Ride2Survive Raffle!

Cancer has struck all of us in some way. This year, two of my colleagues are battling the disease, and I've been thinking of them and admiring their strength, courage and amazing good cheer.

Both of our husbands are doing the Ride2Survive cancer research fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society this year, cycling almost 400 km (240 miles) in one day. Oh yeah, and there are two mountain summits in that ride. (Tony did it last year -- here's his first description of his ride, and then there's a longer followup post after he recovered.)

So Dotty and I are doing a few yarn-and-quilting-related fundraising activities on this blog to support our husbands.

I'm launching the raffle first. But wait til you see the quilts that Dotty's making -- WOW!

The prizes are:

A skein of Wollmeise 100% Merino in the True Love sock club colourway. (I haven't even taken it out of the wrapping so that the winner will get it in the original condition.)

I'm also knitting up a new pooling stole in this colourway, and will be auctioning off the stole here on the blog -- watch this space for a post (and of course, a new free pattern) in a few days, if I can get a few more hours of knitting time done on it!


A skein of Wollmeise 100% Merino in the Taube colourway. This is one of her semisolids, a gorgeous purpley-blue blend.

A skein of Socks that Rock lightweight in the Saratoga colourway.

Two balls of Regia Kaffe Fassett Design Line, in a pretty self-striping spring flowers colourway.


A Louet Hand Dyeing kit in blues (box was opened just to take this photo).

A skein of Dream in Colour Baby laceweight yarn in the Cool Fire colourway.

Two skeins of Artyarns Supermerino in greens and blues.


In addition to my yarny prizes, Dotty has donated two project bags: knitting chickens and Vancouver Olympics. (If you look closely at one of the background images on the Olympics bag, you can see my office building.)


And finally, in honour of the Olympics which happened in our town in February, two pairs of red mittens, size L (fits most adults) and a water bottle.

Whew!

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 -- Team Purl Jam's Ride2Survive donations page. 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.

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 today, Saturday, May 8 to Sunday, June 6 at noon (Vancouver timezone). 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 June 6, 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 or Markus' legs, please enter that name in the "company name" field on the donation form. If we knitters and fibre fanatics manage to fill both their legs with names, they'll share those names with others on the Ride to Survive team, so all the names will be on the ride. (Markus says he has plenty of acreage on his legs; I think that's a challenge!)


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.