Sock Summit Day 4 – At the Top

Today was the final day of the Sock Summit.  I went to a fabulous one-hour class with Cookie A called The Perfect Rib.  If you’ve looked at her new book, Sock Innovation, you’ll recall that she has a section at the beginning about getting the ribbing on the cuff to flow into the pattern.  This class was about how to make that happen.  Cookie was an excellent teacher – clear and technical and right-on.  I loved it!  Some of the knitters coming out of the 9 am class were shaking their heads and saying “this is hard!” but it was just right for me.  I’ll never rib the same way again.

After that, I went into a one-hour lecture called Turkish Stitches with Anna Zilboorg.  She had many Turkish socks to show and talked about the conditions under which they were made and the materials from which they were made.  She talked about how the ground and figure were equally important (in Western motifs, the figure stands out from the ground) and showed us different ways that one simple hook motif was used.  I didn’t expect to want to learn to make any Turkish socks, but I was particularly taken by this pair:

Unfortunately, the pattern isn’t published (at least not yet) – she worked it out specifically for the Summit.  If it comes out in print, I just might try some stranded knitting!

Here are a few other socks that she brought – including a surreptitious shot I took of the socks on her own feet (she went shoeless during class).  I love how at the Sock Summit, taking pictures of other people’s feet isn’t weird.

After the morning classes, Steven and I returned to the exhibit hall one last time to watch a demo of an antique sock knitting machine.  It looks kind of hard.  I doubt I’ll seek such a machine out.  If one happened to fall in my lap, that would be another story, of course!

Steven and I returned to Burgerville for lunch and had delicious spicy black bean burgers.  Burgerville looks like a standard fast food joint, but they use lots of local and seasonal ingredients.  Right now that means cherries and blackberries.  They also print the nutritional information on the receipt.  Boy, was I glad that I didn’t have the chipotle mayo on my burger.

In the afternoon, we went to the Luminary Panel and sang Happy Birthday to Elizabeth Zimmerman (her 99th birthday would have been today).  There was even cake. 

Whew!  Steven and I had a great time at the Sock Summit.

When’s the next one?