I know I have been rambling on and on about this Sticks N Stitches event since all the way back in October of 2007. Turns out that it was totally worth it. Last night we had the first annual Sticks N Stitches at Nationwide Arena. My family, boyfriend and I arrived at the arena around 4:30pm with boxes of goodie bags and door prizes in tow. Our wonderful contact at the Blue Jackets let us in and even managed to procure a booth for us to use. The season ticket holders weren’t overly pleased to see their usual space was filled with these ladies who couldn’t sell them Fan Bucks and weren’t quite sure what to make of all the yarn. 🙂 Woops! They got all straightened out after the 1st period started.
It was fun to watch the first surge arrive. Nationwide Arena has escalators to take folks to the 2nd level and we watched the knitters and crocheters as they rode the escalator with their bags that gave them away. (The boy says you can always tell a knitter/crocheter because they always have a couple of bags.) Everyone was pleased and had fun checking out their goodie bags. The goodie bags consisted of the following:
Each person received either an IK or IC magazine and at random. There were also 3 different patterns and folks received one of them at random. The colors of yarn also varied at random.
When we gave each person a goodie bag they also received a listing of which vendors had donated to the event and what they donated. (The fun part about that list was that at 2pm I realized that I had forgotten to include one business so I began to write that company in by hand on all 100 sheets that had been printed out. Thankfully, my mom stepped in and helped or I wouldn’t have finished!) Everyone also filled out a raffle slip that I had created specifically for this event. The raffle slips included their row and seat numbers so that we could deliver all the door prizes during the game. I got to meet several people that I have been communicating with online and through Ravelry. It was all very fun!
Once the first period started our Blue Jackets contact said that the usual guy who ran the Season Ticket Holders booth would be coming and could hand out our bags as well so that we could watch the game. Score! We cleaned up the area as we didn’t really have very many bags left at that point and instructed him on all the intricacies of passing out bags. 😉
I came back down during the 1st intermission to check on the progress. I think one of my favorite interactions was a guy who came down, read our sign and then said “ahh so this is what all the stitching is about!” He informed me that he had a seat in the back row of our section and was surrounded by knitters. “There were all these people knitting and it just blew my mind!” I heart good sports. There were a few other folks who came over to read the signs and seemed interested in the idea.
During the 2nd intermission I separated out the raffle slips to start the drawings aided by my little brother and my boyfriend. We drew for the crochet prizes and then dumped the crocheters who didn’t win in with the knitters and undecideds for the general prizes. After all the prizes were assigned and the 3rd period began my poor 14 yo brother was sent by himself to deliver Raverly totes and tees to the winners. Let’s just say he was popular. One of the attendees TechnoCowboy looked at him while he was reviewing the winning slips and said call my name. My brother was like hmm are you ___? And he was! Too funny!
The winner of the $100 gift certificate to YarnMarket didn’t seem the least bit disappointed. 🙂 Our family friends that came along to support my event walked away with two of the door prizes. One of them even won some of the gorgeous handspun donated by Five Llamas. We had 25 door prizes and about 100 attendees so 1 in every 4 people won a prize! Talk about your good odds. The final stats are:
- 113 tickets sold
- 92 goodie bags distributed
- 96 raffle slips submitted
We collected 100 blocks for Warm Up America. I will be contacting one of the local organizations Warm Up Worthington to donate the blocks to. Sadly, the Blue Jackets lost but the rest of the game was great and we should have another one next year!
Feel free to leave feedback from the event here or over on the Sticks N Stitches page. Also check out more pictures from the event: photos and door prizes.
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