All Hail Sock Summit!

On the off chance that anyone who has heard of knitting does not yet know about the power and glory that is Sock Summit, allow me to fill you in:

Once Upon A Time, two clever and persistent High Priestesses of Hosiery called Tina and Stephanie, hatched a Cunning Plan.  Overcoming staggering obstacles, they organized a festival - nay - a cabal, of the learned and the learn-ees, the interested and the interesting, all centered around the celebration and the love of the sock.  And lo, the knitters came, and they saw, and called it "Good".

Actually, I was there, and what the knitters really called it was "Ass-Kickin!"  "Big Fun", and "Transformative", among other things.

And though I have to keep pinching myself to believe it, I'm going to be there again this time, not only as a participant, but as a Teacher.  That's right.  I'm gonna be in the same building as the Notable Knitteratti, breathing the same air, and sometimes even in the very same room. 

In celebration of Sock Summit Registration today, I thought I'd share a little about what I'm planning for my students.  Take a gander below, won't you, and see if you'd like join me?

Mary's Sock Summit Offering #1:  "Stranded In Your Socks"

At the end of 2010, I was blessed and lucky enough to have been selected to create the very first stranded colorwork design for Blue Moon Fiber Arts.  The process of creating that design (shown above) taught me oodles about knitted colorwork that is destined for feet.  So much, that I thought it would be fun to share it with other sock knitters, who may or may not have worked socks that use two strands before.  In this class, we will explore what it's like to handle two balls of yarn at the same time, and then apply those skills to sock knitting, using (what else?) an official Mary Scott Huff Sock Summit stranded colorwork chart!  The design is TOP SECRET, natch, but trust me when I say you will love it, and this class is the only place to get it!  Gigantic. Fun.  And to those who harbor doubt, I make this solemn pledge:  No scary homework is required, and no one is going to make you cut your knitting open with scissors.  Yet.

Mary's Sock Summit Offering #2:  "Kilt By Association"

Admit it:  Everybody loves a fella in a kilt.  Highland Games, Prince Charles on honeymoon with Princess Diana at Balmoral (pre-Camilla, pre-hair loss), heck, even Mike Meyers playing his own father; All have a compelling draw.  It's something about a guy in uniform.  Or if my brothers are to be believed, "It's the knees.  Lasses love the knees".  From pipe bands to Utili-Kilts, they all have one thing in common:  Kilt Hose.  Without them, a lad is in danger of blisters and sunburns at best, and wounding ridicule at worst.  Part history, part highland dress overview, and part knitting class, Kilt By Association is all you ever wanted to know about exploring what's under there, but were afraid to ask.  And if all that weren't enough fun, the lovely and talented wee beasties over at Abstract Fiber allowed themselves to be tricked were kind enough to create an outstanding skein of yarn for our class sample, and you can have it too!  Go HERE, and order up a special "kilt skein" (that's a whopping 800 or so yards) of -sitting down? - CASHMERE BLEND "Temptation" yarn.  I can't stand how beautiful this yarn is.  If you ever thought of wearing a kilt (Lassies, too - this is America, after all), this yarn will convince you to take the leap.  Come on over to my tartan lounge for all the dirt.  Everyone is Scottish once they can knit kilt hose.  Ask any piper who's tried begging his granny back home for a handknit pair.  Kilt hose are arguably the most special and rare handknit socks of all.  Oh, and you'll also leave class with a Limited Edition pattern, plus all the smarts you need to customize it for your favorite Brave Heart.

So that's the inside scoop.  Let's face it:  You weren't doing anything better than this, the whole month of July.  Come on over to my hometown of Portland, Oregon, and I promise that we know how to show a knitter a really good time.
 

The Princess Who Frogged

Once Upon A Time, a Princess was knitting on a project-that-shall-not-be-named, when she suddenly realized it was ugly.  Not the whole project, just its beginning.  The Princess had totally overestimated how many rows of alternating vertical stripes were called for.  Which here means that she knit nine rows of them, when a better number would have been approximately zero.  The heinous vertical stripes had no place in the design, and worse, they made the whole size and proportion of the item sort of toad-like.  Which may actually be an insult to toads, now that I see the photo again. Ghastly.

Now the Princess, being no stranger to the Frog Pond, could easily see that the stripes had to go, and in a hurry.  Those stripes were like an amphibian eating off your golden plate: Unwelcome.  But the stripes were way back at the beginning of the now-completely-finished knitted thingy. 

Nothing for it:  She would have to Go Surgical.  Rather than gut the entire, otherwise non-offensive finished item, the Princess elected to remove the lower part of the knitting, and re-finish the lower edge.  Somehow.  Not that she had a clue what would happen, or how to do it.  She just thought anything would be better than the full Rip-It, Rip-It of the entire project, for something that had gone wrong way back at the beginning. 

Now, why the Princess failed to comprehend the repulsive nature of the lower part of the project untill after finishing the ENTIRE DAMN THING is a mystery for the Royal Psychiatrist.  Poor Suffering Bastard.

The Princess bravely snipped out the knitted-in picot hem with embroidery scissors, and resolutely set about unraveling the knitting from the bottom up.  But things went badly when the Princess reached the picot edge.  Turns out that you really can't reverse-frog a p2tog, YO folded picot edge from the bottom up.  The p2togs actually make little overhand knots when you try to pull them from the opposite direction of their making.  Bother.  So the Princess cut that row off the piece, too, figuring she'd be able to frog the stripes out, just as soon as those p2togs were out of the way.

Not, as it happens, so much.  It seems that even Princesses cannot reverse-frog stranded colorwork.  Who Knew?  A Princess who thought she wrote the book (well, A book, anyhow) on stranded colorwork should probably have known that you can't unknit stranded colorwork from the bottom up.  But she didn't, until today. 

Fortunately, the Princess has friends in low places, who can be called upon under such circumstances.  Allow me to introduce His Royal Highness, Ferdinand:

Ferdinand joined the Royal household under the guise of becoming a companion for a two-year-old Wee Lindsay.  But all the Royal Family and servants were aware that it was the Princess who really required Ferdinand's services.  Recognizing that a velvet frog must clearly be an enchanted Prince, she made him a crown of PolarFleece, and one Halloween, dressed up in full Princess finery, carried him around with her all day, kissing him loudly and shrieking "NOW CHANGE!" at him, for the amusement of her co-workers.  The days of the cube-farm are behind the Princess now, and even Wee Lindsay has less need of his stuffed bad self than once she did. 

But the Princess still keeps him around, just in case the need for a charm arises.  And who knows if all that kissing and shrieking might one day effect a delayed change on his slippery visage, anyway?  A girl can never be too sure.  Once the Princess had cut the bottom off her knitting for the third time in one day, it was clear that a need for a little pond-spawn magic had arisen.

Ferdinand croaked a melody which sounded pretty much like what you would expect from a frog who had been in storage in the garage.  But it did the trick, because the Princess was able to miraculously pick up the upside-down row of live stitches adjacent to her last cut, rescuing the un-ugly remainder of the item.  Ferdinand's Magic saved the project, and all its non-ugly bits were saved from the relentlessly unpleasant company of the horrid vertical stripes.

Here is the final carnage pile (WARNING: this image may be too graphic for new initiates to colorwork knitting.  Kindly have them clear the room for their own safety).  The re-knitted lower edge is visible to the left, sans nasty stripeage.

So what did the Princess learn?  Frogs are our Friends.  And even if you can't yank it out, then baby, you can always cut it off. 

Amen, Ferdinand; Preach on.

Say Hello to my Little Friend

I'm almost well enough to sit up and knit.  While I recouperate, have a gander at this:

The publisher kindly sent me this photo of Sweet Pea, my project from 60 Quick Baby Knits.  Ahh, the promise of Spring!