The Christmas Raffle...

Once again, my friend Helen and I organised the K4BN Christmas Raffle. We run 2 raffles per year as a way to raise funds which are mainly used  to buy toiletries for the hygiene packs the group hands out to the needy and of course some funds are used to buy yarn.

Our job is made easier by the generosity of members and their family and friends; firstly they donate prizes and secondly, they buy tickets themselves and sell a lot to friends and family! :-)

Once again this year we had a wonderful range of prizes; we particularly asked for gift cards to ease the costs involved in posting prizes to winners who live outside of Brisbane. We were given gift cards to raffle worth a total of $920...pretty good eh? 

And we had other lovely prizes including a number of beautiful handcrafted items...

Helen and I share the job of organising the raffle...I do the 'advertising' and keeping the prize list up to date, on both the Facebook page as well as in the Yahoo group. Helen wraps prizes and makes beautiful labels for every prize. She also did our checklists this time. 

Beautifully wrapped prize...

Labels designed and printed by Helen...

Last Monday was the day that the raffle was drawn; we had 38 prizes! These...

And all those gift cards too...

Group members had sold/bought lots of tickets!!

We had some help with the draw...here's Deb assisting Helen...

The smaller container has the names and numbers of all the prizes written on little cards...draw one prize name and then a ticket butt to find the winner of that prize...38 times.

Afterwards Helen rang the winners to give them the good news and to thank them for their support...so lovely! 

And how much did we raise? Our best effort ever! We raised $1600!!! A wonderful effort from everyone. 

Right place, right time??

In a Mothers Day raffle this year, I was lucky enough to win a Spotlight Gift Card for $25. 

(Spotlight is a large chain of stores that sell a large range of craft supplies,yarns, haberdashery, fabrics, party supplies, homewares, manchester items etc) 

I had no real plans of how I was going to spend it until a few weeks ago. I went to my local Spotlight store to get  a Sewline Glue Pen. The store had no glue pens but I noticed some interesting polar fleece. I took a photo with my phone and vowed to come back next day with my gift card to buy some.

And so I did. I also had a good look at the other fabrics in the same pile of rolls. I fell in love with 2 other ones as well. Now the signs said the polar fleece fabrics were 40% off marked price. Each of the 3 fabrics were a different price with the gorgeous 'polar bear' one being the most expensive at $18.99 a metre. The quandary...I didn't need the fabrics, I only wanted them. My $25 card would have to be supplemented if I bought some of each...undeterred, I took all 3 to the cutting counter and asked how much each would be with the discount of 40%. Even though each roll was marked with a different price, somehow the register worked out that ALL were $4 per metre. So....

I bought the end of the roll (just over 2m) of this one...from a distance it really does look like crocheted granny squares! 

2 metres of this one...I've always loved Noah's Ark !

And 2 metres of this lovely, soft and thick fleecy...

And all this came to $25.60...so it only cost me the extra 60 cents!!! 

So some baby blankets' sewing coming up! 

A case of being in the 'right place, at the right time'!