And the winners are....

Well, actually the big winner was me! I was overwhelmed by the number of entries and all of the fantastic advice. When I decided to do a contest I figured 40 entries was a good target. When the number of comments reached 50 I was astounded....and the advice kept coming and coming.

By this morning at 8am (the closing time) I'd received 131 comments or 129 entries (1 of the comments was an update, the other a duplicate). 129 entries!! Gadzooks! I had so many entries that I decided to introduce a 4th mini contest for regular commenters to even out everyone's chances.

I printed out the comments, cut them up, folded them so I couldn't see the names and then roped in the firm's head of audit (who also happens to be The Caked Crusader) to oversee the draw process.

The winners were randomly selected from this pile of entries.

First I drew the Squishy Yarn for All winner who was Catiebell. Catiebell is a first time commenter and her advice to remember to separate your reds from the rest of your laundry is one we've all probably needed (but not used) at least once.

The second draw was the Come Out of the Closet draw and Helenlam was the winner this time. Her advice to read the whole pattern before casting on is definitely solid -- I can't tell you how many times I've stopped reading a pattern before the critical words 'at the same time'. Much frogging and words a lady shouldn't say while knitting ensue.

I do have to big up the first time commenters here -- your comments were so kind and I'm amazed to find so many of you out there. I hope maybe now that you've broken the ice you might be tempted to comment from time to time -- but even if you don't thanks so much for dropping by!

Clarabelle was the winner of the impromptu draw (aka the I Need to Give Something Nice to One of my Regular Commenters so I'm Adding Another Contest draw). (Not the snappiest name but it'll do.) Clarabelle offered up a few pieces of advice (she's an over achiever), including a few words of wisdom from Mick Jagger about getting what I need even if I don't get what I want.

The final draw was Friends and Family and it embarasses me somewhat to include this photo of the HUGE number of Friends and Family entrants.

Ahem.

Anyway - from that select group I drew Shirl's entry. She had found a short BAFTA nominated film for me called Knitting a Love Song. It's a sweet little film about high school and the power of knitting and if you have 14 minutes I recommend a viewing. (You can view it via the above link or on Youtube.)

But wait there's more

....and if all of that wasn't enough I decided long ago that my 1000th commenter would get a prize. I hadn't actually expected to reach it this soon, but the crazy response to the contest took us racing towards that magic number and over the weekend Batty posted the 1000th comment. To celebrate I'll be sending her a little something as well.

If you lucky winners could send me an email: thingssoolikes at googlemail dot com with your postal address I'll get the squishy loot off to you as soon as possible.