Rockin' Sock Club Blog

We are all scheduled to ship out our first 2015 package tomorrow. PDF's will be up tomorrow. We will be printing the mailing labels today and stuffing everything into those lovely tyvek shipping envelopes and then, my firends, they will be zipping their merry way on to you!

Yay!!

While we are all patiently waiting for the GO so we can stalk our postal carriers here are a few practical informative things and then I'll tell you about our first contest.

1. The first thing is we have noticed over the years that sometimes these packeges take a long about route from the USPS sorting facility to you. It does not happen to all of them but it does happen to a few. We have filed a complaint with USPS about this and really have not heard anything back as to the why. We think it is becuase it is a bulk mailing and it overwhelms our little PO but that is just our opinion. We do have a new post master so we are hoping to get her imput this year if this happens again. In our experienc the packages to end up at your door they just take a wee longer to do so.

2. If this is your first year in the club the way to access your pdf's is here on the RSC site. See up in the left corner of the tool bar where it says RSC Home? The pdf's are there under 2015. If you are logged in then they will pop up and you can download, print, save and make notes in them. A s long as the sock club exist you will have access to the years you have been a member.

3. Logging in: You will need to log in to access your pdf's and to post or comment on the blog and to access the info in your account. Up in the Help section of the tool bar is the FAQS page with super helpful log in information. One of the most important pieces and is somehting that is a little confusing is that the RSC log-in is not the same as the log-in you rhave to the general Blue Moon site for purchasing yarn. So if you use your Blue Moon log-in you will get an error message. In our experience most of the log-in problems folks have is from using their Blue Moon log-in instead of the club one. As always any issue you have we are more thna happy to help with. Go to Contact in the tool bar and fire us off an email and we will do our best to help.

4. We had a lovely bumper sticker that was all set to be sent in this shipment. Unfortunately the printer made an error so we have sent it back to be redone and wil not get it back in time. Rather than hold up the shipment we will be sending it out in March.

5. Please read the dyer's notes, especially the ones in this first shipment. They include inforamtion like your discount code and other goodies that you need to know and also highlight your experience of the club.

6. These colorways are avialable to you only. After the shiipment goes out we will make it available to you on the Blue Moon website.

I am sure I have forgotten something that I wanted to let you know. Again you know where to find us.

Contest:

Are you ready for our first contest?! I really look forward to this contest. So very many of you are talented in ways we don't all get to see and this contest gives us a chance to see one of those ways.

See that fun and lovely button on the right with the sock puppets in hats that says Notorious Sock KNitters 2014? Wel one of our very own designed that button for us all to use on our blogs and on Ravelry. Thank you again Bronwen!

Obviously we need another one for our Anniversary year 2015. I could have Jess or Cassie make one up for us but it is way more fun to see what our NSK's who are graphicly talented come up with.

Here are the paremeters"

1. It needs to have either NSK, Notorious Sock Knitters or Rockin' Sock Club on it somewhere.

2. It needs to have 2015 on it. It would be awesone if we could incorporate 10th Anniversary but I think that is too much on a small button.

3. It needs to be this size: 2"square. dpi at 350 a a jpeg (please)

Submitted to us at [email protected] by February 20th. Please put the Button in the subject line of the email. Thanks!

Team Blue Moon will then choose 4 for you to vote on here on the blog. We will post them on February 24th . Voting goes until Feb. 27th.

The button with the most votes will be our 2015 Anniversary button. The designer receives a 200.00 gift certificate. We'll use the button here on the blog, on your blogs and on Ravelry.

Okay I think that covers things for now. I am going to grab a cup of my fav brew and head out to the barn to help out.

Welcome back to all of you wonderful NSK's who keep signing up for our sock knitting mayhem and Welcome to all of you who are new Nororious Sock Knitters. We are a wonderful community of knitters!

and sock knitting. A decade! A whole flippin' decade. Just so we are all on the same page, that's 10 whole years of being our notorious sock knitting selves. Can you believe it? I've been here during the whole thing and I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

It seems like it was just yesterday when we decided a sock club might be fun thing to do, especially if it really was a club! In no time at all it went from what we thought was a good idea churning in our fertile imaginations to my living room being stacked with boxes from floor to celing, yarn hanging everywhere, binders being put together on any leftover surface we could find and, honestly, the best kind of fun. My home was a maze. I don't mind telling you that that first shipment was a mind blowing experience and maybe a smidge stressful for the handful of us that put it all together. I had just hired Debra a few months before and was teaching her to dye when this all hit the fan. I still can't believe she did not run out the back door screaming at that point. I count myself lucky that she has an adventurous spirit and hung around for all this sock yarn dyeing and knitting craziness.

You know those moments in our lives that are either huge growth periods, fraught with meaning and heart or the axis of life changes? Well the sock club has been all that for me and quite a bit more. Running this club has stretched me in ways I didn't even know I needed to be stretched, making me a stronger more well-rounded person and hopefully a smarter one.

One of the biggest gifts that our sock club has given me is you. A community of knitters who are smart and funny and loving, something I have been shown in a huge way this year, have been humbled by and am ever so grateful for.

So...what to do to celebrate our decade ( I'm sorry but I'm going to be saying this a lot!) of being our notorious selves?

I have thought of a few ways...

I wanted to do a special project bag and luckily for me Rebecca Peary of Queen Bee Creations and her wonderful habit forming bags are local. So we met with her and she has agreed to design us our very own project bag, perfect for sock knitting and for us! You're going to love these bags! We are going to add a few cool essential knit goodies into the bag as commemorative pieces and have deemed all of this our 10th Anniversary Edition. I decided to offer it as it's own product to give us all choices. Since we all have budgets and we ( Blue Moon) have shipping weight restrictions with each month's package to keep in mind, we are shipping these out separately at the end of the summer. What this means is that you can choose your regular club membership or you can choose the 10th Aniversary Edition which includes the sock club and the bag with it's goodies.

I want us all to feel like we are all special no matter what so our regular club membership comes with a few bonuses this year. Bonuses like color coordinated stitch markers in every shipment, buttons and bumper sticker and last, but not least, all of the colorways this year will be exclusive to this year. Also the 2015 colorways will not be offered to the general sock knitting public. If you are a club member this year you can get them whenever you want which makes them all yours. Sometime during the year, and maybe we do this at the end of the year as a vote, we'll name one of the colorways as the official 10th Anniversary colorway.

I will be taking us down memory lane in the dyer's notes and on the blog with contests and games to remind us where we've been, who we are and maybe shine a bright and colorful light on where we are going.

Our graphic team will be putting some of our graphics through the years onto t-shirts and mugs and other cool things so we can add them to our Cafe Press shop. I'm super excited about this since my first Camp t-shirt bit the dust recently.

I'm so excited about our 10th year together!

I want to take moment here to thank our tech editor Sandi Rosner for the great job she has done for us over the years. Sandi has moved on to a really great job as creative director with Universal Yarns. Thank you Sandi! I already miss you.

As we know when one door closes another one opens! Please join me in welcoming Kate Atherly as our new tech editor. Kate knows her sock knitting. Kate is also tech editor for Knitty and has written her own sock patterns a books. We are very lucky to welcome Kate to our sock club team.

Another new member of our team is Shannon Squire. As most of you know, Shannon has designed for our club. Well, now she is going to help me run it! Welcome Shannon to the Rockin' Sock Club team!

I promise I am wrapping this up soon.

Lastly I want you all to know I am doing great. I am over the worst of the chemo treatments. Sept. and Oct were pretty intense and I seriously am glad they are behind me. I have me energy back and am ready to rock 'n' roll. I do hope you will rock 'n' roll with me!

I can't believe I almost forgot this part, silly me. The ability to purchase gift certificates for the club is live as I type this. So if you want to give the club to knitter you love or hint to your loved ones that this is what you would like it is there!