...for a quickie raffle.

Here's the deal. This weekend, I'm participating in a charity spelling bee: The Spirited Spell-Off Spectacle. Oh yes, a spelling bee. It's a team spelling bee with my twin sister Cathy and my friend Chip. The event is a fundraiser for the Athens Clarke Literacy Council. They promote and support adult literacy in Athens, Georgia, where I live.

As a former English major and a big nerd, I am REALLY excited about being a spelling bee. (I may possibly still have all my spelling bee trophies from grade school.) My equally nerdy sister, who is a high school English teacher, is also really excited. Our team (The Triplets) has been vigorously training for this event.

However, even the best spellers will sometimes meet a word that they can't spell correctly....( For example: 'bouillon'. Eighth grade. Archdiocesan spelling bee. Not that I'm bitter.)

That's where the raffle comes in!

At this team spelling bee, the six teams that raise the most money for the Athens Clarke Literacy Council are granted a mulligan, which means you can miss one word and still stay in the competition. So, we've been raising money to support our team. Any amount you can afford will help us, and it all goes to a great cause - promoting and supporting adult literacy.

So, here's what I'm thinking. Every $5.00 donation will get your name in a drawing. At the end of the raffle, I'll randomly pick a name, and I'll knit the winner a pair of socks in your favorite colors. All the money donated will go directly to the Athens Clarke Literacy Council.

That's it! Wouldn't you love a pair of handknitted socks that you don't even have to knit? If so, just click the button below and buy yourself a raffle ticket.

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THANK YOU SO MUCH for all your donations! I'll post about the bee and the raffle winner on Sunday!
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(The paypal link will say chip@athenstown.com - that's us!) Once you've donated, please send an email at carrieokeknits@gmail.com and let me know your name, email address, and the amount of your donation. The raffle will be open until Saturday morning at 9:00 am EST.

Thanks for letting me use my blog for shameless spelling bee fundraising.

Spelling Nerds!

Posted by Carrieoke at 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

It's been two weeks since my last post. I think about posting all the time - things I want to say, pictures I want to put up, hilarious anecdotes that I want to share. Har. and then I have to, like, work.and study. and sleep. I really, really want to post more for a totally selfish reason: I like to look back at my posts and remember what I was doing a year ago. When I only post twice a month, it's not really a good picture of what was going on. I used to post like every other day. Geez.

So, that's my story about how I want to post more. The End.

Jacob and I just got back from a park - the Athens Astronomical Society set up some frickin' huge telescopes and we watched the lunar eclipse. It was fabulous. One of the telescopes was so huge that you could actually hold your camera up to it and take a really nice picture of the eclipse.

We forgot our cameras. D'oh! But Jacob had his iPhone, so we have one kinda okay picture from that.

Eclipse.

Hooray! The moon was a really pretty tea color. They also had a telescope on Saturn, which totally looked like a sticker someone had slapped on the end of the telescope. Very cool.

In others news, my progress on the Drops sweater has sort of stalled. The sleeves are bothering me, and I don't feel like figuring out how to fix them. There are tons of ends to weave in, and I haven't picked out buttons. Harumph. I think I'm going to let it sit for a little while and come back to it. I've been working steadily on Jacob's sock, bur I think it's time for a new project.

so, what to knit? I want to make something I can wear to work. And I want to make something that's with worsted weight (or thinner) yarn. It also needs to be not 100% wool, because it's just not a realistic fiber for Georgia.

I really love the Minimalist Cardigan in the Fall 2007 Interweave - [ Ravelry link ], but hi, the body is moss stitch. I don't know if I can handle an entirely moss stitch sweater. I think I would wear the crap out of it, though. hmm.....need to check the stash.

Any suggestions for a new spring-y knit?

I've been posting to Flickr lots - I'm doing 365, which means I post a picture of myself every day for 365 days. I started on January 2, so even in this leap year, it's still 365. Here's today's:

Lunchy.

Things I've learned so far:
1. Natural light is good.
2. Flash, not so much, usually.
3. I have wrinkles around my eyes.
4. I know nothing about how cameras work, or taking good pictures.

But, I guess that's why I'm doing 365, right? To learn how to take better pictures?

Posted by Carrieoke at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (32)

Lots of primaries today! I voted before work this morning.

I'm rocking my sticker.

This weekend was fun filled. Including, but not limited to, new hair fun:

Let's try red for a while.

I got it cut and colored, and I'm loving both. It is super red, which I love, but was a little bit of a shock at first. It's exactly what I asked for, but I haven't seen myself with red hair in a while. Jacob is still getting used to it.

Other weekend fun times? Eating chili and watching the Super Bowl with my family:

Yes, that is Cathy. Not a floating head.

and coming very, very close to finishing the never-ending Drops sweater. Ya know, the one that knits up SO quickly. Gah. Here's where I am:

Almost.

So here's my question. I think I only have enough yarn to make the sleeves that length (the one in the picture above), but I'm not loving what the double seed stitch is doing. It looks chunky and puffy and weird. What would be a good alternate for the double seed stitch? Carolyn suggested possibly keeping it stockinette but turning a hem, which I'm seriously considering. I just don't like the way it looks currently. The sleeve length is okay, but not the edging.

There have been exactly ZERO strips cut since I took that picture of myself cutting quilt strips. I'm going to try to dedicate sometime to my quilt this week, but school is eating up all my free time. well, school and bad television.

Posted by Carrieoke at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (31)