Hello, blog!

Yes, I realize it has been almost a month since I last visited you. Do you forgive me? We've been a little busy around here, what with the arrival of a book, knitting of new designs and preparation for the biggest sock knitting gathering ever attempted... But now I'm back for a bit, so pull up a chair and get comfy, because I've got a lot to tell you!

First announcement - Toe-Up! arrived here just over a week ago and the fun hasn't stopped since (fun as in drafting Bill to help me pack and ship box after box of books, which is not at all fun to do, but it is fun to think of all those books going out to all those yarn shops...). Here's what the living room looked like on arrival day:



That's only about half the boxes. Bill had a great time trying to figure out where to stash them all (there are still about 400 books in the living room, but the pile is considerably smaller than it was, thanks to everyone who's buying copies). We've got books in both our big closets downstairs, books in the hall, books in my office, books upstairs behind the bathroom door, books in our bedroom...books everywhere!

The book also has its own webpage now - toeupsockbook.com. You can see photos and materials lists of all the patterns.

Last weekend, Donna and I headed for the Northwest Needle Market in Seattle, where we exhibited and I taught my toe-up sock class to a very fun group of shop owners/employees. Three of them were from the Vashton Pharmacy, which is on an island in Puget Sound. The pharmacist is also an avid knitter, so she talked her husband and business partners into letting her sell yarn! How cool is that - a pharmacy/yarn store.

I was very excited to debut the book, but never expected to sell out of three whole cases of it! We sold every copy we took with us, including the one I'd given to Donna (but hadn't yet signed). Several shops in Portland now have copies, including Twisted, Dublin Bay, All About Yarn and Close Knit (well, they'll have them after I drop them off this afternoon...). I'll be doing an informal booksigning at All About Yarn on Monday morning at 11 am, if you happen to be in the area.

The needle market was the last remaining milepost between the beginning of summer and the craziness that is going to be Sock Summit. Portland doesn't know what's coming...although they might be getting a small inkling (the mayor's got one, anyway).

Are you going to be there? Be sure to stop by Booth 815 and say hi. I probably won't be there, since my schedule is beyond crazy all week. If you want to join me in doing some fun stuff, check out our Sock Summit happenings page. Also, be sure to join us at the Ravelry meetup on Saturday night - Gardiner Yarn Works is a sponsor!

Once Sock Summit is done, there's no rest for the weary. If I survive, we're planning to head out the very next week for our annual trek to the heartland. We're stopping in Kalispell, MT, on the 16th so I can teach a toe-up workshop. If anybody lives in Billings and wants to hang out the morning of the 18th, let me know! Then we're heading to the Black Hills/Badlands and on to MN. I'm teaching at The Yarnery in St. Paul on the 22nd and will be doing a booksigning at their Friday-night knitting on the 21st. Check out the Toe-Up! events page for all the details.

Whew! And now that the weather has cooled off a bit, the kids are insisting on going outside. Which means I get to sit on the front porch and watch them. Time to get some knitting done, and I hope to see many of you next week at the big socky wonderland!

Happy place...I'm in my happy place...

So I thought maybe Twitter and Facebook would help me get things back under control. But no - I've gotten so overwhelmed that I've abandoned them AND this poor blog. I'm determined not to post yet again about how busy I am or what I have to get done. Instead, let's talk about fun stuff. Like the fact that I just planted a bunch of Russian Red Kale in the garden along with a Tarragon plant and spicy italian basil. And the fact that we have fennel coming out our ears. Boy can that stuff grow! If anyone has any great fennel recipes, please pass them along. We're totally overwhelmed. I asked our new neighbors if they liked fennel, and she was crazy enough to say "oh, yeah - I love it!" I immediately thrust two enormous plants at her with the admonition that she should be more careful about saying she'd take anything off our hands! Which reminds me...we need to bring them some eggs.

So we have new neighbors! Again. For the 4th time in 5 years (although technically the house was empty when we moved in - the kids of the former resident were fixing it up to sell it and they were in and out). These ones seem perfect - they've got 4 kids between them and the ages are really similar to Sydney & Owen. They're much more appropriate playmates than the 11-year-old who lived there before (she was very nice, but the age difference was just too much for kid play and she wasn't quite old enough to babysit...).

As summer moves right along (how in the world does time go by so fast these days?), I'm furiously working to finish up some new designs to release at Sock Summit. Ah, yes, Sock Summit, the source of so much stress and angst these past couple of weeks. The class handouts were due yesterday, and I managed to crank them out. Those slacker teachers with only one class got nothin' on me! And since you're here, reading this blog that has for all intents and purposes been abandoned, I'm going to give you a first glimpse at two of the new SS designs.

The first is truly a glimpse because I only had a toe done on the day I took photos. The stitch pattern on the foot is fun, but the crowning glory of this sock is its very unusual cuff. It's like the cuff on the Sydney sock taken to a whole 'nother level.



The yarn is the lovely tencel blend from Lavender Sheep. The colorway's going to be introduced at Sock Summit. I don't even know if I'm supposed to be showing it here, so don't tell her, okay? Be assured that it's 1000x more gorgeous in person!

Since I'm all about crazy cuffs these days and Sock Summit is all about crazy knitters, the other sock I'm going to show you is my cable coup de grace. It's called Butterfly Garden because of the butterfly cable running up the front. I adore this cable and have been trying for three years to work it into something. I finally broke down and put it on a sock (I was saving it for a sweater, but really, who am I kidding?).



So that the butterflies have something to keep them occupied, there are flowers on the back.



These are made in the very tasty Shalimar Yarns sock yarn. They'll have a booth at Sock Summit as well, and I was going to try to make a second sock so they could have a sample in their booth, but the top of the ball looks suspiciously like it has been Owenized (as in, Owen plus scissors plus yarn cake equals not fun for mommy when she suddenly finds her yarn has been cut into a gazillion pieces when she's halfway through the foot...). Plus there are only 24 hours in the day, and try as I might, I can't go without sleep.

Now I'm trying to decide if I should go upstairs and continue with the pulp novel I started last night, or if I should turn on the tv and do some knitting. It's really too late to start a movie and I hate watching network, so the novel may have it. I won't even consider continuing to sit at the computer so I can update my websites. That's just going to have to wait until tomorrow!