Unraveled

We are really excited to announce a team effort that we have been working on with the creators of the upcoming Sock Summit event: Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot, and Tina Newton of Blue Moon Fiber Arts. We’ve all watched Sock Summit grow from a sneak peek of an idea on Stephanie’s blog to an incredible event bringing together inspiring sock-kniterati and thousands of excited yarn lovers (like us!) this summer in Portland for classes, community, and an amazing marketplace.

Here at Ravelry, we knew that we were going to Sock Summit, and we knew we wanted to have a meetup, but we also knew that the community spirit that was building around the event was going to be something really special, something that we would love to help bring to knitters and crocheters who weren’t able to attend the event in person, if we could. So we wrote to Stephanie and Tina, and it turns out they had the perfect idea for a Sock Summit/Ravelry teamup in the works:

They had been thinking about a contest to provide a showcase for dyers connected with Sock Summit. Tina, a hand-dyer, wanted to create an opportunity for dyers to come forward and strut their stuff to the global community of knitters and crocheters who admire their work. As knitters and crocheters, we are inspired each day by the work of dyers, soaking in their color choices and often choosing our patterns and projects based upon what would work best with the techniques they choose. This contest and showcase offers dyers connected with Sock Summit to create a special sock yarn colourway that fits into one of the categories listed below and display their work in front of the global Ravelry community, and it gives Ravelers around the world the chance to participate in this amazing event by voting for their favorite colourway in each category. Together, we can all Dye for Glory.

How do you participate? The first step is for the dyers. After that, the rest of us get to play. :) First things first: here are the rules:

What kind of sock yarn colourways can be submitted?

The Dye for Glory contest has the following categories:

Kettled: The entire dye process happens in the dyepot (kettle); all manipulation occurs with the whole skein in the pot with the dye.
Watercolors: Any hand-dye process that uses any group of colours diluted and mixed to create a watery fluid effect.
Random Stripes: Any skein that is hand-dyed to create stripes by nature of the placement of the dye on the skein, no matter how you get it there.
Predictable Stripes: Any hand-dye process that produces a skein designed to generate predictable, intentional stripes, by nature of long repeats of colour.
Pooler: Any hand-dyed process that creates a skein that pools colour in delightful intentional puddles while knitting. (We hate that these pretty yarns have a bad name.)
Mosaic: Any hand-dye process that results in a skein with multiple colours, all existing in small areas and resulting in short repeats, usually the result of the use of multiple techniques on one skein.
Painted: Yarn that’s dyed outside of the dyepot, with the application of colour (using a brush, turkey baster, syringe, fingers…) to paint on the skein.
Dipped: Any skein that’s coloured by dipping parts of the skein in dye.
Machined: Any yarn dyed by a mill, rather than a person.
Printed: Skeins that are printed by machine with dye to produce a regular, predictable pattern over the entire length of the skein. (Regia Jacquard Colours or Opal Hundertwasser are good examples.)
Primary: A hand-dye process that uses only primary colours (Red, blue, Yellow)
Tertiary: A dye process that uses (or results in) only tertiary (look it up) colours.
Shaded solid: Any hand dye process that results in a skein that is only one hue, and gets its variance from the rate of absorption, or the addition of black, not other colours.
Out of the box: This category is for any other process (Machined or hand-dyed) that we didn’t think of. Yarn people are creative people. If the dye-process results in sock yarn, you’re on. Go nuts!

Dyers, in your stash section here on Ravelry, you will see the following fancy new button on any yarn that is not in the database but that is added by you or belonging to you (if you are a yarnie):

(This button is going to appear all over the place in Ravelry stashes, since we at Ravelry don’t have the info about who is eligible according to the rules. We know that the button is shiny and new, but please don’t click and submit your yarn if you aren’t eligible to participate! That’ll just make more work for Stephanie and Tina, who will be checking the booth information for all of the submissions.)

If your yarn will be sold at Sock Summit, when you are ready to submit your special colourway, you’ll start there in the stash section - enter your yarn (with all the information you can completed and filled out first, including colorway name and the information about the Sock Summit booth in which your yarn will be sold in the notes).

Very important dates!

Have questions? We’ve started a thread about this in the Sock Summit Ravelry Group. Please use that thread to ask any questions you might have about this! We here at Ravelry will be monitoring the thread, as will the good folks from Sock Summit. Together, we’ll be able to team up and respond to you quickly. (Please do not use the customer service emails of Ravelry or Blue Moon Fiber Arts, or Steph’s email address, or comment on our blog posts if you need help - we really will help you faster if you post in that thread! Plus, it’s likely that others will have the same questions you have and you’ll be helping lots of other people by asking it there, which is totally appropriate and good for this community event.)

We’ll have more details about the voting when we’re closer to the date on which voting begins - July 23. Until then - dyers - dye for glory!