be planting in a muddy garden!

Someone (yes I know I’m the only likely suspect) cluttered up my sewing table so I need to get things put away before it gets too out of hand.  There’s my Camp Loopy quilting project I’ll need to be working on next week. so I think a bit of cleaning is in order today.

My quilts are all finished for the Golf Outing Auction to benefit the Komen Fund.  These projects are all headed to the auction.