sweetgeorgia

Leapfrog Socks

Have you seen the new issue of Sockupied!? Interweave Press has been putting out these special interactive e-magazines since August 2010, and in this Spring 2012 issue, our Tough Love Sock yarn was featured in Debbie O’Neill‘s pattern, “Leapfrog Socks“.

It’s an ingenious sock pattern that mixes up handpainted yarns to minimize any pooling tendencies. The stitch pattern creates these “leaping” yarnovers which move the colours around and makes the best use of handpainted yarns. Check it out on Ravelry here »

New Pattern: Park City Socks

After taking Cookie A’s sock design class at VK Live in September, I knew I had to get myself in gear and actually DO something with all the knowledge I was acquiring. So, I thank Cookie A and my table-mate, Chia, for being a part of this whole sock pattern process. In Cookie’s class, we learned to do the math required to fit a stitch pattern to sock instructions, ensuring that the sock is the right size to fit over your foot AND ankle joint. While, I didn’t end up working out the pattern I had started in Cookie’s class, here is what I did end up designing:

These Park City Socks feature an all-over simple lace pattern that looks like a forest of trees. Knit from the top/cuff down, they are written for two sizes (to fit a foot circumference of 8.5″ and 10″ — ladies’ medium and large). One of our intrepid test knitters, Judy, knit these for us in Tough Love Sock (English Ivy). I knit my sample in Cayenne and I think it’s so interesting to see how we all use the same size knitting needles (2.25 mm) and the same yarn, and yet we get different results because of our knitting styles. My prototype sock was knit way too tight… thank heavens for test knitters.

Hope you enjoy… my first sock pattern. Please let me know if you run into trouble or have questions about the instructions! Find the pattern here on Ravelry or on our website.

Curious, Inspired

Last year, Hunter Hammersen of Violently Domestic designed these stunningly intricate socks for her Silk Road Socks book using our Silk Crush yarn. They were so beautiful that when she called again in May looking for yarn for her second book, I was more than happy to send some her way. Mostly, I was just eager to see what might fall of her needles.

Hunter’s second book has just launched and it’s packed full of twenty beautiful patterns inspired by vintage botanical prints. The book is called The Knitter’s Curiosity Cabinet and is available for pre-order on Ravelry here. It’s currently available at a discount of $16.95 (after it’s released, the book will go up to $18.95). I don’t really know how designers price their patterns, but I’m pretty sure $0.85 per pattern is a steal.

We sent Hunter a skein of Merino Silk Aran in Cayenne and a skein of Silk Crush in Deep Olive which turned into this elegant pair of socks and hat. She took inspiration from a vintage print of a humble Scots pine and says this:

Pinus silvestris Flowers are showy, they get all the attention. But plants that don’t make what we think of as flowers can be just as lovely as their flashier counterparts. I wanted to be sure to include at least a few of them in this collection, and the Scots pine is a perfect example. The socks are simple stockinette with a decorated panel that runs down the front and back. The panel is mirrored and twists gently around your foot. The pattern on the panel is drawn from the scales on the mature pine cone. The hat is inspired by the amazing orange color and intricate texture of the young pine cone. The decorated band at the bottom produces a lovely wavy edge while the plain crown ensures a comfortable fit. Be sure to peek at the inside of the hat as some people like that even more.

I’m always curious and interested in where and how people find their inspiration. For Hunter, a simple set of botanical illustrations yielded ten sock patterns and an additional ten accessory patterns. I admire that process… pushing one idea forward, and then pushing yourself even further to design more out of the same idea.

For any designers out there, where do you find your inspiration? What kinds of things do you collect in your own personal curiosity cabinet?

Sock Summit 2011

A mere 24 hours after returning home from my honeymoon, I was back at the airport, on my way to Portland for the incredibly popular Sock Summit. Who knew that something as specific as hand sock knitting could draw nearly 6,000 knitters from across the country to Portland? I didn’t go to the first one two years back… I can’t recall why. But after hearing how “amazing” it was, could I live with myself if I let a second Sock Summit go by without seeing what all the fuss was about?

I arrived on Thursday morning at PDX. The flight from Vancouver to Portland was a mere hour and 30 minutes. But then waiting for the hotel shuttle took me another hour and 30 minutes. That was a rough start, but made so much better by the fact that I randomly ended up sharing the hotel shuttle with Stephannie from Sunset Cat, a technical editor and designer. Turns out Stephannie and I knew all sorts of people in common and we hit it off quite well. It lessened the frustration of feeling like I wasted my morning sitting outside the freezing cold airport terminal.

Going to these knitterly events always makes me a bit nervous… it’s like the first day of school. I don’t think I’m going to know anyone and I figure everyone’s already going to be hanging out with their friends and that it’s going to be all awkward and weird. And it was. A bit. Just at the beginning.

It was just before lunch and my class with Amy Singer was going to start in the afternoon. I knew I had to eat. But I wanted to make the most of my brief Portland experience. I’d heard so much about the incredible Portland food carts, so when I saw a girl with a sign that said “GOIN’ TO THE FOODCARTS 4 LUNCH ” I just knew I had to follow her. Turns out, she is Natalie, one half of the “Cloudy with a Chance of Fiber” podcast AND she is a Portland-native. Strangely, I felt completely comfortable getting on public transit without a map or direction, following someone I had just met. She was going to lead me to amazing food. I (and Kathy and Heidi) followed. Natalie was great to chat with and we even recorded some of our conversation for her podcast. You can hear the episode, plus an interview with Maia of Tactile Fiber Arts on her site or off iTunes.

Amy Singer’s class in the afternoon was like dessert. It was a scoop into the Knitty.com editor’s mind to see what she sees and learn what she likes or doesn’t like to select for the Knitty issues. The class was called “Making the Next Monkey” and gave great insight into how to get your pattern submission selected. Students in the class got to informally present designs that they were considering submitting or had already self-published, just to get a reaction from Amy and see how it might fair in the selection process.

My second class, “Kids’ Socks” was on Friday morning with Sandi Rosner. Sandi is a knitwear designer, technical editor (for Twist Collective among others) and teacher. I found her teaching style quite practical and hands-on. She began by getting us to ask her the questions we have about knitting socks for kids and she wrote them all up on the board. As the class progressed, she answered each and every one of the students’ questions. And at the end, she walked around the entire room (maybe 25 students?) and gave each student some one-on-one help with their sock pattern. I learned new tidbits and confirmed other bits in my brain… now it’s time to actually put that knowledge to good use.

The rest of the time I spent trekking through the supermassive marketplace. I know there are lots of knitters who were blown away by the Sock Summit… the list of teachers, the classes, the vendors, all the crazy auxiliary events like the Sock Hop and the flash mob… but honestly, I think it was simple, practical things that made it for me. Just silly things like how they offered free WiFi to all the participants or how the lighting in the marketplace was not merely adequate, but actually bright. Overall, my gripes with these kinds of conferences is that the rooms are always freezing cold and that there’s no good food within walking distance. I got a lead to go to a Japanese-run grocery store for sushi but the offerings were seriously sketchy. Raw fish at left room temperature? Eww.

I’m happy I got to go and meet so many fellow dyers and knitters and would love to go again. The Sock Summit crew seems to have this event organization business down pat. They captured the spirit of everyone from the technical knitters to the social media/twitter knitters to the nerd audience (Sockgate anyone?) as well as the crazy Rockin’ Sock Club membership. Something for every kind of sock knitter.

Footsie “His and Hers” Socks

I’m back from a quick trip to Sock Summit and just in time for the release of the Fall 2011 Twist Collective issue. It’s up now and I’m so excited to see Allison Haas’ beautiful new his and hers sock design called “Footsie”. She’s worked these intricate cables and twisted rib socks in both our BFL Sock and CashLuxe Fine.

Clara Parkes’ Sock Yarn Stories at Sock Summit

Going to Sock Summit was a late, late decision on my part. Initially, I got all worked up about trying to arrange for a vendor booth, but it was around the time of our wedding and we decided that making the Sock Summit our honeymoon was a bad idea. Instead, it turned out perfectly that the best decision was to work with one of our retailers, Dublin Bay Knitting Company and have our yarn at their booth. A few weeks before the wedding, it seemed that everything was falling into place and it wouldn’t be such a difficult thing to squeeze in two days in Portland following our honeymoon. Long story short, I managed to get classes with Amy Singer, Sandi Rosner, and a lecture with Clara Parkes of Knitters’ Review. All of the content was exceptional. These classes were worth the trip alone. But more on that later.

Clara gave a knowledgeable and endearing lecture, tripping through the recent history of sock knitting yarns. She offered stories and anecdotes about the rise in popularity of everything from self-patterning yarns to indie hand-dyed yarns to the future of high-tech manufactured fibres. Having amassed a large archive of different yarns and swatched with many (if not all?) of them, Clara speaks with great wisdom when it comes to sock yarn. She is called the “yarn whisperer”, I’ve heard.

What I gleaned from her lecture, I’ll share here. It’s solid advice for sock knitters and it’s very possible you’ve heard it before, but I’ll say it again.

Sock yarns need a little boost from either nylon or silk (up to 25%) to make them more durable and wear-resistant. Sock yarns need to be knit quite firmly… a regular fingering weight might be most appropriately knit at 9 sts per inch or even 10 sts per inch. The looser the knit, the more room for abrasion and the greater the chance of the yarn wearing through. Even though superwash yarns are available, Clara still recommends that hand knit socks be hand washed.

Finally, she lingered on cashmere-blend sock yarns and their popularity. Clara talked about how the cashmere content of a sock yarn can help bloom and puff up the stitches, making the overall knitted fabric smoother looking. Of course, the softness of the cashmere lends to the luxurious feel. And the nylon content will help keep it strong. I stayed a bit after class and she talked about how the more rare sheep breed, Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) makes a wonderful sock yarn. The staple length of the BFL fibre being longer and glossier than standard merino, and therefore harder-wearing.

I geek out about these kinds of details because I believe this is where knitting begins. All these bits of info help you decide what yarn to choose for what project and purpose… it’s part of designing your project and the most fun part for me. I hope you’ll enjoy Allison’s new sock design and choosing new projects to knit this fall. All my project knitting has already begun in my head. Let’s see if I can actually get it on the needles.