Summer of Socks 2007

Can you believe it? The Summer of Socks 2007 is officially over and fall is here (not that you could tell by the weather here in central NJ)! It seems like just yesterday we were all gearing up for this and now it’s done. It’s been an awesome summer for socks. I mean, look at all the beautiful socks in the Flickr group! There are definitely going to be many happy warm feet this coming winter!

There are so many people to thank that went into making this along a success. First, I must thank Risa for sharing her technological prowess with all of us. If not for her automated sign up form and willingness to field several frantic phone call from me at the beginning, we wouldn’t all be here! She also made it possible for all of you to get the winning pattern from the Design Contest. Thank you so much Risa!

Next I must thank all our amazing sponsors. Their faith and trust in me and their generosity to everyone involved in this along was just overwhelming. When the e-mails first started coming in, I was totally overwhelmed. Thank you to all of you for sharing your creativity and amazing products with the winners in this along!

I actually got to knit 7 pairs of socks myself this summer! There is absolutely no way that would have been possible without Beth and all of our blog readers! Beth was an organizational wizard and the rest of our blog readers were on the ball and ready to go when we needed them. They each donated their own time out of their busy days and made a huge contribution to the along. Thank you all so much! Not having to worry about that part of the behind the scenes operations was such a relief and a help to me, I can not tell you!

I’d also like to thank all of you that participated in each of the contests. I hope you found them fun and interesting and maybe even a challenge.

Last but certainly not least, I want to thank YOU! If you are reading this or your name is over there on the sidebar, you were an integral part of this along, no matter how much or how little you participated. Everyone who followed along and/or participated helped to make the Summer of Socks what it was. There wouldn’t have been much of an along with out you!

Finally, we’ve come to the moment that many of you have been waiting for. The announcement of the winners of the Most Socks Contest!

First though, I need to get some bad news out of the way. Unfortunately, only three people participated in the Crochet division of this contest. Sadly, that was not enough entries for the contest to run as planned. However, our generous sponsors came through again and agreed that the three participants should get something for their effort. Therefore Zuleika, Dawn and Andrea will each be receiving a skein of yarn as a consolation prize and a thank you for participating. The remaining skeins of yarn that were tagged for this contest were redistributed to the prize pool for the other contests. Thanks so much ladies and I’m sorry that we weren’t able to have the contest as scheduled!

In much better news, the Knitting Division was a huge success! We had plenty of participants and many wonderful pairs of socks were knit. As many of you have no doubt noticed, there were two knitters that jumped out to an early lead in this contest. Before we knew it they had completed 20 pairs of socks! Then 30! Then more! In the last couple of weeks, they’ve been knitting it out, head to head, back and forth. It was anyone’s guess who would win. Only in the last few days did it start to become clear. The magic number for one knitter was 37. That was it, she just couldn’t go on. That amazing knitter who is the runner up in this contest is

Cookie!!

37 pairs of socks is an incredible feat and despite not going home with the grand prize, Cookie will be receiving one prize skein of yarn for her efforts. After knitting that many pairs of socks, I couldn’t let her go home empty handed!

That means our winner with an unbelievable total of 42 pairs of socks goes to

Jeannie!!!!!!!

I have to admit when Jeannie took the lead early on I didn’t think she would last. I’d seen it before, start out strong but run out of steam in the end. Boy was I wrong!! Jeannie did keep going strong, day after day, gorgeous pair after gorgeous pair of socks. I am a pretty dedicated sock knitter, but I don’t think I’ve even knit 42 pairs of socks total so far in my life, much less one summer! Jeannie, congratulations to you!! You are an inspiration to us all and you are a very deserving winner in this contest. Now go rest those hands!

Thank you again to everyone for a great summer. I’ve been asked by several people if there will be another along next summer and right now, I just can’t be sure. If there is, I’ll be sure to post about it here when it happens. This blog will remain online until further notice so you can still come back here to reference some of the things we’ve talked about this summer. I will however, be closing the comments in the next couple of weeks (I sure don’t need the spam!).

In addition, I would like to encourage you all to please e-mail me at Jessica [at] zarzuelaknitsandcrochets [dot] com if you have any comments about the along, or suggestions for improvement in case I decide to do this again next summer. There is always room for improvement and I am very open to any ideas you may have!

Finally, if you are attending the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival next month, I hope you’ll stop me and say hello! I would love to meet you in person!

Thanks again for a great summer everyone!

Happy Sock Making!!

I hope you all enjoyed the Caption contest that came to a close last night. Once again the voting was very close but we definitely have a winner. The runners up (in no particular order) were:

George swears by his Cherry DPNs, however, I contend that magic loop will bring us into the next millennium. - by KC

“Hey…….I thought only my wife knew what size weenie warmer I wore.” - by Jude

“Look, I’ve already told you: I’m not signing ANYthing until Ben teaches me his awesome short-row heel. Yes, I _am_ serious, I’ve got the sock right here…” - by Tina

“Give me Magic Loop or give me death!” - by Cookie

and

“Are you getting gauge?” - by HeatherL

And the winner of the Caption Contest and the lovely Merino/Cashmere sock yarn from Perchance to Knit is:

“Knit if by land, purl if by sea.” - by Phoebe!

Congratulations to all the winners! Ladies, please be sure to send me your snail mail addresses ASAP so I can get your prizes in the mail tomorrow morning.

I’d also like to let you all know that Jude is making her SOS Design Contest entry available for free! Go check out her blog for details!!

And just a quick reminder that the along ends tonight at midnight! Get your entries in for the most socks contest by then.

I’ll have a wrap up of the along and the announcement of the Most Socks Contest winner this weekend.

And for one last time…

Sock ON!!!

Thank you again to everyone who entered the Design Contest! There were some very interesting designs and I really wish everyone could come away with a prize.

I’d also like to thank the two judges besides myself that helped choose a winner. Wendy of Wendy Knits and Lisa from Wildhorse Farm Designs, thank you so much for the time and thought that you put into judging! As you all know, both of these ladies are very well respected designers, and I really appreciate them lending their expertise to this contest.

In addition, another big thank you to all the sponsors who have donated a prize that will be used for this contest. Without you all, none of this would have been possible!

The Design Contest was judged on a number of points. First and foremost, entries had to conform to the guidelines laid out in the contest rules (qualities such as size, type of yarn, etc.). In addition, the entries were judged on their creativity, the attractiveness of the finished product (the actual sock) and several other factors. Each judge gave each of these factors a numerical rating which was then averaged with the scores of the other judges and then totaled. The pattern with the highest score was chosen as the winner. And that winner was….

MEADOWLANDS SOCKS by INA!!!!

Ina found inspiration in the tall grasses characteristic of the New Jersey Meadowlands. Her sock pattern is based on the Cedar architecture by Cat Bordhi, who graciously gave her permission for its use in this pattern. The pattern is innovative, attractive and well written. It includes detailed written instructions along with charts and diagrams. I think it will be a challenging and interesting pattern to knit and I can’t wait to get a pair on my needles! Congratulations Ina for creating an inspiring pattern that I’m sure we will all enjoy!

As a member of this along, each of you will be receiving the pattern for Meadowlands in your inbox in the next few days. I will post a notice here to let you all know when the pattern has been sent.

IMPORTANT: For those of you who entered this contest and did not win, I’d like to assure you all that all copies of your patterns that were sent to myself and the other two judges have been erased from our computers. Many of you might consider submitting your designs to other contests or publications and I would encourage you to do that! Your designs are safely your own and will not be appearing anywhere else without your permission.

Thanks again everyone! I hope you’ll all join me in sending Ina a big congratulations on her winning pattern!

Sock ON!!!

Sorry for the delay in posting this week’s winner everyone! Life has gotten the best of me lately. Our winner this week is:

Susanna!!!

With the along winding down I thought some of you would like an inexpensive way to display your new socks. Susanna had this to say about her link:

Sock blockers are a great way to display, photograph or present your finished pair of socks but they can be expensive. Maryann of Little Sesame Knits has posted a great tutorial for do-it-yourself sock blockers that are easy to make and can cost as little as one dollar! All you need is a plastic placemat, some cardboard, pencil and sharp scissors. She even provides a PDF template that’s sized for US letter of A4 paper sizes. Super simple!

Congrats Susanna! We’ll all have nicely displayed socks thanks to your link!

Please note: This will be the final Weekly Link contest. Interest in this contest seems to be very low at this point, so I’ve decided not to do it again. Instead, I’m cooking up an idea for a new contest for the end of the along, which I’ll be telling you about very soon.

Stay tuned! And as always,

Sock ON!!

We have a winner in the Socks on Vacation Contest! This was a very close race, all the way up to the end. In fact, the first and second place winners were only separated by two votes!! Amazing!

Once again, I’d like to thank all of you who took the time to participate in this contest. You came up with some very creative and beautiful pictures of your socks in many different environments for us all to enjoy and it was a lot of fun seeing where you’ve been with your socks.

So without further ado, our winning picture is:

#25

Which belongs to Jeanie, the traveling knitter!!! Jeanine has won all of the amazing yarnie goodness listed for this contest on the Prize page for her picture from a gorgeous area of the Canadian Rockies. Congratulations Jeanie!! And thanks for the great picture.

And I’ve made an executive decision and decided that since the voting was so close, our runner up shouldn’t go away empty handed. Therefore, a set of stitch markers will be going to the owner of picture #13:

Which was submitted by Judy!!! Judy’s picture was just too funny! I will be traveling to Newport in the future myself, and I know I’m just going to have to find the place where this picture was taken.

Thanks again to everyone who participated and everyone who voted. I hope you all enjoyed this contest as much as I did.

Sock ON!!!

Can you believe it? We’ve only got one month to go in the Summer of Socks! My summer has definitely flow by, how about yours? You all continue to turn out some really lovely socks and I hope you are all continuing to have fun as you participate in the along in various ways. From here on out, things start winding down (you know you only have until tonight at 10pm to get those Vacation pictures in, right?!) and we’ll be having all sorts of winners being announced, and maybe even another surprise contest. You just never know what will happen!

But back to the matter at hand. Our link this week is somewhat related to a new book that seems to be quite a hit in the world of sock knitting. So without further ado, this week’s winner is:

Linda!!!

Linda submitted a link to a number of videos that Cat Bordhi herself has put together addressing some popular sock knitting issues. Here’s what Linda wrote about her link:

I was about ready to give up on the toe up cast on techniques - until I watched the video by Cat Bordhi. She has such a pure way of teaching and helping you understand. I now know what I was doing wrong and am able to continue to do my first toe up sock, which was one of my goals when I joined the Summer of Socks group. I love these videos and will use them alot. There are many other videos she has done on different techniques at this link, so I think this will help lots of my knitting friends.

I watched a couple of these videos myself and not only are they informative and instructive in a very easy to understand way, Ms. Borhdi also infuses them with a singular wit that would make learning anything fun! I’m sure those who are new to sock knitting and those who have been at it for a while alike will find something interesting and valuable from these short, free videos.

Thanks again for the great links everyone! Keep them coming!

Over the weekend I’ll be working to get the Vacation pictures put together on a page and get the voting system set up. Be sure to check back so you can help select the winner!

Sock On!!

Thanks so much to all 38 of you who entered this contest. It was meant to be fun and simple and there really weren’t any “right” answers as long as you basically answered the question. All entries that I received were included in the drawing. Here’s a few highlights from the answers I received.

1. A podcast that talks about socks.

There were several different answers here, but the one I specifically had in mind was Socks in the City. If you haven’t checked it out yet, make sure you do! All socks all the time. What’s not to love?!

4. A pattern for something inspired by a sock.

Many of you found this one to be a bit difficult, but you managed to find an answer. There were of course, patterns and pictures of Sock Monkey’s, but there were also gloves, and scarves.

5. A picture of yet-to-be-knit blue sock yarn.

I admit, this was totally self serving. Anyone who’s looked at my blog knows what my favorite color is, and you all definitely sent me some serious eye candy for this one!

7. A picture of a sock in the process of being knit that includes a cat and/or dog.

Many of your pictures featured one the knitblog world’s most favorite pets, Lucy! She’s definitely one of the most photogenic animals I’ve seen! But this one just made me laugh and laugh.

9. A picture of something (not yarn) used to make socks.

These answers were very creative. Some you had to look at pretty closely, some were a bit of a shock, some have been around for a while, but all were pretty interesting.

10. A picture of a sock with a refreshing summer beverage.

There were a lot of socks with beer - I wonder if there’s a reason for that? I also tried to help y’all out and some of you wondered if you got extra points for sucking up (sorry! No way!).

In the end, I hope you enjoyed this contest as much as I did.

And now to announce that our winner is (drum roll please…):

Yarnatic!!

She will be sent the two beautiful yarns that Cynthia offered up specifically for this contest. Congratulations!!

But wait… there’s more!! Since our sponsors for the along were so generous with the number of stitch markers that were donated and far surpassed our needs for the Weekly Link Contest, I let the random number generator also pick two runners up! And the winners are:

Jen and Kelly!!

Congratulations to all our winners!!

And just a quick reminder, the deadline for the Vacation Contest is this Wednesday! Get your entries in now!

As expected, this week’s winner announcement is a bit late, and I do apologize for that. We had a nice crop of entries this week (although not nearly as many as the previous week) and I think I’ve chosen a unique and important link this time. Without further ado, this week’s winner is:

Karen Jo Seattle!!!

Karen Jo reminds us to take care of our hands so we can continue knitting and crocheting those beautiful socks! She writes:

The site linked shows photos of hand and wrist stretches. Now that we’ve all spent several weeks knitting away at a small gauge, we need to give our hands a break. I do finger cascades and open-hand stretches at least once a day when I knit. I’ve had some bad bouts of tendinitis in the past and these really help to prevent recurrences.

I originally found this site on Margene’s blog. I’m a nurse (not currently working as one) and thought this one of the better sites I’d seen for quick ideas.

As someone who has experienced hand trouble myself, I thought this was a great site and a perfect time to remind you as you race for the finish line in this along to be kind to yourself! We certainly wouldn’t want anyone to be injured after three months of high stakes sock making. Remember, pain is your body trying to tell you something. Taking a short break, a stretch, and maybe a deep breath can save you a lot of trouble down the road. Thanks for giving us all this great reminder Karen Jo!

Be sure to get your links in for next week’s drawing ASAP! And keep your eye on the blog for the announcement of the Scavenger Hunt winner within the next couple of days. Thank you so much to everyone who entered that contest! It was fun to look at your links and I’ll be sharing some of my favorites with you all when I announce the winner. Stay tuned and as always….

Sock On!!!

Welcome to another edition of the Weekly Link Contest winner report! The competition was especially tough this time around. Since we couldn’t have a winner last week, many people decided to step up and sent in some really wonderful links, which was great. It made the job of narrowing it down so tough that I decided to award two prizes this week to make up for the last. Admittedly, this weeks winners were chosen with those of you who might be entering the Design Contest in mind. That deadline is fast approaching (where has the summer gone?!) and these links may help you put the finishing touches on your entries.

So without further ado, our first winner is:

Ina!!

Ina sent in a link to the Knitting Chart Maker by Jacquie. Here’s what she wrote about it:

This boon to impecunious designers and occasional charters replaces tedious pencil and graph paper and renders erasers obsolete. Stitches for purl-knit patterns, lace, or cables can be shown at their true height:width ratio, with rows numbered for flat or round knitting. Other helpful features include copy, mirror image, tink, frog, resize, and stitch tally. Charts may be saved and re-used. The interface is intuitive, easy to use, and compares well with expensive chart software or improvised spreadsheet charts.

This really is a wonderful tool that I can definitely see using in any future design projects I might dream up for myself. I will warn you all that you should have Java installed on your computer in order for this to work properly (this isn’t a problem for most computers/browsers, but worth noting). My home computer didn’t like the site at first, but once I got Java set up everything was fine.

And our second winner is:

Phoebe!!

Phoebe’s link is going to help us all take better pictures (scroll down to “Life in Germany”) of our projects by showing us how to make an inexpensive light box. Here’s what she wrote about her link:

I thought that I would pick as my link this week the show notes from a recent episode of knitters uncensored…within the notes are tips of how to photograph yarn, and your knitting from one of the hosts, Elem. I always struggle with the best way to show off the true colors in my skeins as well as the stitch detail in my projects. Elem elaborates within the show about the merits of using a light box and how to create your own, inexpensively.

She also included a link to some of Elem’s pics which demonstrate the magnificent results that can be gotten using this great tool. Elem just happens to also be a member of this along (everybody wave hi!), so a big thank you to him for posting this information for all of us to learn from. Go check out his podcast if you haven’t already done so too!

So there you have it! Another week and some more interesting stuff for you to check out. There really were so many great links this week. I hope those of you that haven’t won yet will continue to submit. Making my job hard is a good thing!

I should also note that next week’s contest winner may not get posted on Wednesday, but we will have the contest, so get those entries in!

I’d also like to remind you about the Scavenger Hunt deadline which is coming up next week. I’m getting some really great entries and many creative answers to the questions! Make sure you check out the comments on that post. As people have been asking questions, I’ve been answering them there.

Until next time - Sock On!!!

Sorry this is a bit late this week everyone. Life has been conspiring against me.

Can you believe we are 5 weeks in already? I certainly can’t. I guess time just flies when you’re knitting and crocheting socks! It’s time for another weekly winner and this week it is…

Akaijen!!!

She submitted this link for a great sock tutorial and this is what she had to say about it:

Silver has two great sock tutorials, but I found her “Two Toe-Up Socks on One Circular Needle” (aka magic loop) tutorial to be like a present from the gods. Her step-by-step instructions sit along side lots of clear photos to help you along the way. She even includes tips (like when to make your stitches really tight), and little words of encouragement at points when you might be feeling apprehensive.

I’d never knit a pair of socks in my life when I whipped out Silver’s tutorial. She demystifies the whole process so that even an abject sock newbie can learn the technique.

When you visit this site, make sure you scroll down the page to find the links to the tutorials. You’ll be able to get them in html OR pdf as you please. The pictures are definitely well done and this will be a great source for those of you who are still a bit new to the sock game and/or want to try your hands at two at once.

I’d also like to add a quick congrats to Bookwoman who was our 15th entry in the Knitting Division of the Most Socks Contest! Thanks to her, this division of the contest WILL be awarded! She’s won a set of stitch markers as a thank you.

I’d also like to remind everyone that you should all really check in on the discussions going on in the Flickr group. Some very interesting stuff happening over there!

Keep the links coming everyone! More fun and surprises in store just as soon as I can get my act together.