Look who wears our SOCKS!

A well known CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) TV personality wears our SOCKS!
Are you familiar with George Stroumboulopoulos?
We sent him a pair of socks (which he loves)
All we asked in exchange was that he send us a picture of him wearing the socks to display at our Market table and he very much said yes and sent us this photo!

 

Next Historic Farmers' Market appearance

May 10, 2014 (7am-1pm)  Mother's Day Weekend!
 

MrB can String you Along....

Here is a string of 6 pairs of socks!  MsB, that's me, will be busy in the next day or two, kitchenering.  We had a very nice day at the market yesterday.  MrB cranked away and I sold and chatted up many a conversation with so many very interesting and intriguing people. Some people are our local market goers, some are visitors and some are tourists.  I must say it is one part of my job that I thoroughly enjoy, intermingling with the people who stop at our vending market location.  It is a very rare occasion that I do encounter someone who is not pleasant!  But then again, I try to be courteous and welcoming, and do not string them along..... :-) It was our last market where we attend twice monthly.  Our next market, we are entering, what we call, our off-season, May to August in which we attend the market only once a month starting next appearance.  We decided last year that it was important for us to continue our presence at the market even if those 4 months are not booming sale months.  If we catch it right, when a cruise ship is in we do make several sales though, and we are in a building in which tours take place and the tourists are drawn to inspect us also.  Part of our market going is not all about sales, but networking and just being friendly also.  MrB also enjoys educating, demonstrating and sharing the art of sock making to all who stop with a very curious look on their face. It is not often either that he will string you along except when he is crankin' out SOCKS!

2 Pairs of Left-Over Sock Pairs and 4 more pairs!

A Rainy Day blogging picture taking day!

Yessiree, its a rainy cool day in Cole Harbour, NS today, and MrB is out and MsB will play!  I just got the inkling it was a day to take some indoor pictures for a blog entry.  I had to come with a focus, and was thinking of showing you what we use for waste yarn.  MrB came up with a very clever way to have access to his already started waste yarn spools.  Also showing you that we use 10 size Crochet Thread as this is what MrB has used since the conception of Socks Made On 88.  It is easily accessible to us from our local stores and we usually pick up some when we see a sale or need another colour to add to our collection.  It works very well for us, and MrB does not waste it, it is re-used until it's too full of knots that it can not be used again.  When I am done kitchenering I take off the waste yarn and MrB winds it out on his toilet paper rolls to use next time.  I am showing two pictures of the waste yarn and how MrB stores it on the spools.  Various colours are needed as over the last couple of years I have very much stressed that CONTRAST is needed between the sock yarn on the waste yarn!  Both MrB and myself have learned that the hard way, just saying :-)

Moving on around in our work area room, the cranking cave, I see mounts of left-over yarn sitting on the to-do shelf, and think yes next picture for me!  Tis the season that MrB wants to use up our left-over yarn so he has kept the left-overs on his spools. See all the colourways, the socks are going to beautiful as ever.  I am very partial to our left-over pairs, they are my kind of uniqueness.

As I mentioned MrB is out and I got a roaring fire going.  A couple of pairs of socks were completed last night and did not dry overnight as we did not have a fire going overnight.  Needless to say they need are a still a little damp.  They will be dry soon now! Note they do not usually lay this close to the fire, only for purpose of getting a picture and adding in our sign.

Oh I have a picture too of the containers that we store our sock pairs in.  They are handy-dandy and are good portables to go to and fro to the market too.  Love that they are waterproof for all seasons also.  Purple is designated for most of our Mens socks, White is for our Womens 6 &7 and Baby Hats, and the pink container is for Womens 8 & 9.  I also have another container for misc. stuff that I cart to the markets and its changes frequently of what it contains depending how I decide the our display shall look at any given time.

Now to add the photos! Enjoy!  

The teal blue heather socks drying is a new to us colour of Shelridge yarn!

Stocking-Piling of our cranking has begun for the Christmas Season

We have markets scheduled to do Sat April 26th and May 10th on Mother's Day weekend.  After that MrB will be focusing on making our Left-Over pairs and stock piling them for the Christmas season. As we will be only attending the market once a month in May, June, July and August which we consider to be our off-season.
Our drawers are full of  Left-Overs and ready to be cranked for sock pairs!  MrB got one pair completed to begin our stock-piling. We sat down and also set our goals of how many sock pairs we want to stock-pile in total.  This year we decided also how many left-overs of each size we wanted, and ribbed, and are a touch bit more organized in that department this year as compared to last year.  We have a better handle on how many pairs we may need that last market day before Christmas and we know that we need more than 60 pairs in addition to what we take for each regular market.  We will have a Deranged pair or two to throw into our mix hopefully also.  And you just never know, MrB may scare up some lace work pairs too, if he gets really ambitious throughout the summer. 

A pair of Left-Overs!

Socks to Kitchener, but not today because it's sunny and feels like Spring!

Socks to Kitchener, but I just do not feel in the mood today!
Oh my gosh, I would rarely say that...  but the sun is shining, and I have so many other things I want to do today. We have not had the sun here often in Nova Scotia yet this spring. In fact, is Spring really here to stay now?  I want to clean the clothesline with soapy water, to hang out some bed sheets and then it will be ready to hang out socks soon too.  It will be a busy week for MrB and I, and I am wondering how much Socks Made On 88 work will get done.  Thank goodness we will have another week to focus on that stuff before our next market.  And that is one reason why we do not like to go every week.  Oh, and my kitchenering will get done tomorrow after I bake a cake to take to my son's place on Thursday.  This will be the first time visiting him since they moved back to NS from Toronto.  They moved back the end of October but they made several visits to us and now its our turn now that winter has surpassed and the roads are better. We are excited to make the 5 hour drive.  SPRING, how I welcome you in so many ways finally!

Very Early Past Posts

I just want to inform my new blog readers, that if you are reading some of the very original posts and they speak of: our ball winder, swift, forks and weights, all of those pictures were removed from the main blog page and replaced with some other photos during the time  in which I was having problems with the blog, April 11th and April 12 th, 2014.  But in saying that, all of the things are pretty self-explanatory and I am sure you will get the drift if those particular photos do not exist now!  Thanks for your cooperation.

HALLELUJAH!!! and even Bigger Smiles on Me!

Hi Folks!  I am back!  I was just in the midst of trying to figure out my stradgedy to repair my blog, and I got a message from Blogger Help.  My blog is now back up and running better than before, and all posts are complete with pictures!  A great big sigh of relief and my heart does not feel as heavy now.  Bigs smiles to all.

Smile :-)

We had a good market today, and a good time!  It always ends up being quite a gruelling day since I am up at 5am.  Today, I seem more relaxed and chilled so a perfect time to work at getting my blog page more presentable, which I have.  One page now done, many, many, many more to go!
But at least today I can smile!  Last night I was not much in the smiling mode, so to speak. GRRRRRR  It was almost like it was meant to be as I have changed the introductory page and I like it better than it was before.  Again, I want to say, please have patience with me to get the photos reinstalled to their proper posts from the last couple of years.  It will be an ongoing-work-in progress!

Temporary use of one of my pictures to add some colour until I get things sorted out or not!

Google Problems

I may have lost all my photos and I am going to do my best to add some more photos to continue the blog running.  If I can not do that or access it, I may have to discontinue this blog.  I have to see what I can do.  :-(

edited:  I am still able to use and post to the blog (Thank Heavens) and in the next post I have added some photos just to add some colour since all the other photos are gone.  I was able to re-add some photos to the latest posts.  Somewhere I have all my photos or most of them and if I can not get google or blogger to retrieve them all for me, I may have to gradually one by one add them back into my blog myself.  It will be a tremendous tedious job, but this blog means too much to me to just give up on it, and dissolve it.  It is my plan to get it back to looking half decent with a pleasant appearance little by little again.  I am so very sorry for how it looks now, my deepest apologies....but it will survive!!!! I am feeling in better spirits now knowing that the blog, maybe not be salvaged as a whole, but at least partially.  It may have a different look if I can not get it back to like it was, but it is my mandate to try to recapture a big part of what I created along the way with many of my past posts!  Please be patient!

Is Spring here to stay?

Is Spring here to stay now?  I sure hope so!  It was a truly beautiful day yesterday, finally, with temperature of +14C which is about 57F.  It was so fantastic to see the SUN.  I could not help but get outdoors and capture the sole crocus on the lawn with some very colourful baby hats.  And if you need to brighten a very grey day, like today filled with showers and downpours, just try this ever so bright colourful sock pair on for size!  If this pair can't brighten your day by having them on your feet I don't know which pair can?