Mea culpa

I fear the yarn fumes got to me a bit at the Sock Summit marketplace and I’m a little surprised at how much stuff I bought.  I’ve been putting off this post partly because the past two weeks have been incredibly busy, but also because I feel slightly embarrassed by this bounty.  So, please join me in the confessional booth.

Let’s just do it, shall we?  Here is what I got.  First, two really cute project bags.  First, this one from Dancing Sheep: You know how those blue and green combos draw me – and the flash of orange was irresistible. I think this was my very first purchase when the market opened to students Thursday night.  Much later, I spied this one: I have been eyeing this sock monkey fabric for years, just waiting until the right bag made from it came along.  The bag is made by good to be girl but I bought it at The Plucky Knitter booth.

Since we’re already on the topic of Plucky, let’s look at the yarn I bought there.  I was entranced by this booth – the yarn was all dyed in rich shades of semi-solids, and there were a LOT of neutrals.  I ended up getting 4 skeins of Primo Fingering, which is 75% merino, 20% cashmere, and 5% nylon.  I really hope that 5% holds up its end of the deal.  It is a 4-ply with a tight, springy twist, so I’m hopeful.  I got these colors (the green is Wonder Years and the blue is 2Cool4School) to make the now ubiquitous Different Lines shawl. Later, I went back to get yarn for Kris and me to make a pair of socks for Ed, our Portland host during Sock Summit.  Because he has big man feet, I got two skeins – just to be safe.  This is a neutral called M.A.S.H. Tent which somehow contains hues of green, brown, and grey all at the same time.  (Steven: breathe into a paper bag if you need to.) Next, here is Sincere Sheep’s Cushy Fine yarn – 80% superwash merino, 10% cashmere, and 10% nylon (this is a common base and while the cashmere is nice, it’s really the nylon I’m after).  The color is “Winter’s Night” and it is dyed with natural dyes – it is a moody blue-grey.  There is a generous 490 yards in this skein.  3 plies, medium twist: Next, let’s visit Huckleberry Knits.  I was completely overcome by the rich shades of this yarn – and I was eager to try the 80% Blue-Faced Leicester/20% nylon base which she calls “Willow.”  I couldn’t decide what to get so I ended up with FOUR skeins (in my own defense, I was also having a “hungry emergency” while in this booth): From the left, the color names are absinthe, browncoat (a reddish-brown), eucalyptus (it’s green – so hard to photograph), and creme brulee.  Willow is a 3-ply with medium-high twist.

I got this skein of Lucia yarn from Dirty Water Dyeworks – it’s 75% superwash merino/25% nylon and the color name is “Pixie” – this is a 4-ply light fingering that is fairly twisty.  It is also very green and a little more variegated than any other yarn I bought:While we’re doing the green yarn, this is watercolors sock yarn from Periwinkle Sheep.  The color is “juniper” and it’s also 75% superwash merino/25% nylon.  Like Lucia above, it has 4 plies and is fairly twisty.  I’ll bet these two skeins were dyed on the same base yarn.  You really can’t tell from the photo but I swear, this is green!

I picked a lot of sedate yarns.  This Anzula yarn is called Squishy and it’s 80% superwash merino, 10% cashmere, and 10% nylon in a 3-ply.  The yarn base sounds like that used by Sincere Sheep in Cushy Fine, but it feels a lot softer.  I’m guessing that’s the difference between superwash merino and regular merino.  The color is unnamed so I’ll just call it “brown”: Now, on to my WEBS purchases.  I wanted to try this new Lorna’s Laces sock yarn called Solemate – it’s 55% superwash merino, 15% nylon, and 30% Outlast. Outlast is a human-made fiber designed to regulate body temperature (used by NASA originally, I think?).  The yarn is a 3-ply light fingering with decent twist.  I got the colorway “Grand Street Ink,” which also has the Brooklyn Tweed logo stamped on it.  It is a moody purplish-grey: Also at the WEBS booth, I picked up two 50-gram skeins of their own Valley Yarns Huntington, which is a standard 4-ply 75% fine superwash merino/25% nylon with a medium twist.  The color is “mustand” but in my mind, it’s “school bus.”  This yarn is definitely destined for S1’s feet! And here is the only non-sock yarn I bought at the Summit – 8 ounces (665 yards) of a 3-ply DK weight 100% superfine alpaca in a heathery purple color: I plan to make some kind of infinity scarf out of this – for me.  It will be sooooo snuggly warm in the wintertime.  I got this at the Village Spinning & Weaving Shop booth.

I also got a pattern for the Achillea Socks by Kirsten Kapur.  A booth sample seduced me.

That’s it, folks.  I feel like I’ve just finished a huge Thanksgiving meal and I won’t want to eat again for days.  I’m going to try to not buy any new yarn for quite a while.  There are so many socks I’d like to make in a couple of books and this stash should keep me busy for quite some time.  I’ll tell you about those in a future post, though.

Signing off!  I feel so much better now that I’ve told you about this.  And I’m not even Catholic. :)

Sock Summit Day 4

Today started with electronics – my Twinkle Toes class.  Syne Mitchell had lots of fun electronically-enhanced textiles on display at the front of the class.  I know I should have video of these, but I just don’t.  There are limits to what me and my little netbook can do with limited internet access.  Here is the bag she designed for knitty.com: And here is another blinky hat: We got our electronics kits and tested our components.  All of mine worked right at the beginning, which was good. Eventually we started sewing things onto our handknits with conductive thread.  I managed to sew in the “sparkle” component (which is the one shaped like a flower) as well as my four LED sequins (the smaller pieces you’ll see below) just before the end of the 3-hour class.  I started connecting my circuit by duplicate stitching conductive thread between the sparkle and the LED lights, but I didn’t have time to finish.After I do that, I’ll connect the battery holder to the sparkle piece (also using conductive thread) and hope everything lights up. I’m a little worried that I don’t know how to do the duplicate stitch well enough and that my circuit will break the first time Boy 1 puts the socks on.  The thread isn’t stretchy at all, which is why we compensate for that by using duplicate stitch (which waves around the way the yarn does in knitted fabric, with extra room for give).  But we shall see…

I popped into the marketplace for a couple of minutes to check out the Fleece to Foot competition.  The teams started at 9 and were still hard at work at noon – I saw some people knitting, but others on the team were still spinning and even flick carding:

There was this really cool wheel in one of the team’s work areas.  I don’t know the story, but I like how colorful it is!

I jumped on a train and Kris and I had Japanese food for lunch.  Then, a quick train ride back to the OCC, and I finished out my Sock Summit experience with Clara Parkes’ class, “A Bag of Tricks for Stretch and Strength.”  We spent the first part of class looking at raw fiber and talking about the qualities of wool, alpaca, silk, cotton, cashmere, and nylon.  Handknit socks require strength, elasticity, and moisture management, so we talked about those properties in each of those fibers.  We covered some of this information in Clara’s class in 2009, but it was a wonderful recap (with some new detail).  Then we talked about specific sock patterns that make the most of a particular yarn’s qualities.  The patterns are all in Clara’s new book, which will appear this October.  She had a single galley proof with her in class, and we all eyed it greedily: There are so many great socks in this book – we looked at the samples in class.  I want to knit a bunch of them!  Here is the sample sock for the pattern that is shared in the promotional brochure for the book (that I got yesterday):I think this pattern is a contender for Ed’s socks!  Kris, what do you think?

Clara also took a look at my Hedgerow Socks, the ones that blew holes in both heels on the same day.  Do you remember those?  The yarn was Green Mountain Spinnery Sock Art, a mix of wool and mohair.  Clara was mortified when she saw the socks (which, remember, had been worn less than half a dozen times).  She picked apart the fluff at the frayed parts and noted that the wool staples were extremely short, which they shouldn’t be.  It almost looked like the wool had dissolved, leaving only mohair behind to hold the sock together.  Mohair isn’t strong enough to do that on its own, which is why the holes appeared.  I had some of the leftover yarn with me, too, so we looked at that.  The twist was tight enough.  The 2-ply structure of the yarn was a concern of hers, but mostly, she diagnosed a fiber preparation problem.  She thinks that perhaps the fiber wasn’t blended well enough at the mill before spinning, so the wool and mohair separated and broke.  Or, perhaps something was wrong with the wool (the staple was too short, breaks appeared easily due to stressful growing conditions for the sheep, who knows?).  She was concerned enough that she suggested I contact Green Mountain.  I may do that.  It was affirming to hear that I hadn’t made an error in choosing the yarn.  And she really liked seeing another pair of Hedgerow Socks in the world (the pattern originally appeared in The Knitter’s Review).

…and that was the end of Sock Summit 2011!  Kris, Ed, and I went to Hawthorne Hophouse for a lovely dinner on the way home.  Kris and I split a beer “flight” of 6 little glasses, after which we ordered our favorites.  I had a salad with strawberries, hazelnuts, and chevre.  It was super yummy.  I would love to have a restaurant like that in my neighborhood – they have 24 microbrews (and even a category new to me, nanobrews) on tap brewed in Portland and the surrounding area, and the varieties are constantly rotating.  I had a “Black Cherry,” which is a mix of a cherry/apple cider and a porter.  Super yum.

Portland, we enjoyed being here.  Thanks to the mountain for coming out so often.  Thanks to Ed for showing us a great time.  Thanks to all the knitters, and to ST-1 and ST-2 in particular.  I had the time of my life!

Sock Summit Day 3 part 2

The second half of Day 3 began with the flash mob dance, which was a TON of fun.  Here are some of the ST-1s and ST-2s (ST = Sock Team) getting ready up at the front.  Technically, we’re still mingling at this point.
Kris and I ran into the rest of the central PA contingent and we stuck together for the dance. That’s Kris on the left (note how bright her green shirt is – that’s what helps you find us in the videos!), then Missy, then Carol of The Mannings, and me on the right. Here are Stephen Houghton and Debbie (sorry, don’t know her last name), the ones who made the instruction video:
Here is some mingling that happened before the music began.  Kris and Katharine are showing each other their yarn (you can see Steph and Tina in the background if you look between Kris and Katharine):

And then there was dancing.  I didn’t record any because I was participating… so you’ll have to search YouTube on “sock summit flash mob” and you’ll find a ton.  I’ll add a couple of links where you might spy us later (my internet access is brief).  Added later: this is the best video right here!

After the dance, Kris, Katharine, and I jumped on the train and went downtown for dinner.  Then we rushed back to the convention center for Stephanie’s lecture, titled “This is Your Brain on Knitting.”  She summarized some of the scientific research that pertains to our craft.  Not that there is neuroscience research on knitting… it’s not quite that direct.  The literature on repetitive motion and the relaxation response is helpful, though – and some of those studies actually mention knitting (though one, hilariously, concluded that it is not practical for everyone to carry around knitting with them, though they think it would be helpful).  I think I took good enough notes that I can track down some citations (Stephanie usually mentioned the author’s name and institutional affiliation), so I’ll do the librarian thing when I get home and see if I can recreate a list of references.  She also used some of the research that the video game industry has commissioned to learn why people get addicted to video games and how to get them to pay good money to do something imaginary.  She told a compelling story.  The room was packed.  I was right in the front row (a fluke – I walked up there with Katharine, who was having a seat saved for her by an early arriver, and it turned out there were a couple of empty seats right up front).  It was neat to turn around and see an entire room filled with people knitting socks and listening to someone talk about knitting.  There were over 500 chairs in the room and the event was sold out. After the lecture, we dropped off our baby shower donations.  There were at least 6 tables full of things like this.  That big bag on our table was full of items that someone brought from their local knitting group – it contained at least a couple dozen hats, pairs of booties, and more. After that, we decided to swing by Voodoo Doughnuts, which was a pretty hopping place on Saturday night. I kind of clutched at all the choices and ended up with a plain cake donut with chocolate frosting. I prefer cake doughnuts to raised ones, and the cake ones were way tamer than the raised ones.  They had vegan doughnuts – I was sad that Boy 1 wasn’t here to try one (he’s never had a doughnut because he’s allergic to eggs).  Katharine bought a “voodoo dozen,” which is a dozen doughnuts that they select – you don’t hand pick them.  Here is a peek:

Yes, that is a piece of bubble gum stuck in the hole of the pink doughnut, and some kind of colorful cereal on the one in the back.  Super crunchy! One more day of classes, and home on Monday!

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!

Sock Summit Day 2

I’m a little behind in posting – there is just no time at “home” at Ed’s in the evenings.  Luckily, there is wifi at the convention center.  I’ve been toting the netbook along so I can post from there.  Yesterday I composed on the MAX ride in and then uploaded at the center just before rushing into class.

I’m writing this on SS Day 3, but I’ll tell you what happened yesterday.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of great photos. Content yourselves with Kris and me at the Sockgate.  I don’t totally get the Stargate reference, but many other people do. This is right in front of the marketplace entrance.

In the morning, I took “Knitting Knee Highs: Do the Math” with Barb Brown, who has a book just out called Knitting Knee Highs.  Her concept was just what I wanted – a formula pattern to customize for any size foot.  The class should have been a one-hour wonder, though – there just wasn’t enough content for 3 hours.  The most beneficial part was that she brought most of the socks knit for the book and passed them around.  We were even invited to try them on.  Trying on a dozen pairs of handknit knee socks turned out to be the most helpful part of the class.  My neighbor and I were both taken with this pair (unusually lacy for my taste, I know – but they fit so well):That ribbon at the top would also help keep them up really well.  We talked about ways to do that, including running lingerie elastic into the hem.  I can’t shake the feeling that one shouldn’t have to put elastic into socks if they fit properly to begin with… but we shall see.  Look how different the socks appear in the book.  Models are always about 6 feet tall and knee socks never come all the way up. This is the exact same sock. I brought my Bohus-style knee socks to the class and consulted with Barb (and my neighbors) about them.  I have a new plan now, and it’s a plan I felt was coming.  Now it’s confirmed.  You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?  RIP!  Those babies are coming out.  I’m going to recheck my stockinette gauge in the green yarn (which is Shelridge Farms Soft Touch Heather).  I might need to replace it, since it feels slightly plumper than the SSYC solids in the stranded section.  I can easily order a similar green color from SSYC and reuse the Shelridge for something else, if I need to.  I’m also going to start over with a MUCH smaller cast-on number.  The pattern called for 104 and I might go as low as 84.  I’ll also use a 2.0 needle for the ribbing at the very edge of the cuff, and then move up to 2.5mm for the stranded colorwork, and then edge back down to 2.25 and 2.0 for the rest of the sock.  My main question now is whether the colorwork section will be too tight over 84 stitches.  Stay tuned for more thinking about that project!

Kris and I decided to bolt from the convention center at lunchtime.  We jumped on the MAX train and got off at Chinatown.  We had a fairly mediocre meal, but it was nice to get out of the OCC and into another part of town.

In the afternoon, I took Amy Singer’s “Making the Next Monkey” class, which is about sock designs published in Knitty.com.  She talked for about 2 hours about what sock patterns have been in Knitty and why.  We looked at the Sock Hall of Fame, which included many patterns we all know now… leading up to, of course, Cookie A’s Monkey, which is the most popular sock published in Knitty.  We learned the story of how it came to be called Monkey (that’s NOT what Cookie titled it in the original submission) and discussed elements that make it stand out.  Then Amy broke down ways to beat the odds and get your sock pattern published in Knitty (by the way, doing the math between sock pattern submissions and how many sock patterns she wants in each issue results in a 1 in 5 chance of getting in).  She also talked about the top 5 ways to blow it, and we spent quite a bit of time looking at photo submissions (the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly).  She dispensed design and pattern-writing tips and encouraged us to submit our designs.  The last part of the class was spent providing feedback to students who wanted her critique of their sock designs.  Some people directed her to Ravelry photos, while others just stuck out their foot which was clad in an original design (Amy then photographed it with her iPad and then connected it to the projector so we could all see it while we discussed it).  It was very informative and interesting.

I popped back into the marketplace for a while, but all I bought on Day 2 was some Soak foot cream (peppermint – I’m such a sucker for mint scents).  Here is a shot that gives you an idea of how crowded it was and how striking some of the booth designs are: This is the booth for A Verb for Keeping Warm.  I love their naturally dyed colorways, but their sock yarns are 100% superwash merino, and you know how I feel about that.  It might be fine for a shawl, but not for socks!

We ended our day at Ed’s and enjoyed some of our dinner courses on the roof deck, which was perfectly lovely.  There was more wine from Edgefield.  We stayed up too late (DOH!) but are here at the OCC again this morning, ready for more sock fun!This last shot is a bit blurry, and yes, it’s because I had a glass, too.  Yummy!

Sock Summit Day 1

My morning class was Explore Shimada’s Socks with Gayle Roehm.  We spent the first half of the class reviewing the book.  Gayle’s handout explained what kind of information was in which section and translated key Japanese words and symbols.  We talked our way through one of the daunting charts that is a Japanese sock pattern.

During the second half of the class, we swatched one of the heel styles in the book – the one least familiar to Western knitters.  It is essentially a short row heel with yarnovers and turns (slightly different than the wrap-and-turn I’m used to), but it doesn’t decrease and increase evenly and as a result is shallower.  I don’t understand why Shimada does it like this, but our goal was to work the heel the way the designer intended.  Here is my teacher holding my work: Will I use the patterns in Shimada’s book?  Probably not.  I think it’s interesting to look at Japanese stitch dictionaries and I' can see myself incorporating some of those into sock designs, but I don’t see any advantage in using the Japanese sock structure.

Interestingly, Gayle said that sock knitting isn’t nearly as popular in Japan as it is here.  She could only find TWO Japanese knitting books devoted to sock patterns.  Some books include one or two sock patterns in a larger collection, but there aren’t stacks of socks-only books like we see here.

Kris made some friends in her morning class (Cat Bordhi’s class) who joined us for lunch – it was fun meeting Susan and Katharine, both from the S.F. Bay area.  Katharine is a new teacher this year, teaching a Bosnian toe one-hour wonder class.  It was fun to chat with her about how she got started.  She has taught others in her knitting group before, but this was her first big teaching opportunity.  I wish I was in her class to cheer her on!  We also ran into teacher Lorilee Beltman at Burgerville and she joined us for lunch, too.  Kris met Lorilee at a wedding earlier this year (the bride is her niece) and since they were both knitting, they connected right away.  It just so happened that I was signed up for Lorilee’s afternoon class, so let’s talk about that next!

My afternoon class was Mad for Plaid, and it was a JOY.  Lorilee had structured the class ideally for learning.  She explained things very clearly and managed the classroom superbly (I always notice this stuff because the kind of teaching I do is also “one-shot” teaching and classroom management can be difficult in this environment.  She dispensed little tips throughout the session which were gems (I’ll show you the knit one slip one trick in person!), and she insisted we take a stretching break (smart).  Here is a sock made using her plaid pattern, so you can see what we were learning: Do you see that the vertical lines aren’t quite one stitch wide?  They zig zag back and forth over two columns, which creates a twill effect.  It looks really, really good! We brought yarn in a main color but samples in three other colors were provided by The Plucky Knitter (you’ll see that I fall pretty hard for her later, when we get to the Marketplace).  We didn’t get very far along during our 3-hour class, but we learned everything we need to knit this sock successfully.  I am definitely planning to make this sock at home.  Here is what my class work looks like:I know, there isn’t much to see yet – but trust me, it was impressive.

Here is Lorilee dispensing thoughtful wisdom to a fellow classmate.  You can see the brain waves, right? After afternoon classes ended at 4:30, the marketplace opened to students only.  The line was insane.  I didn’t take a picture so you’ll just have to trust me.  I ran into Carol from The Mannings and Missy, too (Missy from the former Wool in the Woods).  Missy and Anita taught my first beginner knitting class 9 long years ago.  When I introduced Missy to Kris, Kris exclaimed “then you are my grandmother!”  It was a pretty neat moment.

I didn’t take many pictures in the marketplace.  It was crazy.  I was too hungry to be shopping for yarn.  (You know how you’re not supposed to go grocery shopping when you’re hungry?  You shouldn’t go yarn shopping, either.  I was so hungry that I forgot I had stashed some almonds in my backpack.  I just wasn’t thinking straight!)  I did take this shot of The Plucky Knitter booth, where I liked every single thing I saw (including the pompom chandelier covered with xmas lights).  Best use of pompoms I’ve ever seen. I l bought two skeins of yarn here to make the Different Lines shawl (which is the one you see hanging in the top right corner).  I may return to look at patterns again – there were some neat ones.  This vendor is based in Michigan – I’ll try to convince her to come to MDSW. 

When I finally caught up with Kris again, she was winding lace yarn at the yarn winding station.  Look at the neat swifts made by The Oregon Woodworker: And then we went to Burgerville for smoothies because we couldn’t make it until 7 pm and the snacks at the opening reception.

The reception was fun.  We met lots of people and were entertained by Stephanie and Tina.  We saw a blooper reel of the making of the flash mob dance video, and then we all practiced the dance.  We looked pretty darn good, I must say!