stitch marker

piper

Piper is new here.

And she is such a dog. Yesterday, all before 10 am, she dug a hole under the fence and escaped, knocked over and stole the garbage, drank from the toilet and ate a shoe. Go girl.

perfect storm come & gone

It is over. Well, a couple things are.

The sock summit was, because there is no other way to describe it, large. Actually it was not as huge as I expected. After being to TNNA, the marketplace map's resemblance to the Death Star did not humble me. The convention center was pleasingly full and not overcome. (Except if you were trying to buy $8 nondescript yakisoba on a paper plate at noon.)

But it was a great amount of largeness, enough to be full of fantastic, intelligent, artistic and funny people everywhere. I think the combined creativity and skill there could have formed a singularity. Somehow we survived. After emailing with her for my new book, I was fortunate to meet Meg Swanson in person. (She is so beautiful it should be illegal.) WonderMike was there. (No, not the rapper from The Sugar Hill gang.) Mike is among the top 1, 2, 5? persons I have ever met through this Internet thing and it was a treat to hang out with him.  It's always quite a pleasure to see the Lantern Moon people, and they gave out cute tattoos. And someone told me they saw a knitter asking Barbara Walker what she thought about a particular cast-on and Barbara replied "I don't think about knitting anymore." Awesome.

My favorite part of the whole storm was the yarn tasting lunch by Deb at Mt. Hood Fiber. And an after-party at Stevanie's house late on Saturday. Places where I could really talk to people who weren't working it.

The Abundant Yarn booth was beautiful and lush with a ton of pretty yarn. I wandered around a few times and bought only two things, some sparkly acid green Dream in Color yarn and a skein of the deeply colored, gorgeous Twilight colorway from Becoming Art. Among a tempest of gorgeous colorways hers stood out.

Thankfully I didn't have a dime to my name that day.

Oh, the blanket raffles and silent auction were the result of an incredible 450+ squares from all over the world. We raised hundreds of dollars for Doctors Without Borders. Frankly, the amount (about $600) was less than I hoped and far far less than what our work was worth. But once I was there at the summit I realized there was literally no way to stand out among the numerous auctions and drawings that went on practically every minute. The blankets were gorgeous and we are making a significant donation. Thank you for being a part of it.

I loved the sock summit desperately and am also glad it's finished. It was hard on all of my friends. Getting ready for this summit was a task of heroic energy and fortitude, several people dyeing every day from 7 am until late in the night only to do it again in the morning. (It reminded me of an old comedy routine. Was it Eddie Murphy? Where instead of walking uphill to school both ways, the kids had to get up before they went to bed and clean the lake they lived in and then walk uphill to school both ways.) The summit itself was like a vacation compared to the work that was put into it.

And then, nearly the minute the summit was over, the Abundant Yarn shop closed. There's not much I can say about my feelings at this time.

My family and I are happy to be back together on the "off" days and new things will surely develop now. More than anything, perhaps the sock summit was an incubator of deep, rich new ideas and plans.

Fun times.

this town is our town/

It is so glamorous/
I bet you'd live here if you could/
and be one of us

I'm sure you've all heard a quillion times that this town is hot this week. 106 yesterday at our front door. That's 314 Kelvin for those sort of geeks. People are wearing foil hats, and not because of visitors. People are hatching schemes about which windows to open, which to close, where to point the fans. We're going to the mall for the first time in a decade. Suddenly IKEA looks like a rare steak.

There's nothing to do here but melt and get ready for Sock Summit. I'm going tonight for more sewing at Abundant Yarn and finding out about the incredible amount of dyeing and planning left to do.

I'll dream tonight of ice and snow. That colorway above is delta vega, after the icy world with red monster in Star Trek.



Mmmmmm, ice.

my new hero

Photo by Sarah Gilbert

Next to me on the bus, a Japanese guy writing code on his little phone. It had a plastic skin with flamingos on it. He was wearing a cowboy shirt.