What's in a Name?

Once again, we find ourselves with a brand new yarn that is hopelessly, helplessly nameless. You named Honor last year, can I ask you to put on your thinking caps for us again?

"Yarn X" is a 55% superwash merino, 15% nylon and 30% Outlast viscose sock yarn. It has a nice tight twist just like Shepherd Sock, but it's three ply instead of four.


















You're probably wondering "what is this Outlast she speaks of?" That's a fair question. Outlast is this crazy fiber that interacts with your body's microclimate to moderate temperature from being too hot or too cold. It was used by NASA. Ferrari uses it for their race car seats.

We spent a lot of time deciding whether we wanted to go ahead with this yarn or not. At market in January 2010, we gave out about a dozen skeins to a bunch of different designers. They kept coming back to me and asking me when we were releasing it. I hemmed, I hawed. They poked, they prodded. I said let's do it! We're bringing it to market in June along with nine or ten new colors.

The photo you see is dyed in a really pretty color, but we'll be dyeing it in all of our colors, so don't let the one shown here influence you.

Here are the details. Send your entry to contest AT lornaslaces DOT net with the subject line reading "New Sock Yarn Name". We'll narrow the choices down to our three favorites by April 17th. Then we'll email a ballot with the top three to our newsletter subcribers on April 18 and let you vote for the winner. If you don't get our newsletter, you can sign up here. Voting will close at 5:00PM central time on April 22.

In case of multiple entries for the same name, we'll use a number generator to pick the ultimate winner.

You're probably wondering about the prize, aren't you? How about 12 skeins of the new yarn? My theory is that would be enough for the lucky winner to make a pair of socks every month for a year. (If you aren't a sock knitter, don't despair. We'll come up with something else to make your heart sing.)

Please keep in mind that we're not Publisher's Clearinghouse. Contests and giveaways aren't what we do every day. I'm trying to make things as simple and fair as I can. You could probably find a loophole to exploit, but let's try and play nice and just let this all unfold for what it is...fun, fun, fun!

knit.sock.love

I took some time on Sunday to read Cookie A's latest, Knit.Sock.Love

This book is absolutely stunning. Stunning I tell you. Laura Kicey did the photography and she did a stunning job. Did I mention it was stunning?


















It's a collection of 19 patterns. Some of them are old favorites like Monkey and Hedera while others are brand spanking new. She's broken the patterns down into three sections, Columns, Tessellations and Diagonals. Within each section, the patterns are presented in increasing levels of complexity. It's all very organized which makes me very happy.

The Columns section are variations on vertical design elements. Repeating elements are stacked on top of one another. Cables immediately come to mind. So do some simple lace patterns. Columnar patterns make it easy to keep track of where you are by checking your current work with the work below.

This is Stalagmite. It's shown here in our Shepherd Sock color 22ns Turquoise.


















The next segment is Tessellations. (Please tell me I'm not the only person who'd never heard that word before.) A Tessellation is an arrangement of shapes on a surface the leaves no gaps between them. Mosaic tiles are a good example. The world famous Monkey Sock is probably one of the best known examples in the knitting arena.

This section includes Clandestine. Lorna's Laces worked closely with Cookie in the creation of a special color for this sock, Cookie's Deep Dark Secret. The marriage worked quite well, don't you think?




















The final section is Diagonals. Cookie describes diagonals as patterns that travel off the grid. She's embracing the idea of adventure and pushing boundaries. How cool is it that a sock can do that for us? I think my favorite of these socks is Sake. (Named after sake sashimi rather than the rice wine.)


















The patterns are available as singles or you can go ahead and buy the book. I always prefer to own a book. It keeps things nice and tidy for me.

Would you like a copy for yourself? I have a signed one right here. Reply to this post by Friday, February 18th at 5PM central time and me know which pattern you want to knit and we'll let the random number generator pick a winner. We may even throw in a skein of yarn to enable you even more. (I've only put up three pictures, you should really take a look at them all here. There are so many nice ones. Rhombus and Stricken. Cusp and Wedge. BFF and Marilinda.)

We all need a little sock p0rn in our lives. Especially when it's this stunning.


**Also, you all should know that the book was written before we changed our put-up. Now it's 100g and 435 yarns so you'll only need one skein of Lorna's Laces for a pair of most socks.