I’ve booked my tickets for Portland for the Sock Summit!

The marketplace shopping bag is starting to look 3D, like it should, no more flat bottom panel.

But, work is wacky and huge right now, so not much time for blogging

I am officially attending the Sock Summit 2009! I’ve been thinking about it since it was announced, but I officially have a roommate, and hotel room, so it is all real!

I just need to wait until it isn’t Easter weekend so I can book my flights.

In anticipation of Sock Summit, even before I had a place to stay, I started some projects. The obnoxious socks in the last post are one, and this is another (and probably more practical that wool socks in summer).

I traded for this yarn, which means it was essentially free, which means more money for the Summit Marketplace. It is Louet 100% linen, and I’m using it to make the market bag from the Spring 2009 IK.

As I have three colours, I decided to start with the darkest for the base, then the next lightest, then the very lightest. I’m hoping to do the first 28 squares in dark purple. There are 72 squares total, but the 28 would give it a nice symmetry I think.

I actually took these photos a while ago, I’m on square 13 now, and was on square 7 in the photo.

As you can see, I’ve been using my Revolutionary Stitch Markers. That gold one is dual purpose; it is on the right side of the work, and it is marking square #1. I’ve since moved on to a slightly more advanced system, marking the first square of each set of four (the base is worked in sets of 4). I’ve been using these markers as alphabet markers, number markers, you name it. I was one of those kids whose pencil crayons were always in rainbow order, so I know that with these markers pink is #1 or A (it’s the closest to red), orange is #2/B, gold/yellow is #3 etc.

My work now has a pink, an orange, and a gold on it. I’m working on the square that should have a green, but I don’t think I’ll need to actually put it on the work.

In but 4 months, this bag will be full of yarny goodness at SS09. I can’t wait.

With some of the money I made destashing knitting books last month, I bought myself another knitting book! I bought Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters.

I had also been thinking about the best way to attack my stash strategically. Ages ago, I’d made an Excel inventory of my yarn, and I set it up to calculate the total length of the yarn in my stash in kilometres. I then set myself the goal of only having 10km of yarn in the stash at one time. Back in March I was so very, VERY close to 10km, but I’d destashed all I was willing to part with. I had large amounts of yarns left, and I wanted to use some of those up. One of these things was a skein of 800-odd yards of sock yarn that I’d bought to make knee socks. I didn’t feel like making knee socks any more, so I tried making it into a cardigan. It was obnoxious. The yarn is quite bright, so I decided it had to become socks.

Then the lightbulb went on. I had this new, exciting sock book, with all sorts of socks to knit. I had a lot of sock yarn. I could combat second sock syndrome by knitting one of each sock in the book! I’ll end up with a set of socks that are related by colour and innovation, but not by construction.

I figured I might as well start at the beginning, so I made one of the socks in the Sky Architecture chapter.

It’s funny: two of the books I sold were Cat Bordhi’s other knitting books, A Treasury of Magical Knitting, and Another Treasury of Magical Knitting. This book is still the same chatty style (which takes getting used to) but I guess I’m just a sock person, because there is no way you’ll pry this book out of my clutches.

Now I just have to decide which one I want to knit next!

If my socks are going to be obnoxiously bright anyway, who cares if they’re a perfect pair?