And the Elfie Goes to...

Today was the First Annual Amazing Threads Sock-It-to-Me Contest, and what a success it was! The entries were quite creative and unusual. The room was bedecked with little baby socks MamaSara made years ago and her flower arrangements. As contestants et al trickled into the room with their entries tucked away in opaque baggies, MamaSara tagged them and passed them to me to pin on the board. She wore her own pair of elf socks, of course.

After we gathered at the tables, MamaSara began to tell the conclusion of Elfred's Snow Squad Drama. Despite our incessant chatting, we actually managed to hear Sara's tale. It went something like this:

Mrs. Claus was not happy with how Santa had treated the elves, and cut him off until he reformed his ways. She said, "no nookie until you're nicer to the elves!" Well that just about lit a fire under Santa's bowl full of jelly, off he and the Santa Squad went to Anger Management. At the conclusion of the course, Santa apologized to elves for having a snit fit and, in his beneficiance, ordered brand new yarn and needles from Amazing Threads. Naturally, he invited Thora Lee to the North Pole to teach the elves how to knit socks on double points and 2 circulars. To top it off, he's even going to give the elves time off every Tuesday morning for their SSK group where they can do all that we do at our SSK group: sharing, caring, hugging, knitting, chatting, and EATING! Painting toy tires wasn't so bad after that.

There's just one more wrinkle to this story, Elfred, one of Santa's most senior elves had gone on the lamb and fled to Hawaii. Santa found him on the beach, and went to apologize and ask Elfred to return to the North Pole. Elfred said, "are you kidding? Look at all these hot women in string bikinis. I'm not going back to the North Pole no matter how much you pay me. I'm staying here to be a surf bum." In the end and after intense negotiations, Santa conceded that he needed Elfred to run his distribution center in the Islands. He gave Elfred a big promotion and new position: Big Kahuna Malikalikimaka Menehune, Big Chief Christmas Elf.

Don't you just love a happy ending? Well it gets better, all the projects that came from the sock yarn grew into a beautiful display of entries.


Here's a close up of some of the entries. Starting from the upper left and working clockwise: my entry (blue and magenta), my entry (red heel and toe), my entry (orange and yellow), Cid's entry (pink with flowers), K's entry (hat), K2's entry (multi colored wavy stripes), and Yvonne's not completed afghan (blocks and blocks and blocks). I also made a washcloth that folds and buttons up into a cold compress wrap. You can't see in the picture below, but you can in the above photo (Yoda and a white post-it note are stuck to it.) Cid's flowered sock took an avalanche of prizes winning both the Elfie for Best Use of Color and, the Grand Prize, Viewer's Choice. K2's wavy socks brought her the Elfie for Best Use of Pattern. Not pictured are the winners of the Elfie for Best Use of Ugly (won by Pooh's elf foot) and the Elfie for Best Non-Sock (won by Tink's doll outfit). Congratulations to all the winners!


My entries brought me little glory, but the orange and yellow ones had a strong following of haters, three at least. MamaSara was the only one other than me who liked them. Naturally, I promptly put them on my feet and put my feet on the table. Tis the extent of my pride in my ugly love child. Besides if you wove in all these damned ends (see below), you'd be justifiably proud of them too.

The magenta and blue one was intended to be a toe sock, but that didn't work out well (below). The big toe had increases evenly spaced partway up, so it took on a decidedly phallic look (no picture, EVER).
We all agreed that the contest was a big hit and we should do this again next year. It won't be socks, though. We're thinking hats. I want to send out a big thanks to MamaSara for providing us with the elf yarn and the inspiration to create and innovate. Thanks Sara!!!