Sock Summit 2009! Final Day

It's funny that the end of conventions are both sad and a relief, it's wonderful to walk through the marketplaces and see all the fantastic wares for sale, and attend the panels or classes headed by luminaries of the craft(whatever it might be), and to see the awesome things people have put together or made. It is also often overwhelmingly overstimulating and budget blowing.

Sunday, I hit the market place one last time and took this...



While we were there V and I also visited the Sock Museum and took pictures of some of the ones I really liked. If I'd really been thinking I'd have written down the information of each of them, but oh well



They really had me marveling at the patience and skill knitters have, the red ones that V is looking at in the picture had to have been done on 000 sized needles if not even smaller ones and they were over-the-knee/thigh-high.

Once the market had closed V and I headed over to the Oregon Ball Room for the Luminary Panel (only thing I managed to get a ticket for) and found A.



I have to say it was a lot of fun to go into these rooms and whole bunches of people are knitting while waiting and during the events. I spent some time amusing myself by trying to capture it, I took random pictures of the knitters around me, I don't really think I succeeded though.



Then the panel members took their seats...



From the right Nancy Bush, Judith MacKenzie McCuin, Barbara Walker, Meg Swansen (you can only see the very top of her hair behind the podium), Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, Anna Zilboorg, Deb Robson(I think she'd leaned over or bent down so you can't see her), Cat Bordhi, and Lucy Neatby.

The event was of course moderated by the lovely ladies who deamed up and expertly executed this fantastic event, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and Tina Newton!


(you can see Deb in this one)

It was really great to hear all these wonderful ladies express their views and tell how they got started. I wasn't recording so I can't really pick out any particulars but I laughed quite a bit, especially when Stephanie started getting all nervous about the cake man.



I'm sure he was just checking in to see where they where, so he'd know when to bring out the cake, but she was saying he might do damage for making him wait so long.



Couldn't picture the cake for all the knitters taking pictures of it.

Oh yes lets not forget the haul! I really tried to keep in mind that OFFF is next month and I'd really like to have some funds available to spend at it, so I really restrained myself at the summit, and took quite a few business cards for later purchases. I think I only moderately blew my budget...



Ok, so other than the Sock Summit swag, on the right are a blue/green & blue hank those are both 1800 yards of Happyfeet from Newton's Yarn Country, next to them is a bag of pink King Tut cotton, and a bag of purple Marisol T'ika. In between the bags is a Mini Sock Yarn Lollipop from Lollipop Cabin, a Purlescence Yarns tape measure, & my Ravelry party button. Under all that is 2 skeins of Hazel Knits in Purple Hazel and Cami Chic, to the right of those is a bag with a mini skein of Dream Sox (colorway Blarney?) Dye Dreams with the Flippant pattern. Over on the far left is 2 skeins from Frog Creek Fibers, Dye for Glory winner Raspberries & Chocolate in Ebullient & Wasabi Peas in Gnarly. Oh and I can't forget, the white looking ball is called Nightlights, It's glow in the dark, yep I'm gonna have some fun with that.

Sock Summit 2009! Day 3

Saturday I was feeling really lazy so I didn't go into the convention center instead I met up with V, C, & A out in Beaverton for dinner at New Seasons (I love the Wok). Afterwords we took the MAX in to the Forestry Center for the Ravelry event.





It was kind of weird because the whole point of the event was to meet and talk to other knitters/Ravelers, but we ended up sitting together on the cement bleachers and knitting for most of the evening. Not to say that it wasn't fun to hang out, chat, knit, and people watch (a good number of others were doing the same so we weren't the only ones who went introverted). It was interesting to me though that instead of opening up and wandering amongst the people to make new friends, we for all intents and purposes closed ranks, and staked out our territory.

I seriously considered making a pest of myself with the Ravelry Gang but I couldn't do it, because I always feel so bad for people in their position. I know that I would hate if random people I don't know kept coming up to me and acting like they know me, and having to make nice.

Yes, I realize that it was a Ravelry event and so technically they were working, and it would have been acceptable in that context to approach them but still...

I do however have no problem taking stealth pictures of people of note, and since my camera has an articulated LCD they usually turn out alright.





Anyway I got quite a bit of work done on the sock I started for the summit, and it was good to be out knitting in a semi public space and not get any funny looks or comments for doing it.

Later in the evening they had a drawing for a whole bunch of really wonderful fiber and needles, I didn't win but it was fun to listen to the whoops of those that did.

Sock Summit 2009! Day 2

Friday, I met up with my cousin A at the Guinness World Record attempt at a little before noon, and I'm really glad I made it because I almost didn't. For some reason, I thought it was going to be on Saturday, I have NO idea why I thought that though. So I'd slept in pretty good and was enjoying a nice lazy morning thinking I might just call A and see about meeting up for lunch around noon before hitting the marketplace.

Texting her to see about lunch is when I found out that I'd gotten the attempt date wrong. Since I had barely enough time to make it, I rushed out of the house and sped into town, dropped my car off with my mom at the nearby Wendy's (she has a space in a garage a couple blocks up from the convention center that she wasn't using that day) and ran, yep I ran down to the convention center. When I got there, some helpful individuals in the lobby were letting everyone know that you needed to cast on before going in so I grabbed out the needles and cast on 25 stitches super fast. Then handed the nice lady at the door my ticket, and found A (who'd kindly saved me a seat) once inside; I'd made it with 15 minutes to spare.




Before start, they had everyone raise their needles to show that yes they were indeed using 2 strait needles, not two circular or four with only 2 actually in use at a time. Apparently people were really trying to get around the whole two strait needle thing. Tina and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee MCd, and Stephanie made it very clear that the Guinness people didn't have a sense of humor, she had terrifying amounts of paper to deal with after the record attempt, and the Guinness people scared the snot out of her. They didn't know how many people were there at the time but I read in the Oregonian yesterday that the grand total was 935, so we kinda smashed the previous record of 256 that was set in Australia in June (Stephanie had made us all apologize to them before the record attempt).

After the attempt was finished A and I walked up to Muchos Gracias for lunch and then came back and wandered through the marketplace in a much less addlepated manner, I didn't pick anything else up but I petted some really nice yarns.

That evening I met up with my friends V & C at Powell's Books for the Night for Knitters that featured Knitted Socks East and West by Judy Sumner and Knitalong by Larissa Brown & Martin John Brown, both Judy & Larissa were guest speakers that night.

It was really great to listen to them describe the process involved with making their books, and they passed around the sample socks from Judy's book, so we had a great deal of fun fondling real things. After we were all done wondering around the wonderful world that is Powell's on Burnside, we headed out and could not help noticing this lovely little detail...

Sock Summit 2009! Day 1

Well it is officially over, people have gone home or are on their way, the remnants have been cleared, and yarn bunnies swept up. I hope The Stephanie, Tina, ST-2, and the rest of the planning team got rip roaring drunk and have taken the week off.

It was really awesome to see the signs up when I first arrived at the convention center, I was lucky it was just me because it made me a little giggly.




Heading in the right direction...



Ok so there is some fantastic art in this building but my personal favorite is Principia. It's on the North side of the building and is composed of a rather large pendulum the swings from the tower across a suspended circle of horizontal spikes with an inner ring of mostly vertical round ended spikes. On the floor below is a terrazzo & brass inlay floor that looks an awful lot like the solar system. It's really awesome to stand under it and watch.



I was glad that I waited until afternoon on Thursday to go in and pick up my registration materials, I didn't have to wait in line at all which made me very happy.



Since the marketplace wasn't going to open until 4:30 I still had a few hours to kill so I went ahead and cast on the project I had picked out for the convention.



It's a sock pattern designed by one of my oldest friends V, and it's both knit & crochet. This is my second attempt at it, because I'm not much of a sock knitter or crocheter and the first pair I made had a few issues. The first attempt did however effectively illustrate the differences between crocheter & knitter thinking, but that's a whole other story.

When it got to be about 15 minutes to open people started to line up, and Tina, Stephanie, one one of the ST-2(don't know who's who) people started a rather spirited round of "99 skeins of yarn on the wall." I didn't get a really good picture of them though as people kept running in front of them, and it didn't occur to me at the time to switch it to video, which now of course I really wish I'd done.




Of course other than people running in front of me, I really think it's time to update my camera, because while she's game my poor little Canon A610 is just not as zippy as the cute little things currently on the market today, I mean by technology standards her being four years old means she's qualified for retirement.

Anyway while we were waiting a couple of the gals from Dye Dreams came by with mini skeins of their Dream Sox(I think I got their Blarney colorway) and cute little vinyl bags that included a pattern called Flippant. It's a flip flop "sock" designed to keep the straps from rubbing between your toes, they said the mini skein would make a pair so I think it would be great for leftovers.

The marketplace was awesome, though the near mobbing of some of the booths most notably the Dye For Glory winners was kinda disturbing. I mean I know it's beautiful yarn but do you really need to crush into a booth and elbow others out of the way? I know they only have so much on hand but the great thing is that they know how to make more and if you don't get what you'd like now, you can order some later; there is no call to shove, snatch, or possibly hurt others for it. Sorry pet peeve.

It was really overwhelming, I kind of ended up wandering around in circles in complete sensory overload, though I did eventually stumble across the Frog Creek Fibers booth, they're based in Hillsboro, and their Raspberries & Chocolate colorway was one of the Dye for Glory winners, I was luck to get a skein of it in Ebullient(. I also picked up a skein of Wasabi Peas in Gnarly.

I also stopped by Hazel Knits and could not resist picking up a skein of Purple Hazel & Cami Chic in Artisan Sock. After that I was so overloaded it was time to go home.