And the winner is...

...going to be announced in a moment.  Before then, I'd just like to thank everyone who took the trouble to comment or email me with an answer, and everyone who has commented or emailed or read the blog ever.  Your encouragement and support means a lot.

So, to recap, the competition was to guess how many hours St Cuthbert's Banner took to complete, and the prize was an extra Banner flower, mounted on some of the velvet I used for it:

The correct answer was...

802.5 hours

A lot of the answers were much higher than that, which made me think I ought to have put more work into it!

There was one answer that was very close indeed, with an estimate of 800 hours, so I am happy to announce the winner is songbirdgifts.

Congratulations SongBird!  Email me with your postal address, and I'll send the flower to you as soon as possible.

Thanks again everyone!

Competition: win a St Cuthbert's Banner flower

Happy New Year, everyone!  To get the year off to a good start and to celebrate finishing St Cuthbert's Banner, I'm running a competition, where you can win a Banner commemorative piece.

Here's the prize:

Anyone who's followed things this far will recognise this as a wood aven flower and leaf, exactly the same as the ones on the Banner itself, and on a piece of the same velvet.

As I worked on the Banner I recorded all the time I spent on it, and added it all up at the end. So, to enter the competition, all you need to do is estimate the number of hours it took to complete. The person who gets the closest wins, or in the event of a tie, one of the tying entries will be drawn at random. To give you all plenty of time, the competition closes on Sunday 15 January, and I'll announce the winner the following day.

You can either leave your answer in the comments below, or if you'd prefer, email me at info@rutholearytextileart.co.uk.  Please do not leave any contact details at this stage - I'll be in touch with the winner after the competition closes to ask for them then.

Good luck!