Kiss My Knits!

Paraphrasing for the announcement on their website, Donors Choose was one of the smallest organizations in a group of finalists selected from nearly 1,000 applicants for the Nonprofit Innovation Award offered through Amazon.com. The finalist which raised the most money through Amazon.com had the opportunity to have the money it raised doubled.

Donors Choose won the Innovation Award by raising $790,000, all through gifts of $1,000 or less. Every one of those dollars will go to classroom needs posted on the Donors Choose web site. And the donations made will be matched by Amazon.com, bringing the total to over $1.5 million.

The wearwithstyle.com contest raised about 300 bucks, through the generosity of knitters. I know it was a close contest between Donors Choose and the next runner-up. Therefore, I personally choose to believe that it was knitters who put Donors Choose over the top.

Donor prizes are in the mail for the most part, although a few are still being packed. Way to go, guys, this is thrilling news. 🙂

Well, the Wearwithstyle Donors Choose yarn contest is over, which means you won’t have to hear me yammering about it anymore. It looks like we raised about $300. I picture a lot of happy kids with pencils, paper, scissors, and so forth. I picture a teacher excitedly opening UPS boxes, renewing her enthusiasm. I picture an entire Katrina classroom in Houston outfitted because of the generosity of knitters.

Believe it or not, every single person who donated won a prize, and some people won more than one. Right now, I’m debating whether to let people know in advance what they won, or just have a surprise package of yarny goodness show up on their doorstep. Opinions?

My heavens, it was nice to get an order for something other than a Jayne hat. Don’t get me wrong, I loves the Jayne hats, but after 63 in a row, a break was good. I love the moxie of the teenager ordering these – he’s going to be the coolest geek in his school.

Grr. Arrgh. Pics below.

So, I’m trying to choose which to sell for Katrina. Any opinions?

ETA: I decided to do all three. In for a penny, in for a pound, eh?

I’m changing the focus of the Donors Choose yarn contest, at least for a while. The kids in the Bronx will get by okay without learning how to knit, I believe Katrina is a bigger challenge.

I read a post from a former colleague of mine, , who is a teacher in Texas. She posts, “I almost bawled in class today. 2 young boys arrived into my classroom during 2 separate periods, dressed in the uniforms that they used to wear to their schools in New Orleans. You could almost feel the pent up fear and loss that they carried. They are too young to have to deal with these things.”

Donors Choose is putting all general funds toward Katrina proposals for the next week, and that strikes me as a good use of time and money. So donate, probably get some yarn, definitely help a kid.

Handcrafters across the internet are donating their goods for sale, with all proceeds going to the Red Cross Hurricane relief. I’m going to go through my stuff and see what wear with style items might be good to donate. They’ve already raised about two thousand bucks.

It’s all gathered in one place for your convenience. There’s some gorgeous stuff here – neat jewelry, clothing, purses, stuffed animals, and… well, more cool things than I can count! So shop! Buy quirky, cool accessories and help hurricane victims!

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=3146

Okay, I think the contest, she eez about ready to be born. I welcome any comments, questions, criticisms, etc., especially from the knitters in the group. I have a rhino-thick hide, and I’d rather make changes early than late! Please consider going clicky-click and telling me what you think!

http://www.wearwithstyle.com/contest.html

A while back, Sars at Tomato Nation did a contest in which she asked her readers to donate to Donors Choose in exchange for a feeling of well being… and goodies, too. I thought it was a great idea. I contacted her a few weeks ago to ask her for tips, and she was very helpful.

So, coming up in the knitting channel in LJ, I’m going to sponsor a charity raffle-type thing. People will donate to a knitting-related proposal on Donors Choose and I will offer up some nice things from my stash for donors to potentially win. I’ve got a good range of things to appeal to folks, from Jaggerspun Zephyr wool/silk laceweight yarn to Lamb’s Pride Burlyspun. Donors will forward to me the e-mail they received confirming their donation, and I will enter the donors into an Excel spreadsheet, later to pick randomly from them to see who all gets the various bits of loot. (Possible glitch – I just donated a small amount to be sure things were working as expected. When I donated for tomatonation’s contest I never got the confirmation e-mail from Donors Choose. Once again, just now, I got no confirmation e-mail. Ugh.)

I’m trying to decide what the best way to do this is. Some possibilities would include

a) donate and you are entered, no minimum required.
b) every donation of $10 or more enters you again, like purchasing raffle tickets. I could be beholden to people’s honesty, as I can’t recall offhand whether the e-mail they receive mentions the amount. However, I am a trusting person.
c) (and Sars recommends against this one because it’s a bookkeeping headache), go with a) and also let people without credit cards PayPal me and I forward the cash to Donors Choose.

I dunno. I want Donors Choose to get the most money, but there’s really something to be said for “keep it simple, stupid.” I’m mulling it over.

Thoughts on the process? If you’re a knitter, thoughts on what you might like to get? I’m assuming most people will do it because it’s a fun thing to do, and a nice way to help people – but let’s face it, swag never hurts.

The next challenge: write the challenge up in a very short way, because nobody wants to wade through a hella long post.

So a guy on http://www.booksforsoldiers.com who is stationed in a very dangerous place posted, saying that a guy in his unit had gotten some Magic: the Gathering cards from his brother. Apparently, now more than 20 of the guys are learning how to play and are hooked, and so this fella posted a request for Magic: the Gathering cards, as you can’t really run down to the comic book store in Iraq and grab a deck.

I don’t have any Magic cards, as no WAY was I ever going to get hooked on Crack for Gamers, but I did put out a request on Freecycle, explaining the situation and asking if anybody had any old cards lying around.

One girl at a nearby college sent me e-mail saying she had sent word around to her buddies, and they now had 625 cards for me to pick up and send. Very, very generous of them! I’m calling her a little later to arrange a rendezvous.

I wanted to send her a small snippet of the post the guy had written in which he asked, without any identifying info or troop numbers or anything, so she would see how much it was appreciated.

Lo and behold, my booksforsoldiers inbox was empty. Going to the main message boards, there was a header saying “We’ve been hacked again. Thank you for your patience while we get up and running.”

Who the HELL would hack this site? I mean, c’mon! It’s not to the political left, it’s not to the political right, it’s individuals helping individuals. It’s a worthy cause. I am stunned at the jackassery of it.

College girl rounding up 625 Magic cards for a guy she’s never even been in contact with: good.
Asshole hacking booksforsoldiers.com: bad.

Grrrrrr…

Remember how my booksforsoldiers guy very kindly sent my daughter a box of candy and a stuffed camel? Well, he wrote to ask what the camel sounds like. He said, “I would assume it might sound like a camel but I rarely hear anything out of the camels when they pass us in the desert. Pretty quiet actually.” So I finally put batteries in.

Ho. Lee. Crap.

Unless real camels burst into song when you push on their shoulders, this does not sound like a real camel. And the eyes… the eyes were very unexpected.

Shall I share a link? Yes, I think I shall.

Small camel movie
Big camel movie

Does anyone out there have any clue what this song is? I’ve plumbed resources all the way to an online buddy of my husband’s in Israel, and no luck.

I’m pretty sure that this is some kind of demon camel meant to hypnotize my daughter into joining the Taliban or something. Excuse me… I feel the need to go put on a burqa.