Cool raffle

You may have noticed the little icon over at the right sidebar, telling about a raffle for the benefit of the Barack Obama campaign. (By the way, if I haven't changed it yet, the deadline goes until the end of August rather than ending this week.) There are some wonderful prizes that you can win, including a copy of Knit So Fine (personally autographed) along with a skein of BBF laceweight yarn sufficient to make the gorgeous lace stole therein; a selection of spinning fiber from Black Bunny Fibers; and a bunch of non-BBF but still pretty awesome prizes, including:

• a copy of the very rare Knitting Lace book, by Susanna Lewis;
• gift certificates to various on-line vendors, including BBF, Sonny & Shear, and Wool & Co.;
• all sorts of handknit lovelies, like a Clapotis;
• lots of different wonderful yarns, like 10 skeins of Opal sock yarn (!); Socks That Rock sockyarn; handspun yarns; and more;
• great pattern packs, like a dozen patterns of your choice from Gardiner Yarn Works, and the entire line of French Girl patterns (yep, all 27 of them).

If you would like to enter the drawing for these fabulous prizes, here's how: you make a donation to the Obama campaign using this link here. Note: you've got to use this link to be eligible. (The form will say "This contribution will be credited to Knitters for Obama Fundraising Goal" if you are in the right place.) You will get a confirmation email when your contribution is processed; forward that email to obamaknittersatgmailDAHTcom. You get one "ticket" for each five dollars you donate and you specify which prize you want each ticket to count for. (For example, if you donated $25, you get five "tickets" or chances, so you could put 3 chances on Prize 7 and 2 on Prize 14, or all 5 on Prize 1, or whatever.) A full list of prizes is here on Ravelry.

Since today is Obama's birthday, you might wish to make a donation in his honor. (Or perhaps you'd like to make a donation in honor of Jeff Gordon, Percy Shelley, Louis Armstrong or Roger Clemens, who were also born on this day. You know how much I love random celebrity birthdays.)

If you feel, as I do, that it's time to make a big change in Washington; that we need a president who is smart, knowledgeable, articulate, has common sense and believes in transparency in government; if you think it's long past time we get our soldiers out of Iraq and start fighting the real war on terror; if you are sick of people ignoring the Constitution and using fear to manipulate us into giving them power; if you think it's time the US becomes a real leader rather than a laughingstock led by a moron and his power-hungry and greedy henchmen; if you don't want a president who brags about being unable to use a computer or who calls his wife a word I won't use on this blog or who jokes about gorillas raping women or who changes his position more often than he changes his underwear; then I urge you to put your money where your mouth is and donate.

I know that political issues can be controversial, so I'm trying not to overdo it on what is mainly a knitting blog. But I am very concerned about the future of our country and honestly believe that Obama is the vastly superior choice come November. Thanks for listening.