Happy New Year NSK’s

Thank you for making 2009 a memorable rockin’ sockin’ year.

You truly are the best!

Best Wishes for 2010.

your team blue moon

A round of knitterly applause to our scrappy binder contest winners. I was so touched by the work you all put into your binders. Every single one of you did an awesome job!
Those of you that have won will hear from one if us blue moonies with a code in order to well buy yarn.

First remember that Marcy, Ashley and Linda for won the following categories; Notoriously Sock Knit, Colorfully Outrageous and Martha Stewart.
and then…
NOTE: There was a miscount and some name confusion so I just recounted and then made a executive decision ( I love doing this).

In the Most Dominating category we have your
fav> Elizabeth
and
runner up> Mary

In the Out of the box category we have your
fav> Kelly
and
runner up > Alice .

In the Tightly Wound category we have your
fav> Jennifer
and
runner up> Samantha.

In the Creatively scrapbooked challenged we have your
a fav tie > Maxine and Susan

In the Hodge Podge we have your
fav> Kristin
and
runner up> Camille. ( Camille this was our error and we are going to extend you the 40% because of it. Sorry!)

thanks everyone for playing.

ok off to plan for the new years eve blue moon.

Update: JoAnn sends her apologies as she put the wrong name on Susan’s photo for the Creatively Challenged Category.

Below you will find the scrapbook entries for each category. Please cast your vote for first and second place in the comments section. Copy and paste the categories and then put your choices for first and second place right after each category.

We’d also love it if all the entrants would comment and tell everyone about what inspired their books. And there were so many photos, that if you want to provide links to show off your additional photos, please feel free. We couldn’t post them all!

For three categories, Notoriously Sock Knit, Colorfully Outrageous and Martha Stewart, we had only one entry each. So congratulations to Marcy for being the grand prize winner for the NSK theme, to Ashley for being the grand prize winner of the Colorfully Outrageous theme and to Linda for winning the Martha Stewart category.

These are just wonderful so creative and fun and we have had the best time looking them over and reading the stories.
We really hope all of you who entered post your stories because they are quite lovely and funny.
We all have our favorites here and I certainly have mine but we are not going to color the water here until everyone has voted.
So ready set go!

Here is a photo of Marcy’s submission! (Click on the thumbnails to embiggen)

Here is Ashley's:

Here is Linda's:

Now onto the voting!

Elizabeth:

Mary:

Category 2: the most Out of the Box ( a heel here, a toe there. anything goes)

Kelly:

Alice:

Category 3: the most Tightly Wound ( where organization and inside the lines reigns supreme)

Jennifer:

Samantha:

Category 4: the most Creatively Scrapbooked Challenged

Maxine:

Susan:

Category 5: the most Hodge Podge ( this is the category if the others are not calling your name)

Camille:

Kristen:

Today we are posting the announcement for the 2010 sock club on the brand spanking new part of the website just for the club, where if you so desire you have the the ability to purchase Gift Certificates for those who want to give or receive the sock club membership as a holiday gift.

There are a few changes that I want to tell you about. There are also some decisions I made based on changes to overhead, and reflect what my overall vision for the club has always been and how I would like to keep it that way.

In my musings (torturing myself) over what I wanted from the club this year and what I wanted it to give you, I remembered something. Something pretty powerful and important to me and I hope, to you.

I remembered the very beginning. The start of all this sockiness. The why and how and then the why again. While this was all percolating, I got a phone call from Amy Detjen wanting to settle up some things from the Summit that was (and yes will be again). We got to talking about past-present time connections and how looking back from where we come from helped shape our choices and decisions. Historical Imperatives.

Well, as you can imagine this stirred up all kinds of stuff for me. All of this was pretty early on in the fall (it takes awhile to plan a club year, kind of like building a village). Anyway there was the bonk on the head and more ruminating and some pricing and maybe even a tear or two. I pretty much had my vision down and was on my merry way to making it a reality. Contacting designers, getting better pricing, harassing the USPS for price changes, making any blog or web changes, making sure there are still enough sheep around to make this work for another year…. it is a very long and time consuming list, and also my job which (almost all the time) I love. I am lucky and feel like a conductor of a pretty extraordinary orchestra.

I know… get to the point already. The Rockin’ Sock Club® has always been first and foremost a club all about the knitting of socks. We are completely and thoroughly all about the sock. Some even say we might take it a bit too far but I don’t agree, I don’t think that’s really possible. Secondly, we try to be fun and silly, hence the whole club aspect. In keeping with this tradition of ours and working on the idea of where we have been and where we are going - and the bridge between all of it, I’m taking our commitment to the humble sock even further.

It is my goal to achieve this through working with two designers each month for the year. One a seasoned experienced designer that has maybe been around the heel a few times, the other, a brand new designer. The extra punch here is that all of the new designers are or have been RSC members and were not designers before their membership. You know what this means right? It means we are not just creating Notorious Sock Knitters, we are birthing Notorious Sock Designers.

Each package, two designers work with the same yarn, the same colour and a theme. We get to sit back and watch what they each do and learn from it, and each time, you get two patterns. I do not have words to tell you how excited I am about this aspect of the two designer approach. Double sock knitting duty. Also opportunities for a designer challenge, won’t that be fun?

As you can see from our established designer list, we have the extreme good fortune to have Meg Swansen with us this year. A talented designer, knitter and also Elizabeth Zimmermann’s daughter. I wanted to acknowledge and honor EZ and all that she has done and given us knitters and Meg generously agreed to be a part of this.

Nancy Bush and Anne Hanson are also on this list and I am so happy to be working with Anne again and thrilled to have the chance to create a bit with Nancy. I keep pinching myself when I look at the list. Just crazy good and there are still 6 more whose names you do not know yet. It’s a surprise for you. (Not me. I know who they are.)

Also on the design end of life, we have redesigned the web presence of the sock club. Wait until you see the blog and its new features. Our new web team are rock stars and we are lucky to have them.

I have worked very hard to keep the price down- especially as costs I can’t control go up. I have done this by taking the rings off the emergency keychains so now they are emergency mini-skeins, by finding better sources for materials and building the site differently.

In all of this musing and planning, I realized that I got a little swayed from my path in the past year or so and offered more swag in each package - and really it turns out that swag (the little gifts and presents) is one of the biggest costs in the club, especially if you want good knit related tools. I remembered this year that this isn’t a swag club, it is a sock knitting club with some extras thrown in here and there. I would rather spend time and money on offering the “best in sock” then researching, buying, packing and providing swag that you didn’t ask for and might not like. There are some awesome swag clubs out there. We are just not one of them, so this year there will be some of the usual stuff, (NSK club member stuff) and then 2 surprises at some time during the year.

The costs are as follows;
Domestic: 235.00
Canadian: 239.00
International: 289.00

As you can see the price increase is greatest on the Canadian and International memberships. This is because of the USPS price increase and because we now have to fill out forms (by hand) on all Canadian & International packages. We were squeaking through on another system and they stopped us, so with our apologies and by necessity, some of the time and labor involved in that process have to be passed on.

You will also notice that we changed the shipping out of BMFA date to the last week of the month. This is to give ourselves a little slack. We’ve heard a rumor that some knitters (I think it was only a few) thought that we were late with packages almost all year because my attention was elsewhere at those times. I’ve double checked this to make sure that we were ok, and it turns out that it was simply not true - as a matter of fact there were a few times that the packages went out early to avoid conflict. (The package that came out around Sock Summit is a good example. That one went out early to make sure that the Summit didn’t mess up the club. The few times we were late (besides the time I bumped my head) were related to factors outside our control. There is a lot involved in getting this to you each month and if at any point there is a hold up in one of those steps well, I do my best to make sure this does not happen but if I order things for the club in plenty of time, well within that companies shipping terms, and they don’t come through… Never mind. Let’s leave it at how much I hate that I can’t control other companies, just this one. It looks like suppliers might have an easier time with the last week of the month, so we’re trying that.

One other issue that was brought to my attention -the lack of contests and games for the year, and I’ll take the heat on this. I have not really dropped the ball as was suggested - it was more that I let the lack of participation, comments and feedback in the contests and games lead me to believe that knitters weren’t interested in them.

In all of the playful aspects of this years club there has been only a tiny response and I took that to mean that this was not important to most of you. There are more than 2000 knitters in the club, and at it’s peak, only 80 people have ever responded or participated in this part of the program.

Still my job is to serve every single one of you, so even if there is only one response then we are going to play. (Also, I’d like to point out that your odds of winning are apparently fantastic- since there’s so little competition. ) I am sorry. I assumed and we know what that does. I should have asked. Right now the scrappy binder contest is up and there will be another contest next week to make sure that everybody (who would like to) has ample opportunity to play. (Just a quick note here: These contests and communications will always be here on the Club Blog. Some have suggested that it would be better if the forums/communication were moved to the NSK group set up on Ravelry, but that isn’t possible. Ravelry is a nice company run by some nice people who have their own rules, and besides the additional time and money it would take to monitor this site and theirs, one company cannot run it’s customer connection and care through another’s. You’ll always find us here, and we promise that as always, reaching out to us here at our company will get you awesome customer service, and we hope that the new components of the blog will make this community even more fun for you.)

Well, I think that covers just about all of what I want to say without giving too much away.

As with any new system, there is a learning curve, so let us all be patient with one another and please read all the instructions. I did my best to make this as simple as possible for us all.

Click on this link 2010 RSC and it will take you right to the Homepage.

The 2010 RSC homepage link is on the Blue Moon Site in the side navigation bar as it was last year.

We will be opening regular registration on Monday January 4th.

Sock Camp details and sign-ups to follow right after January 4th.