A winner!

Congratulations to StephCat, who just won the gift certificate contest! Thanks to everybody for participating. I am slowly (very slowly) going through everyone's comments, visiting your blogs or dropping you emails, and enjoying all your thoughts. Thank you so much for saying hello. Some of you are old friends--for instance, we spun together in a guild in North Carolina 8 years ago...and others are new acquaintances I am meeting via the internet. It has been delightful to hear from everyone. Please keep it up when you might have something to say via comment. I love hearing back when I post.

The professor took this photo of our house in the snow as he was out shovelling. It's supposed to snow again tomorrow, so there will be more white stuff to come!

You may wonder how I chose the winner for the blog comment contest. Well, the truth is that this time, I had the professor do it with the Random integer program online. I used to do it myself, but well, it's a funny story. When you add my looney toons, anti-histamine addled brain into the mix, well, I set it up (1-21=the total number of comments, 1=winner), and then it chose a number. Wow, I said! That was fun. Then I did it again. I chose another number. And again. Then, by the time I had 3 numbers, I realized I no longer had one winner...and if I did, the one winner wouldn't be random. I would have chosen 1 out of 3. In fact, I had forgotten the first number by the time I'd gotten to the third. This seemed funny, but then I realized, uhh, this is how come I'm not driving when I'm on this medicine... so I had my lovely husband do the hard work of being objective.

Luckily, the doctor has suggested I can reduce my dosage and stop taking this medicine in December, if all is well. That is probably good. In the meanwhile, I might go back to entertaining myself with random numbers. Apparently that's all it takes. :) (yes, I'm easily affected by medicines...)

the un-holiday contest!

Well, Passover is now over. The holiday lasts 7-8 days, depending on one's traditions. Both the professor and I are in recovery...last night we went out to "break the bread fast" and enjoy pasta and other lovely bread products with a bunch of new friends. (during Passover you avoid bread, grains and anything that rises with yeast to remember that when the Israelites escaped from Egypt, they didn't have time to let bread rise.)

We're in recovery because this big, friendly raucous dinner out started at 8:30, after sundown, and we didn't get home or to sleep until after midnight. We're usually eating during around 6pm and asleep by, say 10:30. So, even though today is just a regular work day--no holiday anymore--I'm totally tired out!

When I was a kid, occasionally we had to blow out holiday candles (for the Sabbath or another holiday) for safety's sake before leaving the house or going to sleep. My grandmother-now 94, btw--always encouraged us to blow out the two candles by saying "PURIM! PASSOVER!" Maybe the P sound made the candles go out faster? It's something I still think about sometimes as I loved being the kid chosen to blow out those candles with the names of two happy holidays! Anyhow, reflecting on this made me realize that Purim (5 weeks before Passover) has long ago passed without me mentioning this great contest opportunity.

The kind editor of Living Crafts Magazine would like to give away one free subscription (starting with this issue, the one where my design is on the cover). So, we're having a contest here--just because!

If you'd like to enter to win a subscription to Living Crafts Magazine, please leave a comment at the end of this post. Make sure you also include a way for me to contact you --via your blog or email or some sort of smoke signal. It's also useful to include your name.

I will draw the winner randomly on Sunday, April 11th, but if you wouldn't mind, I'm wondering if you could answer this question as well....

How long have you been reading this blog? (no penalties for new readers, I promise!)

More information about weaving, knitting, and other stories coming up in my next post...

Winners

Before I say anything else, I've got to mention that there is still one outstanding pile of "well-traveled" yarn around here. Poor Mickey, I'm sorry, I never heard from you so we are trying this again. I returned to Random.org, and k8lh, you are a winner! The best of this is I think I know how to reach you (I know k8lh in real life!) so this should be easy this time. K8lh, darling, can you drop me a line? If I don't hear from you in a day or two, I'll be bugging you!

Now, on to other topics...like, Have You Seen This Amazing Review?! Ok, I can't lie, when I woke up this morning and saw all the emails, I thought, "uh oh. They've found me out. There are a lot of emails here. What did I do wrong? It could be bad..." But it wasn't! It was all wonderful stuff, congratulatory emails about this fabulous book review. I am so happy. Thank you, thank you. I'm pretty excited to know folks like the book. That much.

Yesterday I had a bit of a slow day and decided to wash some skeins of handspun I had lying around. I thought, gee, haven't been spinning much, no big deal...and then I found I was washing 7 skeins of yarn. Wow, they pile up when I'm not paying attention! Three large skeins of cream colored Romney (2 ply, lofty heavy worsted weight), 2 skeins plus a sample spindle skein of gray and brown Shetland--larger skeins spun on my great wheel (2 ply, sportweight), and one skein of 2 ply gray Romney. Yummy--and now clean--stuff!

I'm off to take a walk in the sunshine with my spring-crazed dogs and enjoy the excitement of a good review. In the meanwhile, here's a photo of a cherished young relative and the professor. They spent some time learning to catch butterflies together last weekend. (Note: the professor was the butterfly; guess who had to catch him!)

And the winners are...

Wooohoooo! (can we have some cheering?!) There are 4 (that's it, FOUR!) winners of today's lovely yarn prizes, part of the blog tour and well traveled yarn contest. These yarns will be winging their way to:
Mickey
ikkinlala
Perry
CardiLover


If you're one of the winners, I am going to try to track you down. I have leads on ikkinlala and Perry...and I'll leave a note on your blog, CardiLover. If any of you are reading this, please drop me a line in the comments and/or email me at joanne AT joanneseiff DOT com.

Also, if you're very partial to one batch of yarn, let me know. There may be something I can do about that. :)

Details on this contest:
I printed out all the comments and crossed off any duplicate posts. (one entry per person, please!) Then, I used an online Random Number Generator to choose these winners....

If, for some reason, I haven't gotten in touch with everybody by Wednesday, April 15, I will draw an additional name and that person will be a winner...so there's still a chance it could be you!

Thanks so much for joining me in the blogtour excitement. We travelled home last night and are looking forward to a fine re-entry of laundry, grocery shopping (for eggs, potatoes, and other Passover necessities), and other household delights. If we have luck, the clear weather will hold until our laundry dries on the line and we'll be all ready (not quite) for another workweek tomorrow.

By the way, if you haven't managed to win a copy of Fiber Gathering on the tour, remember that Amazon (click on that book title to the right of this post) and Knit Picks both have discounted prices on it. If you happen to live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, there will be books to purchase next weekend at the Southern Kentucky bookfest. I'll be there and signing them, too--if you let me!

What's next?

The blog tour continues!

Terri and I share many things in common, but one of our mutual fiber addictions is Jo Sharp DK wool yarn. Wander over to her blog today, read a very moving post about festivals and why they are meaningful AND win some lovely yarn if you choose to enter her contest. (think of a joke. We could all use one!)

Yesterday, Cathy's post surprised me. Many of the designers who contributed to Fiber Gathering are friends. We talked in depth about their projects...but in Cathy's case, I never knew that her crocheted sock pattern came from a desire to make something for her dad. Sometimes we need a blog tour to find out wonderful and private details about what makes our needlework meaningful.

Tomorrow the tour heads to Chrissy's blog--and she's another designer who inspires me!

Meanwhile, the professor went out to our yard yesterday (our backyard, in downtown Bowling Green, 1/2 mile from a university and a 1/2 mile from downtown) and he flushed a wild turkey. A wild turkey hen was hanging out in our yard. I don't know who was more surprised--the turkey or my husband! I'm beginning to think that the turkey is his totem animal or something. Stay tuned for his post on Tuesday, April 7th. My professor will talk about how the photography worked for the book, right down to what kind of cameras he uses. (Yes, I suspect he'll even talk about turkeys.)

Remember, my blog tour CONTEST to win spring time yarn for a project or two is still happening. Please don't hesitate to pop over to that post, leave a comment, and win some yarn! (right now odds are pretty good; with four batches of yarn and only 19 comments...why not leave a comment and give yourself a chance to win!)

Thanks for taking a tour with us!
PS: You can leave a comment here if you'd just like to say something but not be entered in the contest. It's ok. Really. I love to hear from you even if you don't want more yarn. :)

more contests!

Psst! Hey you. (yes you, stop looking over your shoulder...) Have you been to my friend Rosemary's blog yet today? She's designed a beautiful shawl called Evergreen. It's available for free (if you read her post, you'll get the link to that.) Better yet, enter her contest, and you'll possibly win a copy of Fiber Gathering!

Tomorrow, stay tuned for an interview on Donna Druchunas' blog. Donna was the tech editor for the book, and a good friend. She's been asking me all sorts of searching questions. Find out more tomorrow on the blog tour!

Remember, keep commenting on what you've learned at this entry to win enough yarn for a spring project!

Blog Tour & Contest!!

This is it! I'm launching day 1 of the first ever Fiber Gathering Designers' Blog Tour. I'm excited, because the designers for this book are fascinating people, with lots of interesting information, questions, and ideas to offer us. Some will be posting about their work, others will be interviewing me. The photographer (aka the professor) and the tech editor will be along for the ride as well. Check out all the links just to the right of this post. Kim Guzman's up tomorrow, April 1st, no foolin'!

This first post is about "the ride." The journey to write a book is a long one. I started thinking about a festivals book in June 2006. Physically, the journey required the photographer and me to travel thousands of miles in one festival season to go to something like 12 different fiber events. We were lucky in the practical sense; we had a few late planes, but no complete travel disasters. We were also lucky in a metaphoric one--we enjoyed (and even survived) the journey.

Doing a project at home--a knitting, crochet, dyeing, rughooking, weaving, spinning project-- is also a journey. We put our life experiences into the works of our hands. We carry around emotions, sensations, and experience and pour it out into our creative endeavor.

In a time of recession, not everyone can swing a trip to a festival. However, we can all take a trip in our imagination. Make a cup of tea, curl up in your favorite armchair, and grab a copy of Fiber Gathering for the trip. Put your computer nearby, so you can read every one of these fabulous entries over the next few days.

CONTEST!

You may notice that this post is peppered with yarn in springtime colors. There's a journey theme here too, through thick and thin:

- 4 skeins of the Tivoli Splendour yarn (bulky, soft blend of fuschias) that I bought in Dublin, Ireland in 2005.

-Three skeins of Noro Shikisai, made in Japan, but sent to me from a friend in England.

-Two skeins of Panda Soy sock yarn, from Crystal Palace Yarns in California...long ago, I visited the old Crystal Palace retail store in Berkeley before the company went wholesale only. It was indeed a yarn palace!

-One skein of Classic Elite Yarns' Silky Alpaca Lace, from a recent learning "journey" I made at home with laceweight yarns.

Please leave a comment at the end of the post and tell me one positive thing that you learned, that interested you, or that you loved from this blog tour experience.

At the close of the blog tour, I will enter all the comments (but I'll only enter each person once!) into a contest to win these yarns. The contest winners will be drawn at random. There are four different batches of yarn to win, so there will be lots of opportunities to enhance your travel experience and your stash adventures through this tour. Watch my blog after the blog tour ends to find out if you won, and to make arrangments to have your yarn sent to you!

I look forward to hearing from you! Thanks for coming along for the ride. Thanks for being such an important part of Fiber Gathering, our rich fiber arts community.