and the winner is...

Shari, congratulations! You've won a subscription to Living Crafts Magazine! I'll be emailing you as soon as I finish this post. Other contenders might wonder how I choose these things. I used to print out all the comments, cut them up so each comment was on a different scrap of paper, fold those up and put them into a large bowl. Then I made the professor choose the winner.

That was a lot of paper to waste, and I don't always have the professor around to do the drawing, so I now use one of the random number generators on the web instead. I put in 1-15 as my numbers, since one of the commenters didn't want a magazine. (even folks who weren't from North America were eligible for the prize) Then it popped up 14 and starting from the first comment and counting down--skipping those who didn't want a subscription--that's how I got our winner. Truly random. :)

Less random was the contest I had a couple of weeks ago to figure out a name for The Winnipegger scarf. I have now posted it on Ravelry for sale. Even if you're not on Ravelry, you can purchase it here. The winners have all been sent their free pattern already! It will also likely be available on my website sometime, too, but for now, Ravelry's the place to go shopping for a downloadable pdf if you're interested. (I hope you're interested!)

In other news, weaving has been going slowly, so no new warp for April as of yet. I did several roving rugs and I'm using the last of this warp on some curtain fabric. I'm thinking of making curtains for my kitchen with this.

Although you can't tell from the photo, I'm making a striped fabric. One stripe of weft is a cream colored wool yarn I got from the Scrap Exchange in Durham, North Carolina. (the warp is from there, too) Since I lived in Durham from 1998 to 2002, this stuff has been marinating in my stash a long time! The same stripe has bits of a nylon white ribbon from Sweden as an accent. I got this at a yarn swap in Winnipeg last summer. The other stripe uses the same cream colored nubby cotton as the warp. I'm hoping this stripe works as a more "see through" option so that hopefully some sunlight will shine through. If you've noticed--I haven't bought a thing yet that was particularly for weaving. It's all from my stash!

In the same vein, I went to the Artsjunktion in Winnipeg's Exchange district for the first time last week. This is a nonprofit venture much like the Scrap Exchange--its goal is to keep useful stuff out of the landfill! It's a great resource for artists, teachers, and crafters. I could not believe my luck. I found cotton yarn (a future warp?), colored cotton thread, several lengths of lovely wool fabric--great for weaving into rugs or sewing into something else, some spools of ribbon, some binding tape, and and....a brand new yellow summer dress in my size. Now, yellow doesn't look good on me, but I am not letting that get in the way.

Free is free...might as well make into something I'll use. One yellow empire waist dress went for a swim in a dye bath last Friday. I meant to shoot a photo, but it's already hanging in my closet!

I did pay for parking and donated some old records and $5 towards the rent of the warehouse space. That said, I felt a bit guilty taking away all this loot. One man's trash is most definitely another woman's treasure!

Is there a reuse depot for industrial and crafting discards in your area? How about a yarn swap in your guild/knitting group? I'm curious...please feel free to let me know or comment on something else below...