Portland, here I come!

This is just a flying post, because it's Wednesday, and I really do have this goal of posting twice a week and Wednesday somehow seems like the middle of the week and therefore a good day for posting.

It was also the day of Sock Summit registration.  Which means that noon Pacific time found me in my office, with the door shut, email shut off to conserve bandwidth, credit card and class list in hand, waiting for the "register now" button to appear on the Sock Summit site.  (OK, in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I was pretty much staring at the computer, class list and credit card in hand, starting at about 11:15.  Thank goodness I had a friend on email who could keep me company, because goodness knows no-one around here would have understood what I was doing!!)  Honestly, you would have thought I was about to ski for Olympic gold, the way my heart was pounding.  I was like Secretariat at the starting gate, except I was not leaning back against the fence.  I kept reminding myself that Sock Summit is fun with or without classes, that the list of available classes is insanely long this year and filled with amazing options, that the less money I spend on classes, the more I have to spend in the marketplace - and I believed all of that, I really did.  But there's something about being poised over the refresh button that gets the juices flowing.  (Or is that just me?)

I am dying to hear the stats again this time, because I think that the site only barely managed to avoid crashing by a hair.  It certainly hung up, but once I was in, things went very smoothly (none of the heart-stopping glitches of last time), and I got everything I wanted!!  (Well, again in the interest of full disclosure, there were a LOT more classes I wanted to take, but I decided to at least attempt to be sane, which meant leaving some open time to hang out with people and to shop in the marketplace, as well as choosing not to take any spinning classes so I wouldn't have to stress about getting my wheel to Portland.  I may regret those decisions later, but right now I am at peace.)

The schedule, you ask?  Here it is:
Thursday 
KnitteRx (1 hour class on knitting ergonomics)
Friday 
Even Cooler Socks, with Lucy Neatby (6 hours on doing stuff with socks I've never done before)
Saturday
The Deeper Meaning of Socks (a 1 hour lecture with Anna Zilboorg)
Sock Yarn Stories (a 1 hour lecture with Clara Parkes)
Writing Sock Patterns (3 hours with JC Briar)
This is Your Brain on Knitting (1 hour lecture with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee)
Sunday
Kilt by Association (a 3-hour class on kilt hose)
Perfect Rib (a 1-hour class with Cookie A.)

How cool is that?  The only one that I may regret not taking is a class on recreating traditional folk socks - it's a 6-hour class on Thursday, and I think it would be really interesting to learn how to "read" a historic sock in order to recreate the pattern.  Next time, maybe?

Is anyone else going?  What classes are you taking?  Where are you staying?  (Note: I still have no plane tickets or hotel room.  That's the next step.)

In other knitting news, I have finished the Daybreak Shawl, and will (with luck) block it tonight.  Given that our humidity levels were around 7% yesterday (I think today they made it into the teens), it'll dry pretty quickly, I think.

And in non-knitting news, I got the coolest cookie cutter in the mail recently from Stella, after I admired the little breads that she was making for her kids' lunches.  So I made some bread dough - very plain, just white bread with millet - and cut out shapes and baked them to freeze.  Tell me what you think:

I made a few coyotes for good measure, but the frogs just took the cake.