BEST foot forward - competition results

Thanks to the 8 people who put in estimates/guesstimates for the end-of-year competition; there was a good span of guesses, none of which were wildly off! I do really appreciate people putting in their entries, and commenting, and generally making me feel as if I'm not wittering madly into a void. And I've been stash-diving and am reluctantly parting with a couple of prize items...

On the number of projects knitted:
Actual number: 50
Best guess: 51, by Yvonne. Well done! I'll wait until I see you at IKL sometime - Thursday, maybe?


For anyone interested, and because I hadn't worked this out before, this breaks down as :
8 lace shawls/stoles/scarves
7 children's garments
7 pairs of socks
5 cowls
5 sweaters/cardigans
4 non-lace scarves
3 potholders (crochet!!)
3 washcloths
2 hats
1 baby blanket
1 bag
1 Christmas stocking
1 cushion
1 pair of mittens
1 tea cosy
and 0 partridges in pear trees, although I'm sure the extraordinarily clever Alan Dart has a pattern in development...

Yvonne wins two skeins of CTH Potluck Worsted (4 oz and 280 yards per skein; you'll have to work out what that is in British) in colour scheme Water.






On the metreage knitted up:
Actual figure: 21,120
Best guess: well, actually Yvonne got this one closest too with 21,000m (I'm beginning to think she's slipped some sort of monitoring apparatus into my knitting bag at some stage... that's only one ball of DK out, which is frankly just frightening).

However, I think she's the sort of nice, lovely, public-spirited person who would put her second winning raffle ticket back in the pot, so next closest is anonymous (and first) poster Rachel with 20,513m! I don't have a way to contact you, Rachel - so I'm hoping you're a regular reader. Please e-mail me at liz AT lizmarley DOT co DOT uk and send me your snail-mail address so I can get your prize to you.

For anyone interested; this averages out at 1760m/month; which is, according to Google (and don't you just love that you can put "1760m in miles" into Google and get an instant calculation?) 1.094 miles. I had a vague target for myself of a mile a month, because I was pretty close last year, but didn't calculate whether I'd reached it until the end of the year. My "worst" month was June with 845m and my "best" December with 2945m, but that's because I only count projects once they're finished, so it's all a bit random...

Rachel wins a scarf kit: 3 balls of Schoeller and Stahl's lovely Limbo in the blue/green colourway


and a PDF of my Helter Skelter scarf pattern (which isn't linked on Ravelry yet because I have yet to figure out the becoming-a-designer thing, but is proving very popular at I Knit London, who have been selling them pretty steadily for the last six months or so - I keep seeing people working on them and wearing them when I go to knit there, and it's lovely!).

And the other vital statistic for 2009:

Yarn knitted up this year: 7,659 grammes (equivalent of 153 50g balls; which is only 21g a day, but I'd refer you to the 8 lace shawls/scarves/stoles...).

I started counting up yarn acquired in the course of the year and gave up in mid-February.

However, with UK Knit Camp looming this year, I need to cut down, so I'm going to be counting yarn in as well as yarn out this year. Gifts and purchases will count as yarn in; but destashing and knitting up of yarn will count as yarn out... And I'm probably going to embarrass myself by posting a monthly total here... I shall, as ever, not be counting needles/magazines/books in that total, so IKL shouldn't suffer too badly...

And tomorrow, I vow to start blogging the Christmas Knitting (both given and received).