Sock Summit Solidarity Socks

The saga of my Sock Summit Solidarity Socks fits nicely on "Other Crafts Tuesday," since they're crocheted. Sock Summit, if you somehow missed it, is this wonderfully huge gathering of teachers, designers, spinners, dyers, writers, vendors, knitters, crocheters, etc. etc. etc., all of whom deal with some aspect of sock creation (or are just interesting in seeing what all the fuss is about - the catchphrase is "Taking Sock Knitting Almost Too Far!"). It was an amazing success by all accounts, and I'm looking forward to trying to get to one some year. But, since I couldn't go this year, I decided, by gum, I was gonna make a pair of socks while it was happening!

To this end, Thursday night, I created a working copy of Cookie A's "Rick" socks (yeah, I bought another knitting book), and Friday morning, I attempted to find some sock yarn in the craft room. This should be pretty easy, right, since there's a LOT of sock yarn in there?

WRONG. One of the bins-of-tote-bags had slid off its stack, and wedged itself between the shelf behind the door and the door in such a way that the door opens approximately eight inches. (My toes will fit in. The rest of me won't.) Since I had about three minutes to find something, I grabbed what I could reach: some Bernat Soft super-chunky yarn I'd scored at the local Dollar Tree, and managed to find my big Crystalite crochet hooks. Thus, crochet was gonna happen. With three skeins of big, chunky soft yarn (two purple, one pink), it spoke to me - screamed, really - and said I WILL BE BEDSOCKS.

Okay, bedsocks it would be. Here's the yarn, Friday morning, when I arrived at work:


I was going to knit them using the Ribbed Sock pattern, but I ended up winging it way more than that. Basically, I crocheted a big rectangle, then seamed it to include a heel. (I have a knitted pair of Laura Ashley bedsocks from the 80s that did something similar.) By Friday, at lunch, I had the foot part of one sock:


... and about halfway home on the train, I'd finished the second one. Yeah, about 40 minutes of total crochet time there, what with the chunky yarn and getting my hands to re-learn what they were supposed to be doing. So, here they are on the train home:


It was time to put on some sort of cuff so they'd stay on. I went with picking up one stitch per "ridge" (see Linda's pattern, linked above, for what I mean by "ridge"). Here are the socks at the Metro station at the end of the trip:


I did the cuff by dc-ing around four times, then folded the cuff over and chained it down. Here are shots of the socks with cuffs,
Friday evening, later:

  
They were missing something, though, and I still had a lot of pink yarn left. So, I decided to make some flowers. Something big, and floofy, and daisy-like. I completely winged it on these, and was gonna write down the pattern while I still remembered it, because I kinda like how they turned out - but that so didn't happen. So, by Friday evening, later than that last photo, I had some floofly little flowers:


... and by Friday evening, really, really late, I had finished bedsocks:


So, bedsocks in one day, and I'm pretty sure I was asleep by 2 am. (This is only 11pm Sock Summit Time, so I didn't stay up all that late.) If I'd know for sure that I'd be headed to Ohio for a funeral shortly, I probably wouldn't have stayed up so late, but it was nice to have some toasty warm bedsocks in the strange hotel outside Cleveland!!