…that the past week or so would be prime blogging time.

I mean, look - the pressure should have been off, right? It’s almost two weeks since I back-burnered the backbreaker project. I have my wonderful Tserf doing most of the heavy lifting of pattern printing and kit assembly. I should have had time on my hands to report on my doings. And there have been plenty of doings to report about.

But somehow, it didn’t add up that way. I guess it’s yet another illustration of work expanding to overfill the resources allotted, which is also partly a by-product of the fact that when the resources increase (Tserf! Pixie! New Packaging and Branding! Big Planz!), so do the expectations. Or to be really original about it - I’m betting my reach will always exceed my grasp. The day it doesn’t… well, that’s how you’ll know I’m dead, right? Right.

So I’ve been crazy-busy with the doing stuff and crazy-bad with the not taking pictures, and now I’m crazy-fried because hey! all of a sudden Rhinebeck is TOMORROW and I’m doing the last-minute errands and printing the last-minute signage and making the last-minute lists and figuring out how to sardine all the stuff into the car (sort of a thousand-clowns operation in reverse)… and for the blog? I got nothin’. Nothin’ but announcements and subject headings. I’ll make it up to you soon, though, I swear.

Reminder of the Main Events

Rhinebeck.

This weekend.

New York Sheep & Wool Festival.

Holiday Yarns (formerly Vancalcar Acres), Building 26, Space D.

Be there, or… miss out on the fun.

They vend by day, they party by night: this year we are co-sponsoring (!!!!) the Ravelry party on Saturday night, and contributing some nice squishy door prizes.

During the day, lots of cool and interesting stuff in the booth. Yarn! Fiber! A visit from Dolores! New spindles! New kits! As I mentioned the other day, we are releasing:

		THE NINE TAILORS
		TURANDOT
		THE ICEMAN COMETH

Also… at long last… by popular demand… this:

The Vintage Leaf Kit!

It includes the pattern not only for the original vine leaf from the Vintage sock but also for its big brother, a scaled-up and more detailed version of the same shape. Plus four skeins of Jennifer’s Flock Sock yarn in assorted leaf colors, each skein enough for about a dozen little leaves.

(And yes, eventually the leaf pattern and its imaginary variations will go PDF. But not yet.)

We will also be offering sets of change-ringing bell markers to accompany the Nine Tailors kit. Bell markers like these -

- only with bells like these:

And here, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go a little pedantic and apparently non-commercial and explain a little bit about the whole bell marker thing. You don’t need the bell markers to knit the tsock. (Or the Tsweater, but let’s not even talk about that right now, though the principle is the same.) You can knit the bell patterns from the charts. You can knit the bell patterns from the directions. OR you can be crazy like me and knit the bell patterns from place notation. And even then you don’t actually NEED the markers… they just make it a little easier to keep track of where you are.

Sorry, does this sound like I don’t want to sell you bell markers? On the contrary, I’d love to sell them to you. But only if you actually have a use for them.

Knitting change-ringing patterns from place notation isn’t really complicated, but it requires a slightly deeper understanding of change-ringing than you’d need if you were just following a regular knitting chart. It isn’t for everybody, but it should be interesting to some - you know who you are. And the pattern does include a fairly detailed primer on the concepts - enough to work from even if you are not a ringer.

From a practical standpoint, why would you knit from place notation? Mostly for portability and compactness. That’s what I love about it - that and the elegance. I could carry four to eight pages of charts around with me for every ringing method I knit… or I could carry the One. Line. That. Says. It. All.

Four pages of charts… or this:

34.x.34.1.x.2.x.1.x2.x.1.x.2.x - le 1

which contains everything you need to know about Kent Treble Bob Major, once you know how to read it. For me, that’s a no-brainer.

(If I were talking about the Tsweater, which of course I’m not, I would tell you at this point that unless I can come up with some other brilliant shorthand the SIX different maximus methods I’m using will probably amount to some horrendous volume of charting - I’m guessing something like 50 pages’ worth. Compare that to the single index card I actually worked from, with its six lines of place notation? Again - no-brainer.)

So that’s the deal on the bell markers. They’re cute, and I love them, and they have plenty of possible uses beyond the purpose for which I originally developed them. So by all means buy them! But don’t feel compelled to own a set just because you’re knitting the tsock. ‘K?

That’s all I can think of at the moment, Rhinebeck-wise. I will have the Wreck of the Hesperus Tsweater and other WIPs there with me and if you come to the booth I will be more than happy to discuss necklines and techniques and aspect ratios with you till we’re blue in the face. Otherwise, I swear on a stack of the writings of Elizabeth Zimmermann that I will blog about it in detail as soon as I finish recovering from (and reporting on) the weekend, with lots and lots of pictures and explanations and plans.

Other pending post-Rhinebeck blog matters:

- My impulsive flying visit to SOAR; the people I met there; the credit card accidents I had there and the spinning that is resulting.

- A birthday party I gave a few days ago.

- The next Club Tsock, complete with yarn saga (or yarn yarn).

- The reveal of the Tslightly Tsecret Tsock mentioned in the previous entry.

- Um… um… several other things, but I can’t remember what. Where DID I put that list?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Sock Designs, Nine Tailors, Turandot, TsockFlock Club, Bloggerei, Techniques, Change-ringing, Iceman Cometh, Vintage, Leaves, Belshazzar's Nemesis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.