Back when this whole Sock Summit thing started, everybody had their thing. While everybody on the team is really invested in all aspects of the Summit, we’ve all got facets of it that really sing to them. Mine was the teachers (Okay. I think everybody was interested in the teachers). I am a knitting teacher, and I had in mind the way that I always like to be treated, and have treated them accordingly. For me it’s really about the process and techniques of knitting and who’s doing it. Tina’s special pet was the vendors. She is a vendor, she has lots of vendor experience, and the same way I have insight into the teaching experience, she’s got it going on vendor wise. She’s been a tireless advocate for all the vendors. (They got free wi-fi. If you’ve ever been a vendor at a large convention, that should impress you.) The people coming to sell yarn, the dyers who make yarn, the shops that stock yarn… not surprisingly, Tina being who she is, was all about the yarn – and especially (again, being who she is) about the dyers.
Tina loves dyeing fibre the way that I love knitting. While I was imagining all the wonderful little knitterly nuance, Tina’s been busting a move to imagine all the wonderful ways that dyers could really strut their stuff at this conference. She came up with all sorts of ways to invite them into the community and show them off. There’s the Colour me Crazy booth in the marketplace, where you can talk with dyers about who they are and what they do, and there’s the demonstration area, and where all the vendors can show whatever they like to you, and then… then there’s this.
Dye for Glory. Tina has already imagined many aspects of the Sock Summit in yarn (She has new colourways called SockGate, ST-1 and ST-2. SockGate is still cracking me up. ) and she got to thinking that this would be a fun idea for everyone. Now, my friends can tell you that I am the sort of person who, if I say “you know what would be fun” everybody runs for cover, and Rachel H gets out a clipboard. I specialize in big crazy knitting ideas, and Tina is the first friend I have ever had who does the same thing – so when she said “you know what would be fun…” and followed it with her plan for how we could have a cool on-line dyeing thing, and all the dyers who were going to have their yarn for sale at the Summit could come up with some sort of colourway, and we could put them on line and then everybody in the whole world could vote on them and look at them and see them, and we could … like PIMP their yarn all over the place and build community and show it off and really connect with people about the dyers community and c’mon… dyers influence almost everything that knitters make, they’re like… the heart of the thing and don’t you think that would be great?
When Tina said that, all I could think of was … YES. Yes. We should totally do that. Totally. Dude, we can have this huge thing and we’ll have pages and pages of yarn and people will really celebrate dyeing and …
It was about 3 hours before either one of us thought about the important stuff. What website? Who would do that? How would they do that? We would need a way to put pictures of yarn on line with all of its details. We would then need a community of knitters who could communicate how they felt about that.. .and …that sounds really hard, and it would take someone like .. maybe Casey to do that and he’s already got a job putting yarn up on Ravelry and having a community of knitters communicate about it and, really, I don’t think he’s got time to do that, which sucks, because something like Ravelry would really work…
That’s when it hit us (Actually, not really right then, but we don’t like to appear dim in public) and we dropped a note to Ravelry asking them if they could help and if they would help us host a really big yarn party, and Jess, Casey and Mary-Heather (who writes really funny emails some days) stepped right up and made a super beautiful on-line yarn party for the Sock Summit. It’s a beautiful thing, just like yarn… and we’re proud (so proud that we’re simul-blogging. Check Ravelry and Tina) to announce Sock Summit’s Dye for Glory event, brought to you by the lovely, clever and generous folks at Ravelry.
Go have a look here: Dye for Glory. It’s very cool, and there’s a brand new Ravelry thread about it here.
(Ps. Thanks Tina. Your ideas are pretty good. Just do me a favour, and slow down with them for 10 minutes.. will ya?)
(PPS:
Blanket Size Check ’09
(Thanks Joe.)
(PPPS. The blanket totally looks smaller when given to a larger person. I’m swapping my model back to smaller daughters rather than a larger husband next time. Better effect.)