Baby Steps

Since the Sock Summit, I’ve had very little time to knit, with work, and the kids’ return to school occupying a lot of my time. I have a back load of baby gifts, and inspired by Brenda Dayne, decided to “make do and mend” some baby socks.

Project Details

Pattern:  “Oh, Baby” by Anne Hanson. I cast on for the size with 32 stitches (perhaps 9 months – they don’t exactly describe them), but then managed to make them the length of the size smaller. They look tiny, but the fault lies with me, I didn’t check my gauge. Next time I will make them on 2.5mm needles. To me (not having seen a newborn for a while) they look newborn sized. The recipient is already 3.5 months old, and Hong Kong is in the middle of a period of very hot weather where it is 29° celsius and 85% humidity by 6am.  It seems highly unlikely that they will be worn, but they might get used to dress a baby doll….

Needles: 2.25mm Knit Pro metal 80 cm circulars, worked magic loop

Yarn:  Some of the leftover Titan Super Trekking from these socks - 10 grams to be precise. If I had known that they would use so little, I would have engineered a prettier part of the colour way.

We’ve had unpleasantness this week, with our older daughter being bullied by an older, bigger, “popular” boy on the bus (and it wasn’t the first incident).  Once again, lots of time has been spent on calls to the school, and on ferrying our offspring to and from school until the issue was resolved by his removal from the bus. Looking at the baby sock, I’m reminded how much my daughters have grown; but they still lots of love and protection. The same daughter did the styling on the photo shoot.  Apparently, every dolly needs a glittery dress to set off their hand knit socks.

Workwise, things continue to be very busy, and I’ve realised that I need even more assistance than the able help that I get from Rebecca, and have decided that I need someone to help out at least 20 hours per week. Hopefully, that will release more of my time for marketing, sourcing yarns, and parenting!

Anyone based in Hong Kong that is looking for flexible work for an online yarn retailer, please let me know. Ideally, the candidate will be a knitter, crocheter or other yarny type, and might have some Cantonese skills. They will be mainly weighing and packing orders, with some general administrative support as well. The new premises for the business look like being in Chai Wan. If anyone is interested, they should email me at ingrid@yarnworkshop.com.

Sock Summit Report

This is the sight that confronted us when we arrived to set up the Yarn Workshop Booth. The set-up process was way more tiring that I anticipated it would be – not being helped by the fact that I had forgot to bring receipt books, a ruler, safety pins, a paper knife, a cutting surface for paper cutting, my mailing scale, a calculator.  All the above were located on a frantic trip to an Office Depot, with the exception of the safety pins.The woman working in the New China Laundry and Dry Cleaners clearly thought that I was a few cents short of a dollar when I was begging her to buy “at least 30 safety pins”; and she GAVE me a large handful. When she gave them to me, I had been wandering the neighbourhoods closest to the Convention Center frantically looking for places that might conceivably sell safety pins. The Office Depot did not have them, the Paper Plus store did not have them, and I could not see a craft or dressmaking shop to save myself.  I was looking  superlative; massively jetlagged, nose dripping constantly (and I had only one thoroughly used tissue in my handbag), and sweaty from scouring the neighbourhood.  I had seriously considered going into one of the several adult entertainment shops in the area in my hunt for safety pins, but decided in favour of  the preservation of my innocence.

As you can see, we managed to hang up Sandy’s Lyra (with the aforesaid safety pins), which attracted so much attention, and even got a comment of approval from Barbara Walker.

I did not get any photos of the booth once we had completed set-up, because then, we were greeted by hoards of shoppers.  If you want to see how it looked, see Majorknitter’s blog post here. That evening we went to the opening reception, and I finally heard the Yarn Harlot speak  The part of the evening where Barbara Walker got a standing ovation was very moving, and we met some lovely knitters.

The following days sped by in a blur. I had brought along Ene’s Scarf, thinking that there would be sitting and knitting time while manning the booth.  I completed about 0.4 rows in the whole time that I manned the booth, and spent the rest of the time talking to customers, meeting old internet friends, meeting new ones, and wrestling with the completely inadequate internet service in the convention center.  At one stage I had a particularly unpleasant interlude with the face of the company referenced here. Email me, or ask me about it when I have a glass of something in my hand, if you are so inclined.

I loved seeing the creations that people had made from Yarn Workshop yarn, both the lovely dyeing, and these socks below.

They were knitted by Jardinrouge (her Ravelry ID) from Footscray, and use the official Sock Summit Sock Pattern (which appears to have been pulled from the Sock Summit website).  I also got to see the original sock yarn blankie (Ravelry link) knitted by Shelly Kang.  The lovely, really fantastically friendly, ladies from the Yarnery were in the booth opposite, and it was a delight to look at the blankie every day. They also protected the blankie like it was the crown jewels, and it was never left unattended.  Sorry about the blurry photo – things were so manic that it is lucky that I got one at all.

Apart from the opening reception, the only other official Sock Summit function that I got to attend was the Luminary Panel.  It was interesting, and a relief to be finally silent – I think that I talked non-stop for the rest of the Sock Summit.  I finally got to knit a few more rows on my Ene’s Scarf.  Blue Garter (who I got to meet again!) has summarised the best quotes from the Luminary Panel, so that I don’t have to do it.  Then Sandy and I packed up the remaining stock – we had fortunately sold at least three quarter of what we had brought.

Sandy was the most amazing assistant throughout the whole summit – she is amazingly physically strong, a fountain of knowledge about all matters yarn, weaving and knitting, and excellent company.  We both discovered that she has excellent yarn selling skills (any Seattle are yarn shops should consider her if they need a part-time employee).

Overall, the Sock Summit was a success for Yarn Workshop, but there was many vendors in the marketplace who had not had a very successful show.  One woman was almost in tears as we waited for access to the loading dock. I am glad that it was fruitful, because the whole process, while interesting and entertaining, was a lot of WORK.  As an indication of how much work – below is a photo of my major purchase, while I was in Australia, in JULY.  It remains untouched in its box, and I really, really want to take it out for a run.  I have some Liberty fabric that needs to be cut out…

Some of us arrived intact

The delay in finding me a room when I was checking into the hotel had me a little worried, but after 15 minutes, all was well.  As I unpacked my bag for a much needed shower, I discovered the following damage:

Apparently, styrofoam heads require more protection than hand knitted goods. I’ll need to find another way to display my Koolhaas at the Sock Summit.

In other news, I startled a pharmacist today by asking for Betadine sore throat gargle.  She said that they didn’t have anything like it, and that  “folks round here mainly use Iodine to make meth”.