Wollmeise, Sea Silk, and more pretties cancer fundraiser raffle!

Last weekend, we lost an amazing man (the father of one of our best friends) to cancer. Bennie Yung was a gentle, cheerful man, and he touched the lives of thousands of people in his community and in Canada, asking nothing for himself, just the betterment of his community. The premier of BC gave him a tribute in the legislative assembly last week, and this weekend, family, friends, community leaders and politicians from all levels of government came together to celebrate his life.

My husband and I, like almost everyone else, have close family members and friends who have fought or are fighting cancer. My mom is a breast cancer survivor, and my husband's dad had surgery last year, and is getting monthly blood tests to find out if he's clear yet.

My husband is doing the Ride2Survive cancer fundraiser this summer, and I've promised to do some destashing in order to help him raise funds in support. It's a 400 km (almost 250 miles) bicycle ride, from Kelowna to Vancouver over 2 mountain passes. The kicker is that it's all done in one day. Yes, he's a little crazy. But he puts up with my yarn obsession, so I support his cycling goals.

The draw prizes are:

One skein of Wollmeise Twin in Maria's Deepest Purple (medium).


One skein of Handmaiden Sea Silk, in rainforest (greens and green/grey)

One skein of Wollmeise Twin in Rotkappchen, a show-stopping red!

Two skeins of Mirasol Cotanani in colour 406, a gorgeous peach
Two balls of Crystal Palace Mini Mochi, in colour #102 (purple/red/orange)

One ball of Tofutsies in colour 800.

If you're a non-knitter, but want to win something, we can enter you into a separate pool to win something handknit by me -- I'll contact that winner to find out favourite colour(s) and ideal prize. Just say "non-knitter entry" somewhere in the form.


Now that I've gotten your attention, here are the details.

Every $5 CDN donation gets you an entry, and here's where to enter -- Tony's Ride2Survive donations page. At the current exchange rates, that's around $4 US for each entry. And yes, they take credit cards.

Tony will get an email from the Canadian Cancer Society's donation page (it's called "kintera.org") when you donate, and record your entry into his spreadsheet. Just make sure that you type in your correct email address into the form so that we'll be able to get in touch with you if you're a winner. (He doesn't get your other contact or financial info from the Canadian Cancer Society, just your name, company name, email address and the amount of your donation.)

If you're Canadian, you'll automatically get a tax receipt for any donation of $25 CDN or more. (Actually, every donation over $25 gets a receipt -- I'm just not sure if non-Canadians can use the receipt for their income taxes.) One final detail: All riders and organizers are volunteers, and all costs for this are donated. This means that 100% of your donation will go to the Canadian Cancer Society for cancer research -- even the percentage that credit card companies charge the Canadian Cancer Society does not touch your donation.

This raffle will run from Sunday, March 29 to Sunday, April 26 at 8 pm PST. That will hopefully give you lots of time to decide to enter. To keep the odds of winning high, I'll also add more yarn to the raffle if there are lots of entries. (If you'd like to donate some additional prizes, contact me at gladyswe@gmail.com or send me a message on ravelry -- id=wenat -- and we'll talk!)

On April 26, we'll do a random draw and the first person drawn will get first choice from all the prizes, then the second person will get second choice, and so on. Get your name in often, and you might even get more than one prize!

One final request. There's a tradition on the race that riders write the names of those touched by cancer on their legs. When the going gets tough, especially on the mountain passes, they look at the names and get inspired to keep going for those people. If you have a name you'd like written on Tony's legs, please enter that name in the "company name" field on the donation form. If we knitters and fibre fanatics manage to fill his legs with names, he'll share those names with others on the Ride to Survive team, so all the names will be on the ride.


For more background information, here's the story of how this ride started, and here's a video they made last year about the journey the riders make. They say that the most amazing part of the ride is when they go past people holding up photos of loved ones affected by cancer. If you'd like to share your stories in the comments, I'll make sure they get to the Ride to Survive organizers.