Saturday, April 25, 2009

Contest winner announced

WOW!! After reading all those wonderful comments, I'm feeling pretty special! Thank you for all the nice compliments and your continued support. Also, as promised, today we find out who won the book, Tiny Yarn Animals. The contest officially closed at midnight last night with a total of forty-five comments to Win this book! The comments were numbered in the order in which they were received as follows:
  1. Jenni J
  2. Mari
  3. Scarlett a.k.a. kittyred
  4. AngelaJ
  5. Robin McCoy
  6. Jen Spilker
  7. kelly
  8. Deeners
  9. wellie
  10. MARIA EUGENIA
  11. Tiffany aka: mieljolie
  12. Bethany @ Gettin' It Pegged
  13. westie-mom
  14. Stacie
  15. guppygirl
  16. jpirkle
  17. Angelbeader a.k.a Mari
  18. Just Me
  19. LindaJ
  20. Michele
  21. Kelly Croasmum
  22. Angel
  23. Laura
  24. Marlys
  25. karmicraft
  26. Renee
  27. MELINDA
  28. Nel
  29. Rayann
  30. KathrynJB
  31. Helen J.
  32. Anonymous
  33. Andrea
  34. sevenstars7
  35. Karen
  36. dlandlrd
  37. keeper
  38. Aurora
  39. wormlynn
  40. Laura
  41. Dianne Carroll
  42. Linda M
  43. LoomLady June
  44. nugatorytm
  45. Elizabeth S.
After assigning numbers to each comment, I went to Randomizer.org and had it to select two numbers out of the 45 comments. The first number is the winner and the second number is the alternate. The following is a screen shot of the winning numbers showing the winner as number 15 and the alternate as number 17:


Congratulations number 15, guppygirl! You have until April 27, 2009 to claim your prize. If I do not hear from guppygirl by April 27th, the prize will go to number 17, Angelbeader aka Mari. Guppygirl, please contact me to claim your prize!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Win this book!

The Loom Lore blog began it's journey on Thanksgiving, 2006, but I somehow never remembered to host a blogiversary. Since my birthday is April 15th, the day we Americans show our love by paying income tax (lovely day for a birthday, huh?), I decided to bring a little joy into this otherwise depressing day by having a little blog contest just to celebrate two and a half years of sporadic blogging.

Being a certified bibliophile who just happens to love loom knitting, I thought I would turn my recent mistake into my blog readers' good fortune. When I'm buying books, I sometimes forget that I already have one just like it at home and end up with duplicate copies of a title. That is just what I did when I ordered Tiny Yarn Animals by Tamie Snow (click on the title to read a description of the book from Amazon). All the best amigurumi patterns available seem to be crocheted; however, even though the patterns in Snow's book are crocheted, loom knitters can get plenty of inspiration from this book!

OK, this is how the contest works:
  1. Leave a comment to this post telling me which projects from Loom Lore you have enjoyed the most and what types of projects you would like to see included in the future. This will count as an entry. Only one entry per person please. Also, if you are an Anonymous commenter, please include your name at the end of your comment so I'll know who you are in case you win.
  2. At the end of the contest, each comment to the "Win this book" post will be assigned a number in the order they are received. One winner and an alternate will be selected using Randomizer.org based on the total number of comments listed to the contest post.
  3. The contest begins on April 15, 2009 and ends on midnight April 24, 2009. The winner will be announced on April 25, 2009.
  4. The winner will need to contact me with mailing information for their prize delivery at my email address located in the Loom Lore About Me page within 48 hours of the announcement notification. If I do not hear from the first winner by the April 27th deadline, the alternate will be declared the winner. The same procedure will be followed until we have a final winner.
  5. The contest is open to all Loom Lore readers, both domestic and international.
Best of luck and thank you for putting up with me for the past two & a half years! Loom knitters rule!!

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Fireman to the rescue

My grandson is happy - I finally finished his fireman. He is so obsessed with firemen & firetrucks that the entrance to the library off from the living room has become a fire station. A table and a floor lamp with a brass pole near the library doorway is now the station house. Every night he places three little firemen face down (one on a tissue box, one on the DVD remote and the other on the TV satellite remote) so they can slide down the lamp pole and head for the firetrucks in case of an emergency. When he's not battling a blaze at his sister's dollhouse, he's watching his "Lights & Ladders" DVD. Sometimes I think if I hear that DVD one more time I'll scream.
As you might have guessed, when I started making the little loomy amigurumis, I immediately got a request for a fireman so I immediately started designing one for my very special customer. My loomy arigurumi fireman was made very similar to the leprechaun, but with a few modifications. The following looms were used for this project:
Two strands of Red Heart Super Saver yarn were use for everything except Vanna's Choice in beige for the head. The fireman accidentally ended up a bit taller (6.5 inches) than the 4.5 inch leprechaun due to several yarn color changes. Also, I decided to put arms on this one. However, after he was finished my grandson immediately asked, "Where are his legs?" I tried to explain to him that he was made that way so he could stand in the firetruck bucket at the end of the ladder (see photo above). He replied that the fireman would have problems fighting fires, so I guess the next one will have to have legs. There's always a critic in every crowd.
The hat posed the greatest challenge on this little fellow, since the back of the brim is elongated from the rest of the hat. To meet this challenge, I cast a 4-stitch I-cord circle onto 18 pegs of the 10" Knifty Knitter long loom and used the Knifty Knitter loom clips to decrease along with a couple of short rows toward the back of the hat. After that, I finished the hat as usual on 14 pegs and ended with a gathered bind off at the top. You can see that the shaping on the back brim worked rather well in the above side view photo.

Other finishing details included button eyes, an embroidered mouth and felt trim on the hat and shirt collar. This is so habit forming that I can't wait to start on my next little project.

Monday, April 06, 2009

My first awards

My first two awards have recently been presented to this blog, so I figure I better get crackin' and post them before they fall into the crevasses of time. The crevasses of my time are becoming pretty full with all things momentarily put aside or completely forgotten - a habit that I must break.
The first award, KreativBlogger Award, was presented to Loom Lore back in March for "Great Patterns for Loom Knitting" by Tiffany at Mini Mischief. (Tiffany shares my passion for all things small. ) Thank you, Tiffany, for this wonderful award.

The rules of this award are to list seven things I love and then pass it on to another seven KreativBloggers. OK, here are seven things I love:
  1. Family & friends
  2. My dogs
  3. Home
  4. Books
  5. Yarn, looms, gourds & crafts
  6. Travel
  7. Quiet moments
The following seven blogs are among some of the most "creative bloggers" I know. They are innovative in many different ways and share their creative lives through their blogs. In doing this, they have made this world a brighter place to live. Here are my nominations for the KreativBlogger Award:
  1. My Heart Exposed
  2. Gettin' It Pegged
  3. Hankering for Yarn
  4. A Knifty Knitter Journal
  5. Rockin' the Loom
  6. Guppygirl
  7. Made by Telaine
The second award is the PROXIMITY Award. Robin from Rockin' the Loom has graciously bestowed this award to Loom Lore. This is Robin's criteria for nominating Loom Lore for the PROXIMITY Award:
"Brenda is a very busy grandma! But she still has time to make the cutest quickie projects and her patterns are always very clear and easy to read. She developed the ‘drawstring cast on’ for the looms and it is a very useful technique that I have used a lot. :) Brenda may not have much time to blog like she used to, since her granddaughter moved in, but she still helps out others when she can. She’s pretty special!" Thank you Robin, I think you are pretty special, too.

The PROXIMITY Award is defined as follows:
“This blog invests and believes in PROXIMITY-nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers!” With this definition in mind, I am nominating the following eight blogs for the PROXIMITY Award:
  1. Y-2K Hippie
  2. Canadian Crafter
  3. Twitchy Fingers
  4. Whimsy Kitty
  5. Knitting Without Needles
  6. Creative KJ's Corner
  7. Loom Knitting and Something Else
  8. Cheryl's Loom & Crochet Projects
Please check out all of the wonderful blogs that have been nominated for both awards. Thank you ladies for sharing your time and talent with everyone.