Hey there!

So sorry that we left you hanging a bit.  A break from the madness was sorely needed.

Anyway, we did get a winner for the Godmother socks round.  It was Petit Noir with her Godmother & Godchild socks.  They were so sweet.  I had hoped to start the voting for the Odds and Sods but I haven’t seen many of them around.  What’s up with that?  We were really looking forward to seeing lots of different interpretations of that pattern.  Show us your socks!

Another thing that i’m sure everyone wants to see… prizes.  Some of you have posted pictures of your loot and we’re all very jealous.  Let’s see the rest of it.  This is a very timely request because, after lots of procrastinating, we’re finally working on distributing the rest of the loot.  (As much as Carole and I would love to do a little personal stash enhancement and keep it all for ourselves, that just wouldn’t be kosher)There’s plenty of cool stuff to go around and the generous folks who donated it are really excited to send it to you all so, if you haven’t won anything yet in SM3, watch your email.  We’re going to start randomly choosing names among those who haven’t won anything yet.  All we ask is that you please show us what you got!

By the way, in case you’re wondering, we have heard from a few designers with great ideas and we’re encouraged but we’re alwat=ys looking for more cool designs so - bring it on!

We’ve heard from a few people who plan on designing for SM3 but not nearly enough. All we need now is a show of hands and a general idea about what we should expect. Don’ be shy. Send us an email at sockmadness(at)gmail(dot)com if you think you might have a great idea for next year. Don’t assume that we just know you’re planning to design. We need to hear from you.

This next vote is a little late but it’s a good one. These are all very different and very strong contenders for the creative award this round.  Don’t you agreee?
Which of these Godmother Socks are your favorites?
( polls)
The voting for this round will end at 6pm on Friday, June 13th.
 

1. Handspun Godmother Socks
2. Godmother + Godchild Socks
3. Furry Dogmother Socks
4. Beaded Gypsy Dancing Socks (w/shawl)
5. Noro Godmothers

The voting for your favorite Godmother Socks will start tomorrow.  Today it’s time to talk about the designs for next year and when we need them by. 

There have been lots of great ideas discussed and it’s time to start putting them on paper.  We’re not too restrictive in terms of theme or style but we do have some requests and suggestions.

Yarn requirements – all submitted designs must be for fingering or sport weight yarn.  This year one design used lace weight but it was an unusual case and held double throughout so that it came close to a fingering weight yarn.  The most important thing to note is that socks using DK or Worsted weight yarn don’t work for us and as lovely as the pattern may be, we just can’t use them.  They’d be too quick.  We also recognize that buying yarn for 7 spairs of socks, sight unseen is difficult enough without having to buy a broad range of yarns.  For the reasons – fingering or sportweight yarn only please.

What we look for – something interesting.  We have yet to see the dreaded intarsia design or one that uses an unusual architecture like a sideways sock or a Cat Bordhi type sock but we’re open to it.  We are  also open to any pattern that will introduce something new and exciting.  Socks with stories go over well as do socks that include an unexpected curve ball.  Asymmetry would be good. Socks that have patterning  with different intervals or that changes in some way as the sock progresses. There are many patterns where one motif is repeated throughout the length of the sock.  These are lovely but unless they possess a twist that will make our knitters gasp they are unlikely to work in SM3.  In short – shock us!  Give us a pattern that will have the players quaking in their comfy knitting spots and you’ve got a winner.  Just remember – it’s got to look cool.  Weird for weird’s sake isn’t good either. 

Are you inspired and ready to put pen to paper?  Ok then.  We’d like to see your patterns by September 1, 2008.  Some of you saw my post on my personal blog yesterday and  know that I’m working on another big project right now.  By December and January I suspect that SM3 won’t be my main priority so if this is going to work we’re going to need the patterns well in advance so that we’ll have time to test them well and set the roster. 

Please spread the word.  I know that there are places where designers discuss such things.  We’d be really grateful  to anyone who helps get the word out.  Every year there are people who come to us after the Madness is underway and want to know how to submit a design.  It would be great if we could reach them now.

Let us know if you even think that you may have a design for us.  If our inbox is too quiet it’ll freak us out.  Remember how close we came to scrapping SM2 due to lack of designs?  Please let’s avoid the panic stage this year.  Let’s raise the bar and make SM3 even better than the first 2!

The voting for the Woven Cabled Eyelet socks is over and it’s another tie (1 vote difference really doesn’t count in my book).  Can you believe that.  Apparently you were equally impressed by those pretty blue socks from Fast & Furious Knitting as you were with the highly modified versions posted by Cornflake.  Congrats to both of you, you’ll be hearing from us really soon since we’re finally just about caught up with giving the prizes away. 

Speaking of the prizes - there are still plenty of them left to give away so don’t go anywhere.  I hope to start the voting for the Godmother Socks on Thursday so if you have a great pair that’s not posted yet then please do so right away.  Anyone with a fabulous idea about how to display theirs should get on that too.  You may consider the nominations on this open. 

Even after we award prizes to the fastest knitters and those who received creative awards we’ll still have pleanty of stuff to spread around so keep watching this blog and your email.  The plan is to get a little random action going on so that we can spread the SM2 love around far and wide.

MKSmiles!

  Here are the socks that won Sock Madness 2.

Aren’t they lovely?   
So many of you have been captivated by this pattern and we hope that you all will continue knitting these socks because we want to see them.  In this pattern, the yarn really gets highlighted and there are so many different ways that you can go with it.  Check this pair out.

These are from Bambino, the second place finisher.  She used solids. I never even considered that but look at how wonderful they are.  It’s interesting to note that, although the colors used for the triangles on each sock are different, because the foot and cuff matches on both socks, these totally look like a pair.  Doesn’t it make you want to try a pair and see how it works out for you?

Please don’t go anywhere yet.  There are still socks to vote on and lots of prizes to award.  You should also expect to start seeing more information about SM3 really soon.
 

Are you ready? Have you collected all those random scraps of sock yarn from all of their hiding places?  Ok, then here’s the sock for the final round of Sock Madness 2. Before you all go nuts - it’s a lot simpler than it looks. Just take a deep breath or 2 and it’ll be fine. If you look at the sock for a minute you can see that it’s really pretty simple once you get the strips of triangles made and put together.

The other thing about this sock that I should mention right up front is that it’s not the usual fit. The leg part is not going to be snug on most of us but, due to the construction, it’s not slouchy at all. It stands up and it looks great. The foot on the other hand it a classic sock fit. It’s unusual but it works really well and it’s totally cool.

In this post you can see two versions of the sock. Mine used 2 variegated yarns - one more colorful than the other. I think it works really well. The designer used a solid for most of the sock and made the triangles of many different yarns for a patchwork effect. Very differnt from my version and also totally fun.

Speaking of the designer for this round - it’s another returnee from Sock Madness One. Tricia Weatherston is actually the designer who gave us the cuffed sock from last year. That’s the sock that inspired Mtn. Mom’s Godmother Socks. Isn’t it neat the way that worked out?

Here are a few words from Tricia on the inspiration for this sock pattern.

I don’t know how other folk come up with designs for socks or other garments, but for me finished socks come unbidden into my mind. Some I sort out in my head and they never need to get knit. Having a ton of leftover sock yarns, this one needed to be knit. Having a clear picture in my head doesn’t always help once I pick up needles. I had been doing a lot of mitred/modular knitting, and I knew that I should be able to flip triangles back and forth to create a strip. I also knew, having knit some of the captivating modular designs of Red Bird Knits that a sock doesn’t have to be cast on and always knit in a tube. Flat things can be made into tubes, and with a little picking up and knitting, 3 needle bind offs and a wee seam you have a tube to build the rest of your sock. 

My first effort to accomplish this was truly awful. It was a mitred triangle but there was no way I was going to be able to coherently write it down and noone in their right mind or even their SM mind would want to knit it. If I didn’t have this sock in my head taunting me and the desire to submit a design to SM, I would have called it quits at this point. Instead, I hunted out my Module Magic book and sure enough what I wanted were equilateral triangles. Once I knew what kind of triangles, I could work out how many to fit around my leg and what the ideal size of triangle was. Originally the triangles were going to be much smaller but fortunately for you, even my love of fiddly knitting refused to make the triangles smaller. Even in SM knitting there are limits. Through all of this I kept thinking just because I can doesn’t mean I should. It became a discouraging mantra. I mean seriously, why would anyone want to knit these socks. One day , this past November I was reading the yarn harlot and her words leapt out at me”Doing something in a beguiling or particularly graceful way matters too.” If beguiling matters, or devilish as some of you are fond of saying, then I needed to finish the sock and submit it to SM. Lots of things got in my way family, Christmas, other deadlines, but in the end I submitted them the day before the much extended deadline for SM.

Thank you Carole and Hillary for your patience and such a great idea to start with.

Enjoy!

Tricia (Zemy on ravelry)

Tomorrow we’ll release the final pattern for SM2. I’m happy to hear that many of you are preparing for it and so is the designer. We’re all eagerly anticipating the interpretations of the pattern. It’s very different from the other patterns and we hope that it adds yet another dimension to your sock knitting.

Today we’re opening the voting on the socks produced during the optional round. Many of them were highly modified and, as I went through the pictures, I noticed that some people mentioned using skills and techniques from earlier rounds on this sock. It seems like the perfect time to formally launch a discussion of designs for next year.

There have been threads where some of you have let your imaginations run wild thinking up ideas for SM3. It’s time now to start putting some of them down on paper. Although the due date for SM3 designs has not been set yet, it’s fair to say that it’ll be earlier than before. It’s our hope that many of you will start working on your designs while the spark of inspiration is burning bright. There will be three (or 4) of us testing the socks out and setting the roster but at least 2 of us have other major events going on towards the end of this year or early next.

It’s not too soon to let us know that you want to contribute a design. Just send us and email with a brief description of what you’re thinking of. Someone had suggested an ongoing thread on Ravelry (and on flickr too if desired) where the designers can support one another in their creative endeavours. Great idea! For the record, designers have been players in the past and this will still be the policy. For the record, no designer has made it to the finals yet

On to the voting for the optional round. The winner of the creative award for the Hippy Ripply Retro round was UC Bear with her Peace themed display. There were no creative shots this round but there were plenty of very different versions of the pattern. We said that you should feel free to modify at will and you did. Voting for this round will end on Monday, June 2nd at 6pm our time. There is still lots of time to express yourselves with the Godmother’s socks so please do. We’ll try to start that voting in about a week.
Woven Cable Eyelet Socks and Beyond. Which is your favorite?
( polls)

1. Green Woven Cable Eyelet Socks
2. X Marks the Foot
3. Lunar Zazzle Woven Cable Eyelet Socks
4. Woven Cable Eyelet Socks with ribbed foot
5. Bright Woven Cabled Eyelet Socks

This was such a hard poll to put together. We’ll leave it up until Monday night at 6pm. It’s my hope and plan to post the poll for the Cabled Eyelet socks the following day so please help me out but posting some great shots and nominating some of the socks for us.
Which picture says Hippy Ripply Retro to you? (Or which one is just plain pretty?)
( surveys)

1.Noro Ripples
2. Peace ~ Hippy Ripply Retro Socks
3. Bright Ripples
4. Arugula Ripples
5. Mismatched Ripples
6. Happy Ripply
7. Red Brick Hippy
8. Hippy Ripply Anklets
9. Ludicrous Ripples
10. Ripply Retro Socks

The schedule announced in the last post has been revised slightly in order to accomodate the schedules of the 4 finalists. The next and last pattern will be released on May 29th instead of the 22nd. We hope that it will be an exciting round.
In the meantime we will continue wrapping up outstanding business from previous rounds. The poll for the Hippy Ripply Retro Socks will go up over the weekend so there is still time to post and submit great pictures.

We didn’t forget about you all and we were not intentionally keeping you in suspense. The truth is that the awarding of prizes and polling for favorites has fallen woefully behind and we were trying to come up with a catch up plan.

Based upon our need to catch up and other small issues we’ve arrived at a release date for the next pattern of Thursday May 22 – probably in the afternoon. It is a little bit of a delay but we know that there are many of you still working on socks from earlier rounds and this will give you a little extra time to free up some needles.

The specs for this round are:

Needles – US 1.5 (2.5mm) I used dpns for parts of the sock and a circ for another, you may choose dpns and straights. It’s hard to say except that you should have a bunch of needles in the right size on hand.

Yarn - 225 meters of solid fingering weight and odds and ends with none of them being less than 4 yards long. This is also open to interpretation based upon the yarn you have on hand. I couldn’t find my odds and ends so I used a highly variegated in place of the odds and ends and a darker, less variegated yarn for the rest. Play with the combinations and have fun.

Gauge – 9 st/inch

As many have surmised, there will be 4 knitters competing in this round to be the ultimate winner. It seemed easier and more representative this way.

While you’re waiting for this round to start, please remember to vote for your favorite from round 4. The voting is still open but it closes in just a few hours.

I’m also looking for nominations for Round 5. Lets see those Hipy Ripply Retro Socks! I’ll get that poll up on Friday and it ought to be open until Monday evening.

By the way, if you receive a prize please show it off to us. You know how we all love Yarn P*rn!