Monthly Archives: August 2009

Graduation

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One yarn website I keep going back to to look at is The Unique Sheep. I love the whole idea of the Gradience yarns – you get 4 skeins and work through them as you knit, creating a graduating colour series. For whatever reason, I never ordered anything.

The Unique Sheep was at the Sock Summit, and I spent a fair amount of time browsing the booth. It took me a few days to decide on colourways but I ended up with these two:

Doctors Without Borders

This is the Doctors Without Borders colourway. Although, as I was reading the Twilight books in my room in the evening…. I can’t stop thinking of it as vampire yarn.

Woodstock

This one is Woodstock. I didn’t realise how fitting it was when I bought it; when I got home I realised it was the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock, and I’ve heard people talk about the Sock Summit as knitter’s Woodstock (although I’m hoping ours will be repeated!)

This next ball is a commercial yarn, but also graduates in colour:

Zauberball!

It’s called Zauberball, and will change slowly from black to white. I bought it, and the solid mauve Black Trillium yarn from a few posts ago, to make colourwork socks with. I even have a pattern in mind, from Janel Laidman‘s new book, the Enchanted Sole. The book isn’t out yet, but I had two classes with her, and got to see all the socks that will be in the new book! I can’t wait until it is released.

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The one I want to do is the labyrinth one on the left!

In the Wild

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I had many great experiences at the Sock Summit. One of the odd ones was how I seemed to naturally gravitate towards other Canadians. I ended up sitting beside Canadians in most of my classes, and all entirely by accident!

One of my favourite things happened in Janel Laidman’s Sideways Socks class (I think, who was in which class is all a bit of a blur). I ended up sitting beside a lovely knitter who is OhSusannah on Ravelry. We chat, find out we’re both Canadians, and then she says ‘I think I have some of your stitch markers!’

In the Wild

And there we have it! Genuine Rycrafty stitch markers in their natural habitat. Those are the first set I ever made, and the 5th to sell from my etsy shop. They’ve been doing their duty since June 2008!

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This is us later, at the Ravelry meetup. :)

She also really made me regret not joining The Unique Sheep‘s Lord of the Rings sock club. I may buy at least one of the kits, when they’re available, and I’ve already signed up for the next session of the same club. Sadly, it doesn’t start till the new year.

At the Ravelry meetup, I was recognized as a customer by BlackTrillium! I’d pre-ordered her Dye for Glory colourway ‘Coraline’ and was expecting it to be shipped to my house here. After Melanie recognized my name, and told me who she was, we made plans to meet up in the marketplace on Sunday, so I could pick up my yarn in person! She very nicely refunded me the shipping charge, so I got a deal and I didn’t have to wait for this yarn:

Coraline

Sock Summit Pile-O-Goodies

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I took unfair advantage of the fact that Oregon has no sales tax (yet another reason to love it there) and of the fact that if I bought yarn at the Summit, I wouldn’t have to pay for shipping! We’ll ignore the cost of plane ticket and hotel stay.

I meant to focus on semi-solids, because I’ve been seeing lots of cable-y, bobble-y, texture-y patterns that I want to make. These are the semi-solids I bought:

Semi-Solid Mosaic

I love the red tweedy one! Well, really, I love them all. Clicking on that photo will take you to my flickr, where I’ve got all my Sock Summit photos. I’ll be doling them out bit by bit. :)

I did start a project while I was out there, with a skein I bought at the marketplace. I needed something simple to knit, and I’d accidentally bought a small skein of sportweight, thinking it was sock yarn. I think that was the only time I got overwhelmed by yarn fumes and made a bad purchase. I was overwhelmed most of the time, but managed to buy great SOCK yarn.

Sock Summit project

It’s a simple cowl, with a few decorative rows thrown in. The basic recipe for it is here.

Timekeeping cowl

I decided not to bother counting the 10 stockinette rows between each band either – I decided it would be a timekeeping piece, so the first stockinette band (I started at the maroon/purple end) was the Ravelry party. The big one that’s next was the Luminary panel. Next was the drive to Edmonton (for the gun class, which I passed), then the drive back from Edmonton, then I just kept going with 10 rows. It’s funny, but 10 rows seems to be where I got to every time before putting it away because I was bored or my fingers were tired.

More new projects and more new yarn later!

Sock Summit

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Yes, I was at Sock Summit.

No, I didn’t take the laptop.

Yes, customs let me back in to Canada with a suitcase full of yarn (funnily enough, once I said the words ‘Sock. Summit’, my documents got stamped really fast).

No, I have no idea how long it will take me to knit all that yarn up.

Yes, I brought my camera.

No, I didn’t take many pictures (I was having too much fun!).

Yes, I will post my few pics.

Yes, I will be adding all that yarn to my Ravelry.

Yes, that’s me in the 4th picture from the bottom in this post (with the blue wrap, and the glass of wine).

Now, you’ll have to excuse me, I’m off to Edmonton for another class all-day Wednesday. This one has nothing to do with socks, and everything to do with guns. (even if guns used on stage in the theatre are replicas/don’t otherwise work, someone on the crew still needs a gun license. Now that person can be me!)

Thinking of pretending I’m a vegetarian, just to confuse the gun people even more.

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