Sock Summit Day 3 part 1

This morning I spent a little more time in the marketplace.  I made a slight attempt to take some pretty pictures today.  I had a lovely chat with this weaver at the Eugene Fiber Center.  Isn’t this twill gorgeous?  I took a closeup photo specifically for Julie and Allison:The weaver said it was a pretty common pattern and encouraged me to photograph the pattern, too – so here you go: The loom is a Wolf Pup, for those who are curious.Kris and I have decided to knit a pair of socks for our host in Portland, Ed.  I know that normally two people wouldn’t work on the same pair of socks, but we like the symbolism of each knitting him one sock and that’s what we’re going to do.  I was charged with returning to The Plucky Knitter booth and acquiring yarn.  They have a lot of manly, greyish colorways (Steven, you would LOVE it) and I picked one called MASH tent: I’m not sure the photo shows it perfectly, but there is the slightest hint of green in this grey.  It’s the kind of color that will go with grey pants, khaki pants, jeans, olive green… all the neutrals.

I also bought a big skein of DK weight 100% alpaca yarn (3-ply).  It is a nice heathery purple and I intend to make a squishy infinity scarf from it that will be super warm and snuggly in the wintertime. I spent some time in the Hazel Knits booth – the way they displayed samples of their yarn was very eye catching.  They had cuffs of socks on vertical lengths of PVC pipe: The colors and textures really drew me in.  They had a lot of kits made up with patterns and partial skeins of sock yarn (just enough to complete, say, a pair of fingerless mitts).  I was ready to buy a pattern but they were out of printed copies.  No worries, I’ll just buy and download it online. At 11:00, I went to Clara Parkes’ lecture, “Sock Yarn Stories.”  She spun a yarn (sorry, couldn’t help it!) about how sock yarn trends have changed over the past 10-15 years, starting with the “old faithful” yarns through the indie dyer surge up to the latest trends.  As usual, her presentation was excellent.  She summarized the sock yarn scene superbly and I learned a lot!After her talk, knitters stormed the front to get copies of a nifty little brochure advertising her upcoming book (due out in October).  The brochure also contains one pattern from the book as a teaser.  I have a copy of this that Clara signed for me during her booksigning time before the lecture.

In the afternoon, I took a class from JC Briar about pattern writing.  It was chock full of detail and there are NO interesting visual aids.  You will just have to trust me that it was interesting and helpful.  I’m not sure I’m going to be creating full blown style guides and pattern templates in InDesign anytime soon, but I appreciated the overview and attention to detail.  Surely the nit picky librarian in me honored the nit picky tech editor in her.

I think I’ll go ahead and publish this post now.  There is more to come on Day 3 – the flash mob dance and Stephanie’s lecture called “This is Your Brain on Knitting.”  But this is long enough now, so I’m hitting the button.

Sock fatigue is starting to sink in a bit.  But I’m still having fun!