Sock Summit - day ONE

The official first day of Sock Summit was Thursday, August 6. The marketplace was only open to students for 2 hours in the late afternoon, so we had all day to set up. Silly me, I thought it would be like a 2-hour job. I put on jeans and my favorite t-shirt, foolishly thinking we'd have time to go back to the house and change into cuter clothes before the Marketplace preview. Oops. Anyway, we left Corliss' and Linus' house in Tualatin and drove the 12 miles to the Convention Center. Corliss followed in their SUV toting all of the boxes I had shipped to them in advance. We unloaded in pretty quick time, considering we'd never done this before, and got to the booth and it was like...YIKES!! I screwed up. I ordered a counter instead of a table, so it was really high. The convention center was going to charge me full price for a table and only refund half of the price of the counter, so I said screw it and we'll make the counter work! And we did.

Noah quickly got busy with the hammer putting the grids together. Jillian and Noah worked on them together for awhile, but Jillian was anxious to see and touch yarn. She's been hearing about this for months, but hadn't actually seen anything. So she got the task of hanging display socks while Noah and I worked on the grids for awhile.

Next, it was time to put some yarn into the grids (what a concept!). Jillian has a great eye for color and really wanted to do the layout, and I have no problem whatsoever relinquishing responsibility and delegating :-) So I went on a Starbucks run while they worked. I ran into people I'd seen and spoken with on Ravelry in the really long line, so it was good conversation!









The final booth arrangement. Not much room! There was a line in the first Jaws movie in which Richard Dreyfuss kept saying "We need a bigger boat..." well, "we needed a bigger booth." I thought if things didn't "move" I'd rearrange as the weekend went on, but the only thing that changed was figuring out how to display the Kiddie Scoops (mini skeins for those who are not familiar with my line). Bev, who test knit Paw Tracks for me, stopped by. As did Cara. And Sheila. And I don't even remember who else. There was this loud cheer from the Marketplace (inside) when the announcement was made that the doors were about to be opened for the masses to enter. And there was an even louder cheer from the Marketplace (outside) when the doors opened. Jillian and Noah both just looked stunned. Really??? All this excitement??? Over socks??? Oh yeah...over socks.

The booth, right before the marketplace opened, Sandy and I, boothmates, and Bev Latham and I showing off her pretty knitting.