Sock Summit 2011 and OSCON

So last week was Sock Summit. Not having any money available for classes, I volunteered to help out with things. Turns out that made it so I could attend at least one lecture and get away and watch a demo and free entry into the Marketplace.  My time was to start at 11:30am on Wednesday. Bobbie (Tiggywinkleknits) and I arrived a ten minutes early to find out that instead of the training starting at noon it wasn't going to start until 12:30pm. So spare time for knitting. We joined a table of ladies already there and one of them was showing off a pad she got from someone from OSCON (Open Source Conference on the other end of the Convention Center).  There was some mention about being able to get in free to their Exhibit Hall, so we decided to take a few minutes to wander over and see if we could get in.

A nice man at the Registration Desk hooked us up with ID tags and soon our hands were full of cool goodies: blow up globes and yummy Dutch chocolates and toffees, playing cards, lots of pens, fun cling stickers and pads from the O'Reilly booth, really nice canvas bag from TAOS. Google was also there and so we got flashy pins and a wood block puzzle (Brandon took it to work before I could get a picture) and a couple of t-shirts. Bobbie has a nice picture of her stash, here's mine (I had fun collecting pins):

The hairband with devil horns to the left have buttons inside to make the horns flash. I wore them Wednesday and Thursday while working the Registration Desk.

I missed the Marketplace opening up on Thursday afternoon since I needed to get home to take Brandon out to Vernonia to set up our encampment for Dragon's Mist Defender's Tourney (next post). Friday morning I attend the Curvy-Grrl Knee Socks & Legwarmers lecture. Then caught the halfway point of the Backward Knitting demo in the Marketplace. One of the nice ladies, Nancy, whom I was working with for the last couple days knew I hadn't gotten a chance to go through the Marketplace so covered for me while it was quiet. I got lucky and ran into Rachel. She was able to show me where all the free stuff was and along the way I found a one ounce batt of cashmere (60%) and camel (40%) that just had to come home with me. I hadn't seen that combination of fibers, so new to my stash. Ms Gusset from Australia  brought some lovely cormo fiber with her and she had some delicious black that I couldn't resist. Looking back, I wish I had bought two bags. Hopefully I can get another from her soon. I did point Cindy in her direction and I understand the shop will have some of her Optim. My last purchase was a small bottle of Citrus SOAK, I'm really low in my big bottle, so got the bottle I could buy with my leftover cash. Here's my Sock Summit swag and the fibers:

Sock Gate wearing my Zen Shawlette

4 ounces unwashed black cormo

1 ounce cashmere-camel

If there's another Sock Summit, I'm not volunteering, especially if there's also an SCA event I'm supposed to be attending. Just too stressful and I didn't really get to hang out and do the free stuff in the Marketplace. I needed to work about half the hours I did to really enjoy the whole experience while I was there. Though I must say my filing fu was awesome! I was amazing people by being able to almost reach into any of the boxes and pull registrations out with just a couple rummagings.