MARKET SCHEDULE ...now to August 2014.

 Socks Made On 88 will be at the Historic Farmers' Market, Brewery Square, Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada on:

Saturday, March 8, 2014 (7am-1pm)
Saturday, March 22, 2014 (7am-1pm)
Saturday, April 12, 2014 (7am-1pm)
Saturday, April 19, 2014 (7am-1pm)
Saturday, May 10, 2014 (7am-1pm) once for this Month
Saturday, June 28, 2014 (7am-1pm) once for this Month
Saturday, July 26, 2014 (7am-1pm) once for this Month
Saturday, August 23, 2014 (7am-1pm) once for this Month

Back to twice a month attendances in September on through to May 2015.
Stay tuned! 

 

Apologies...Re: website

I just want to give my apologies to all of you to whom also follow our website.  We did not notice for a brief period of time, things were not working properly, but seem to be now for your viewing purposes.  We use our website as an additional tool to inform our customers of our Market attendances. So it is upsetting to find out it can not be accessed at certain times without us being aware of some difficulties taking place within the website and wix.com. Right now, all is visible to YOU and on track.  To avoid any other
uncertainties of market attendances I am going to post a schedule in the next post that can be accessed from this blog as well.  Thank you for your cooperation and sorry if the website being inaccessible annoyed you as much as it did me!

More Baby Hats!

Our display rack was in demand of more Baby Hats.  Also, we had a special request for two Unisex colourway Baby Hats.  MrB cranked out some more baby hats to add to our hat rack, so thought a new photo would be in order too!  Outdoor pictures are always nice, especially on a cold,crisp, but sunny day!

Winter, Long, Snow, Lots, Socks, Love!

We have had a winter here in Nova Scotia that seems longer than usual, more snow than usual, actually lots of snow and lots of snow storms this year!  The bright spot in our winter, no matter, long or not or  lots of snow or not, is that we very much enjoy wearing wool socks to keep our feet warm and cozy.  We, Socks Made On 88, make wool socks and it is part of our venture mission to share the warmth and coziness of those socks with our customers.  We try to  produce sock pairs to your liking.  We love socks, and I bet most of you love socks also! Here, I am introducing, another pair of RIBBED socks that we will have on display, and also be for sale at the Historic Farmers' Market, Brewery Square, Halifax NS tomorrow. We are gradually introducing more RIBBED socks in our production line.  We hope to have more in the coming months, with at one pair of each size in sizes from Women's 6- Women's 10, and Men's 9- Men's 11.  If by chance, a Women's size 5 or Men's size 12 or 13 is needed, we can do them by request.  We want to test the desire of Ribbed Sock pairs, by not over saturating them on our display rack. We already know you enjoy and love our Hung-Hemmed sock pairs and want to strike a balance with what our customers are wanting to purchase.  More and more you will see both types of sock pairs on our display rack.  And don't forget, occasionally you will also find some of our Shelridge Yarn sock pairs, Left-Over Socks Pairs ( more coming in the spring and  summer) and maybe some our Derranged sock pairs too!

This wooden winter man's sign says, Warm Winter Welcome, and I am hoping soon that we will have a Warm Winter Goodbye!  But until that happens, and Spring makes it's debut it is still a good time to be at the market selling wool socks!  And for those of you, who are wondering, we will be appearing at the Market twice monthly up until Mother's Day weekend.  We have that one stint for May, and then again for the months of June, July and August we will be attending the market only once a month which tends to be towards the end of those months.  We have a complete market schedule posted on our web site.  You can find the direct link to our web site on this home page.  And those of you who have facebook we have a page there also.  Basically there are 5 ways to find us, or locate us to find out when we are the market.  #1 this blog, #2 our web site, # 3 Socks Made On 88 facebook page, #4 just email us at sockson88@gmail.com or #5 come on down to the market and visit us in person!  

Oh , BTW MrB is recovering well from his surgery and each  additional week of healing makes his hand all that much  better for cranking!!!  We are so happy to be back preparing for a market day again tomorrow.  We have missed being there!

Brigadier Monster says...

Brigadier Monster says Socks Made On 88 will be back at the Historic Farmers Market, Saturday February 22, 2014!
MrB is back to cranking/knitting out sock pairs.  
See you there!

 

back into the swing/crank of things!

The Brigadier 88 needed some TLC from the Cape.  Parts were sent, and then parts were received back today!  MrB with hand healing will be glad to be back into the swing/crank of things!  Parts loaded on CSM, needles in, cast on bonnet on, ready set go!  Oh Oh

MrB says it sounds different, but that's Ok.  Let's see if it knits the same, though. New and improved parts, and new and improved hand, make a good combo!

Stitches out....Hold his Britches!

MrB got his stitches out the other day, from his recent hand-surgery. He is no longer sporting a cumbersome bandage. Now he is just itching to get back cranking, but wait a minute, all of Brigadier 88 is not here at the moment.  Parts were sent to the Cape for some modifications and updates, and we are awaiting their return.  He has to hold his britches, and see when they will arrive. And then, also see what he is capable of doing within his healing process.  Having the weekend to watch curling and Olympics will give his hand just a few more days to be on the mend.  MrB speculates a postal delivery Monday or Tuesday, and holding his britches and enthusiasm to see how much he can do to get back into the swing of things, or not!  No doubt, this will be a pivotal week introducing himself back to the world of cranking gradually.  But I know that if he manages to get the machine back together and even make a few rotations with that crank, his face will light up! MrB and #88 are sure to be cranking out sock pairs before you know it again soon, and when that happens, I will be happy to announce we are back on a roll, and update our market schedule with a return date.

Oh Darn ~ After

The first sock that I darned, I did not have any of the same yarn left.  So I used some miscellaneous yarn I had kicking around.  It turned out really well, I think!  One thing is though, I forgot to turn the sock inside out. Oh Darn! The second sock for repair by darning, I did have the same yarn and as you can see it is not very noticeable.  I do like that fact on the first sock you can see the stitches.  It was easy for me to do the basket type weaving.  Remember making paper doing the basket weave in and out in school, well this is the same principle. What I like about the 100% wool is that the stitches will felt together a bit after a couple of washings. I will have to see how the darning stands up!

Two of my socks darned and ready to give the wearing test!

Oh Darn ~ Before

This sock needs to be darned on the bottom of the upper foot pad.

Before darning my two socks!

This sock needs to be darned on the heel.  This sock is made of 100% wool and was handpainted by me!

It's a Darning, learning day

I have never learned to darn properly.  I have never had to do it before.  MrB and I enjoy the feel of 100% wool socks on our feet.  If you live in Canada in the months of January and February, nothing better on your feet and they serve as slipper socks too when you wear crocs like me.  I want to mention that we do not sell many 100% wool socks but on occasion we do.  I thought it was time to learn more about darning today.  My first thing to do was to search and find a good simple friendly You-tube video.  So off to you-tube I went!  The first one I found was way out of league crocheting. so I found another one and it was much easier.  I did not know that were darning mushroom.  This is new to me.  I was familiar with the darning eggs though.  Well now I have learned  how to darn, I must put that into practice, and go do that shortly.  I do not have a darning mushroom or darning egg to do the job.  So guess what I am using a jar today, and I now have two lathe projects for MrB when his hand is back to functioning.  I am thinking too that sometimes we have more delicate yarns for our own use for socks made of alpaca, cashmere etc, so it will definitely be useful to know how to darn correctly.  MrB has been darning some of his socks, he is much harder on socks than I am!  He will darn his socks and I will darn mine!  I have two socks to darn today.  One is a heel to darn, and one is bottom of sock where your foot pad is below toes.  These are the two areas in which my feet wear the delicate socks.  Please note to anyone reading this post, that I am not referring to the superwash socks that we crank as they have some nylon content for strength.  I am not saying that will not wear in certain areas, but truly not as fast as 100% wool socks or more delicate yarns used for sock pairs.  If you wear one pair of socks, over and over and over again, they are going to wear out, that is a fact, and it does not matter what kind of yarn was used to create them. It's a darning, learning day for me today!

Almost forgot to share... MrB's excitement before surgery!

At our last market stint, we had a lovely young girl approach us of doing a custom order of socks.  This was a unique proposition for MrB, as she is a colour technician for a local handpainting yarn company. MrB was thrilled to have the opportunity to work with this yarn that includes cashmere! It knit very well on the CSM. Miss BP was very happy with the outcome of her somewhat created left-over principle of sock pairs.  I did get her permission to share the photo of the sock pairs here.  She dyed two of the three colours to use for these sock pairs.  The third colour is called, "puffin", and both myself and MrB very much enjoyed seeing that colour unfold as cranked! It was great to see the yarn, touch the yarn, and for MrB to crank the yarn!  When Miss BP picked up her socks, she LOVED 

them!  We are glad we can share them with you. And Thank you to Miss BP for giving Socks Made On 88 the opportunity to use the yummy yarn!

We have "Progress"

We have progress with the healing of MrB's hand.   I am sharing this picture to show one way MrB can occupy his time.  The picture of this puzzle is just amazing!  It reminds my family very much of my father as he used to collect antique tractors, and most of them were John Deere ones.  So this picture could easily be my dad and my two sons, or him and his two great-grandsons ( my nephew's sons) One of my sons loves this puzzle, and now that it has been completed we will save it for others in the family to do in the future.

This post reminds me of how things can become traditional, or how family members like to pass on things.  It makes me wonder, who in our blended family will want to carry on the tradition of cranking socks from #88?  We may never know, but too early to tell!