Finally, a winner announced ...

... first, let me apologize for being so late on the ball here.  We had a weekend away with the kids complicated by my eldest stepdaughter being so sick she required hospitalization and bedrest for the rest of the weekend with my Honey spending time with her only at her mother's house.  We generally have use of a second vehicle while we're up there but it was not starting and at the very last second we had to rent a second car for the weekend so that neither of us needed to sacrifice kid time.  It's a major orchestration of minutae (remember, the dog comes with us, which is another wrench in the machine), and the giveaway had to wait until we were back home and rested.

Now, secondly, I have to say that I have profound respect for those who coordinate a giveaway on their blogs with thousands of comments.  I don't know how you count them all.  For me it involved a lot of copying and pasting from my blog to Excel, then fancy calculations of the =if(right(B2,2)="AM", A1+1, if(right(B2,2)="PM", A1+1, A1)) variety in order to make sure that the right number was given to each feedbacker (feederbacker?  backfeeder?  ugh)  and then giving the extra entry to followers who commented prior to the official begin, with verification against my email (once I discovered that the timestamp on my blog was off but my emailed version of the comment had the official time of receipt).  It took a while!

So, without further ado, from 255 official entries, of which 24 were "bonus" entries for previous followers, the winner is:

.... Charlene S!  She wrote in answer to my question about teens, "When they turn in to teens, you lose all sense by their standards. That changes once they reach 30. If you make rules, stick to them no matter what! Give them respect by listening but demand respect too - you are the parent not their friend"  So thanks to Charlene I know I have two more decades before these little people turn "normal" again.  I think I'll start counting the days!  ;-)

It was actually her "follower bonus entry" that won the prize, so there you go - it pays to stay on top of your blog feeds!  Charlene, I'll be sending you email to ask for your mailing address so I can get these goodies off to you.

Thanks to ALL who visited and left comments.  My Honey and I have enjoyed reading them all and hopefully I've replied to all of you who had a valid email address ... unless you commented after Friday afternoon when the weekend began for me. I wish I could give prizes to everyone but the best I can do is pass along the clearance announcement at one of my favorite online quilt stores, Burgundy Buttons.  They really have some great prices on clearance fabric and precuts, so go check it out.