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- Art for your Feet Tsock Club
Sign-ups are now open closed for the 2013 season, which begins shipping shortly.
Entries on the waiting list will be carried over to the notification list for 2014.
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- Shark Week Benefit for Hurricane Relief
Shark Week is early this year: By kind permission of the 2012 Tsock Club, the pattern for Shark Week is available for download, for a limited time only, at an outrageous price designed to benefit survivors of Hurricane Sandy.
Details, with many heart-rending pictures and anecdotes, on my blog here.
Update: Fund-raiser is now closed. Many, many thanks to all who participated, raising over $23,000 for the two charities! Watch this space - and/or my blog and/or my Twitter feed and/or Ravelry - for final report and for results of the prize drawings; I'll be posting these as soon as I'm out of Pattern Purdah for the current design-in-progress.
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CANDYGRAM!
An Open Letter to Shark Lovers
If you're here because of Shark Week, thank you - and please go HERE for updated info, and my latest heartfelt outpouring, on that subject.
- GLOMERATA
Behold, the Tsarina appeareth in KnittySpin, in the Deep Fall 2011 issue of Knitty. Go here to see my new pattern, Glomerata.
And then go to Moose Manor Hand Paints to buy the Tsarina's Tsilk Tstocking yarn in the "Delphinium" colorway. (Why yes, this IS the first time this yarn has been commercially available... in fact, it's so new that there may be a tiny shipping delay while we finalize the ball-band!) Or if you want to spin your own, run do not walk to Gnomespun for a braid of one of his lovely downs-breed sock fibers in "Lobelia" or "Platycodon" or "Balloonflower."
We will of course have both in the booth at Rhinebeck, which brings me to the next exciting announcement:
- RHINEBECK!!!!!
New York Sheep & Wool
Dutchess County Fairgrounds, October 15th and 16th.
Come and visit the Tsarina's court in its palatial new digs in Building C, spaces 31/32. We will have the first re-releases of some old favorites, some of them in new as well as familiar guises, and a few new and intriguing items to whet your appetite for Future Tsock - not to mention opening sign-ups for the Tsarina's Tsock Flock Club 2012. (Previous club members, watch your inboxes for those first dibs - coming any day now.)
That's our Grand Re-Opening moment, and we'll be doing all sorts of cool new web things to match. One convenient way you can stay tuned:
- SIGN UP FOR THE MAILING LIST!
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- SLIGHTLY LESS NEW!!!!
The official hiatus isn't over yet, but there's some devilment afoot. (Hah. See what I did there?) In celebration of Sock Summit, the Tsarina announces the latest monstrous creation of a decidedly Abby Normal brain:
Fronkenshteek may well be the
craziest development yet in the growing field of
modular and communal sock knitting. There is a reason
it was NOT chosen for the Fleece to Foot challenge at
this year's Sock Summit... but the boldest knitters
will not shrink from it. That's you, right? (Yes, it is. There are half a dozen KALs sprinkled all over Ravelry, including a big hilarious international one with teams swapping segments by mail. Also - watch this space for the Fronkenshteek video, coming soon to a YouTube near you.) Go find out.
The Full(ed) Story: Fronkenshteek on the Blog
Fronkenshteek on Ravelry
Fronkenshteek is available NOW for download from my Ravelry store. 
Show me your steeks at Sock Summit! I'll have my scissors ready.
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- Re-tooling Hiatus
The
Tsarina is
currently
in retreat, re-tooling in preparation for the
launch of her New Empire, which will feature wonderful
new designs on equally wonderful new yarns
in even more wonderful new colors. So kits are
currently unavailable, but we hope to have all the previous
titles back in circulation well before the end
of the year, by which time we will also be preparing to
launch the new edition of the Art For Your Feet
Tsock Club. Stay tuned!
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About the Tsock Kits:
The "Art for your Feet" Tsock Kits have been admired, knitted, and/or blogged by the Yarn Harlot, Lucy Neatby, Cat Bordhi, Sandi Wiseheart, and the Twist Collective. The designs are original and shamelessly over-the-top, stopping at nothing in the pursuit and enhancement of the theme or joke, form following function to its logical extreme and beyond. The kits are not necessarily for the faint of heart: with the one notable exception of our gentle and seductive "Tsocks 101" kit, every one of them presents exciting (and yes, occasionally maddening) challenges for the knitter. If you thought socks were all the same, if you thought they were dull and repetitive... think again. If you thought you'd seen it all where sock architecture and patterning are concerned... take a closer look. The Tsarina of Tsocks unhesitatingly invents new structures and stitches when she needs to - but never for their own sake; always in service and in scale to the all-important theme. These are socks that will keep you awake, stimulated and thinking; this is knitting on the edge of your seat.
Each kit contains a pattern booklet and enough of our custom-blend wool/silk sock yarn to make a pair of socks in Women's Medium or Large, depending on kit size (custom-size skeins and pattern modifications are also available - please don't hesitate to ask!), as well as all other materials that may be called for by the design (such as beads, buttons, ribbons, skeinlets of laceweight, etc.).
Some kits are also offered in Spin-Your Own versions - for these we supply the same blend of fiber, in the same colorway(s), but unspun. Some kits come in multiple colorways or "flavors."
Much of the yarn and fiber is dyed by Elizabeth Murphy of Moose Manor Handpaints, but we will often feature "special guest-artist" indie dyers for particular kits.
The booklets are 5.5" x 8.5", comb- or spiral-bound so you can use them like flip charts. They are copiously illustrated and include complete tutorials for every technique called for, as well as thorough explanations of the designs and themes; each is a theme-driven masterpiece, as well as a small master class in technique and fit. Pattern stitches are written out step by step but are also charted; you'll find the charts and a glossary of abbreviations on cards at the back of the book, so they can be removed and used separately if you like - placed on a chartkeeper, etc.
The Tsarina's special custom base yarn is a 4-ply blend of 70% superwash wool and 30% silk, spun to a high hosiery twist so it is both resilient and durable without sacrificing softness, and has beautiful stitch definition. The wool is grown and the yarn spun in the USA, to our exacting specifications.
Typical gauge is 8 sts x 12 rows = 1" on US #1 needles.
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A Tsampling of the Tsocks:
(Click on any thumbnail or title for details and photographs.
Please note: Most of these are posts from my blog; a few are from my old web site, so they may contain obsolete information as to availability; this will all be updated in the course of 2011.
A complete listing of designs, with links to comparable pages, can be found on my design page on Ravelry)
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An abbey! Yes, it was delightful to be really in an abbey! But she doubted, as she looked round the room, whether anything within her observation would have given her the consciousness. To an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions, and the heaviest stone-work, for painted glass, dirt, and cobwebs, the difference was very distressing.
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The tender-hearted artichoke dressed in its armor, built its modest cupola and stood erect, impenetrable beneath a lamina of leaves, burnished to a pomegranate glow. And then one day, with all the other artichokes in willow baskets, our artichoke set out to market to realize its dream; life as a soldier....
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Meet Marie, the adopted daughter and spoiled darling of the Magnificent Twenty-First; every inch the Napoleonic vivandière, from her dainty little army boots to the brass buttons on her jaunty military jacket.
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It can light a dark room with the brightness of its plumage. It kills deathless demons; it restores the dead to life. Capture the elusive Firebird; hold it fast until it promises to stand your friend. The journey will be long and the obstacles daunting, but the magical creature will bring you good fortune at last.
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...thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral
made.
Those are pearls that were his
eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But
doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich
and strange.
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Now - let's talk business, just you and me.
What are you, Jack Rance? A gambler. Johnson? A
bandit. Me? I own a bar and a gambling den, I
live off whiskey and gold. We're all the same!
All bandits and cardsharps. Well, then - here’s
my stake. I’m offering you this man - and my
life! One game of poker! If you win, you can
take him - and me. But if I win - on the honor
of Jack Rance, gentleman - then this man
is mine, MINE!
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The man let the water trickle gently into his glass, and as the green clouded, a mist fell from his mind.
Then he drank opaline.
Green changed to white, emerald to an opal: nothing was changed.
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But this you can't stand,
So you throw up your hand,
And you find that you're cold as an icicle,
In your shirt and your socks
(The black silk with gold clocks),
Crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle.
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NINE+TAYLERS+MAKE+
A+MANNE+IN+CHRIST+
IS+DETH+ATT+END+
IN+ADAM+YAT+BEGANNE
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 "You have
seen the puzzle of the Paper Ring? Where you
take a slip of paper, and join its ends
together, first twisting one, so as to join the
upper corner of one end to the lower corner of
the other? The Ring has only one surface, and
only one edge. The Sock is just like that, isn't
it? Is not the outer surface of one side of it
continuous with the inner surface of the other
side? Whatever is inside that Sock, is outside
it; and whatever is outside it, is inside
it!” |
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 You know who I mean. Jazz-baby. Murderess. The beauty of the cell-block. That sweet-faced little flapper you want to take home to mother - after you bust her out of the clink. Yeah. That Roxie.
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Sahasrara - Crown
Ajna - Third Eye
Vishuddha - Throat
Anahata - Heart
Manipura - Solar Plexus
Svadhisthana - Sacrum
Muladhara - Root
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 “Are you still cold?” she asked. She bent and kissed his forehead with a kiss colder than ice, and the chill of it shot straight to his heart. Though his heart was ice already, her kiss made it colder still. For a moment he felt he might die of it. Then he felt better. After a while he didn’t even know he was cold any more.
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 Not a sock knitter yet...? You WILL be assimilated, and this is how.
Just you watch. We'll make a sock pro of you yet. |
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 Apollo, my destroyer, for you have destroyed me ... Have I missed the mark, or, like true archer, do I strike my quarry? Or am I prophet of lies, a babbler from door to door?
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When I was young,
at my mother’s breast -
Sing ho!
for the wind and the rain -
A vintage wine
was my sole request,
For the rain it rain’d
and rain’d ev’ry day....
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And here I prophesy: this brawl today,
Grown to this faction
in the Temple garden,
Shall send, between the Red Rose
and the White,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.
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