Fourth Day of Sock Yarn

On the Fourth Day of Sock Yarn, Simply Sock Yarn gave to meeeeeee.....

three skeins of Dream in Color yarn!

To have a chance at winning three skeins of your choice from this amazing Arizona dye studio, simply answer the following question in the comments below:

What is something that a kid in your life doesn't or wouldn't understand the concept of. Like a simple device or a word - nothing heavy or existential please. Let's keep it light.

I recently had to explain to my 15 year old son what a handkerchief is. My mom pulled one out of her purse, and it had a hand made lace edges and embroidery on it, and she said to him "this was probably made by your great great uncle Willy's mom".... Willard died 15 years ago in his 90s, so that would make this handkerchief at least 100 years old? And I had to explain to James that a century ago there weren't all these disposable things like toilet paper and paper towels and Kleenex... much to his horror. It seems like an odd thing to try and describe, how all the toiletries we use several times day weren't even a thing, and instead were replaced by things like handkerchiefs that were little works of art.

Microbatch Color 18 - Jolene by Dolly Parton

So, back to yarn! If you win, you can choose three of any skeins of Dream in Color yarn, and that includes the 50% larger skeins we keep in our Sale Section. Colossal Sock is our exclusive yarn dyed by Dream in Color, and it's such a wonderful yarn. It's a slightly "rustic" or "toothy" sock yarn - so not the ultra smooth ones that come from other hand dyers. It's slightly on the heavier side of fingering weight, and it comes in 150g skeins so you have plenty for a pair of socks. We've offered it for several years now and it's widely used for sweaters too. And if comes in all of Dream in Color's delicious colorways.

Microbatch No. 7 - Moody's Mood for Love

For this batch that we just listed yesterday, we have some super special colors - 20 of them, to be exact. Veronica and her team at DIC came up with 5 pieces of art and 5 pieces of music to inspire colorways, and we at SSYC did the same. So you'll see 20 different "microbatch" colors based on our faves. Here are the details so you can perhaps find one based on your favorite music or painting.

Microbatch No. 1 - Convergence by Jackson Pollock

Simply Socks Yarn Co's inspirations:

Art
Microbatch No. 1: Jackson Pollock’s “Convergence”
Microbatch No. 2: Michelangelo’s “David”
Microbatch No. 3: Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”
Microbatch No. 4: Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss”
Microbatch No. 5: HOTTEA’s “Atlas”

Music
Microbatch No. 6: Blue in Green- Miles Davis
Microbatch No. 7: Moody’s Mood for Love- George Benson
Microbatch No. 8: Feelin’ Good- Nina Simone
Microbatch No. 9: Vogue - Madonna
Microbatch No. 10: Can’t Help Falling in Love With You- Elvis Presley

Dream in Color's inspirations

Art
Microbatch No. 11: Basquiat’s “Bird on Money”
Microbatch No. 12: Van Gogh’s “Postman”
Microbatch No. 13: Escher’s “Hand With Reflecting Sphere”
Microbatch No. 14: Chagall’s “La Mariée”
Microbatch No. 15: Filipp Malyavin’s “A Peasant Girl”

Music
Microbatch No. 16: Mad World- Michael Andrews
Microbatch No. 17: Bitter Sweet Symphony- The Verve
Microbatch No. 18: Jolene- Dolly Parton
Microbatch No. 19: Right Down the Line- Gerry Rafferty
Microbatch No. 20: S.O.S. - ABBA

We all had a really great time coming up with inspiration and then seeing what Veronica and her team came up with for these 20 brand new colorways. Veronica says that she thinks she saved the detailed recipes, so we're hoping that we can do these on Dream in Color's other base yarns too. I mean, who wouldn't want a cashmere Starry Night scarf? Or a Bitter Sweet Symphony cashmere hat??

Microbatch No. 17 - Bitter Sweet Symphony - The Verve

I hope you enjoy our thinking-outside-the-box and that you connect with our collaboration. If you really like any of the above 20 microbatch colors, they are currently available in the sale yarn section til they sell out and hopefully I can get more in a couple months. 

We have 8 more Days of Sock Yarn coming up, so do stop here at the SSYC blog (the shop journal - I've been writing/sharing shop and life stuff here for over 17 years) every day until Christmas Eve so you can win. Full details of the contest can be found here. If you have any trouble entering the contest, just e-mail service@simplysockyarn.com with your comments and I'll add you to the contests when it's time to randomly choose the winners.

Comments

[Geri Heagy]

How about using bobby pins for "pin curls". My mom used to pin curl my hair when I was little. It hurt so bad to sleep on! :)

[Jane Piotraschke]

Mine was explaining the fact that Mom sometimes need an extra light to knit socks at night--when the lamp is on!!!

[Deb Temple]

Would not understand that once upon a time there were no microwaves or computers

[Nicole Acuna]

My kids act shocked when I told them when I was a kid we had rotary phones lol I highly doubt they would be able to use one haha.

[Natalie]

I have been trying to explain to my children about a typewriter. How we had to put paper in and type and use white out to fix mistakes or start all over again. How hard it was to set the margins and the resource page correctly.. I hated typing those papers- I always messed something up

[Alice]

Dial up. And the tragedy of an incoming call

[ElizabethD]

Party lines on the phone, and talking to the operator to place a long-distance call

[Judy]

Rotary phones, analog clocks, no personal computers, TV antennas . . .

[Leslie]

My kids would not understand how to use my cassette player. I showed them how to use my antique rotary phone once. 🤣

[Laura]

Keeping long distance calls short because you paid by the minute. Or even….long distance calls.

[Emily]

My nieces were fascinated by dial up internet. Also, we went to disney world over the summer and my sister gamed the lightning lanes so we only had to wait up to 15 minutes per ride which was highly impressive considering most lines were over an hour long. We didn't have that as kids, everyone had to wait in the same long line. And yet my oldest niece still complained about the wait.

[Sheila P]

Taking pictures and waiting to have them developed. Also, life before cable TV and VCRS. Your had to plan to watch something and if you missed it you had to wait for station to replay it in reruns.

[Donna]

Rotary phone…I was in an antique store with my niece. They had a rotary phone in a phone booth. When we explained it to her she was still baffled by it. It was very funny watching her try to use the phone.

[Elizabeth]

That being an adult/the boss doesn’t actually mean that you get to do whatever you want. Quite the opposite…

[Donna Tyson]

Recently I explained the way we used a pager to my twelve year old grandson….I told him I thought they were an intrusion but little did I know the cell phone was up next. I Love Dream in Color….

[Karen Powell]

cameras, when my nephew was 6, we took him to an aquarium science center and I took my older film camera, and after I took pics, he came over to say can I seen them, we laughed as the innocence of time, had robbed us of every having the opportunity to show him actual film for the camera, but we sure explained it to him, and showed him photos from the past. Such a difference, paper history to electronic history. He thought I could just turn the button on the camera, to show him the pics like on a cell phone.

[Diane]

I’m thinking that they wouldn’t know that a house call was when the doctor came to your house to examine you.

[Stephanie Warn]

My 15 yo stepdaughter found my flip phone the other day and was trying figure out how I would have texted from it. She got so frustrated. It was funny.

[Dana]

Hand written correspondence.

[Debra Cohen]

Traveling using a road map… I was watching a tv program called “The Amazing Race” and the biggest problem the contestants had was using a road map!

[Tamara]

I was just telling them about snow days! We had to listen to the radio, waiting to hear if school was delayed/canceled - no texts or emails back then!

[Diana Rucker]

Hourglass phone timer

[Kathy]

Party lines

[Kim Holbrook]

My grandkids can’t believe we actually used typewriters and carbon paper! It seems so time-consuming to them.

[Trudy]

I recently asked a. Grandson to get me something from the ice box. He stood, looked at me & asked where is the ice box??!! I love anything dream in color. Their yarn is fantastic

[Teresa Knittingdancer]

I don't have any young kids in my life.

[Carol Rice]

Microfiche and encyclopedias. Had to explain to my daughter at one point that we used to use them to write papers and gather information. She is a reader, loves books, but couldn't fathim research without the internet!

[Susan]

I was trying to describe winter attire and how we put plastic bread bags on our feet before putting winter boots on to keep our feet dry.

[Kate S]

I recently had to explain long distance calls to my nine year old - she was shocked!

[Labrista wadkins]

The fact that TV used to be 3 channels and that was if the weather was good. Also the fact that programming ended at midnight.

[Alison Alldredge]

Not being immediately able to verify or lookup information on your phone. We had to live with not knowing things like what other movies that actor was in.

[Staci J]

“Can you get off the internet, please? I need to make a phone call.”

[Susanna Eve]

My kids are all grown up and my grand babies are little but my daughter is bemused by the idea you had to go to a store and rent an actual physical telephone.

[Sabrina Snyder]

I have had to explain what a record was to a teenager. This happened some years ago when I went into a store and asked where the record department was. I can't imagine the young people today knowing much about listening to records.

[Brenda]

Playing outside til the street lights came on AND getting in trouble if you didn't make it on time! LOL

[Terri]

My kids always got a kick out what a davenport was. My grandmother used that term a lot!

[Anne Reaves]

Those pink curlers with pop over lids—my mother wanting to give me a Shirley Temple look when I was very young.

[Pat]

Records, rotary phones, no internet,no cell phones. So many technology changes.

[Lucy]

I told a grandchild that they sounded like a broken record. They blocked at me and said, grandma, what's a record? Hahahahahaha!

[Lisa]

Phones with a cord...no cable tv...no remote control for tv...there are so many things. Records and cassette tapes and CD's instead of digital music. I even remember a time when my niece took my cell phone and tried to scroll the screen and it wasn't a smart phone. She was so confused!

[Virginia Harnischfeger]

How to use and dial a rotary pay phone in a phone booth

[Geraldine Scott]

What 'E' tickets were at Disneyland....life was so simple, now it takes a rocket scientist to plan the day there!

[Shari]

Listening to the radio to find out if the school was closed for a snow day.

[Bonnie]

We were just talking at work yesterday about a colleague's grandson who was trying to figure out what a cassette tape was. Do you listen to it? Do you watch it? The answer is neither because nobody owns a cassette player anymore. :)

[Rose Birchall]

Walking to school.

[Megan]

Love DIC!!!

Winding clocks mystified my son for a while. I finally took one apart to show him all the inner workings and showed him videos of how the springs work inside. He’s been fascinated with mechanics ever since. One of his Christmas presents is a small model of an internal combustion engine so he can figure it out as well!

[Cathy]

Pay phones or phone booths

[Stefanie]

I had to explain to my kids what a pager was recently. They thought it was crazy that you got paged and then had to go find a phone to call someone, instead of just using your cell ;)

[Sheila Hochberg]

Putting a pan of water on the stove and heating it to make a cup of hot chocolate or tea. Or making popcorn in a pan on the stove!

[Diane Jenkins]

Carbon paper! And mimeograph machines. Kids look at me like I'm a dinosaur. Lol

[J’net]

Calling a number to listen for movie times, and if you missed your movie, you had to wait for it to play again.

[NCJKnits]

Just this week I was explaining to my boss that when I went to technical college in 1980, I learned to use a 10-key adding machine by touch and I learned how to key punch cards that were placed in trays and then inserted into a computer to be "read" for data entry.

[Barbara Dubois]

I am a person who loves to cook and enjoys most foods. I have found myself in the position of explaining that you don’t need a mix to make some foods. I had a family member want pancakes but couldn’t understand how I could make them without a pancake mix. But I also had a conversation with my nephew about growing up and having to make pudding on the stove top and it was the best was when it was still slightly warm.

[J roth]

Always having a dime with you in case you needed to use a pay telephone

[Deb Adams]

Rotary dial telephones

[Jen Simoneau]

What's the 411? A fellow veteran teacher and I recently had to explain this to the new teachers.
When I was kid you would dial (on the rotary phone attached to the wall) this number for "Information".

[Renee]

Cassette tapes! I still have several in a box, and my kids couldn't possibly comprehend what those were used for.

[Kendra Yerian]

The "kid" in my life is 27. He has never understood the need to be able to read an analog clock. To be fair, we don't own one and both use out phones for time (I don't even set appliances).

Recently I got a flat tire and was explaining to the mechanic where I saw a screw by analog clock reference (2:00 from the air stem).

That was when the light bulb came on.

[Susan]

Life before cell phones and technology!! The apartment complex where my youngest son lives has garages but no garage door opener so he has to get out of the car to open the door….

[Toni]

A broken record!

[Deb]

That shows like the Wizard of Oz, Frosty the Snowman and the Peanuts Christmas Special were shown only once a year and were an EVENT!

[Karin Martinez]

Kids in today's world can't begin to imagine how I grew up with 3 TV channels and no internet. How could there ever be a world without streaming?

[Tina Niesen]

I would say waiting for dial up internet and listening to it while it’s connecting!

[Faye]

Automobiles that required you rolling down the windows...kids are too lazy to do that now! And what about the cassette players?

[Megan]

A child in my preschool class several years ago had an afghan for naptime his mom had purchased at goodwill and he loved it…but was sad when the corner came unwoven (the end came loose) and some stitches cane undone. I happened to have a crochet project with me, so I offered to fix it for him. I sat down and fixed it in under a minute but several classmates had gathered to watch and were fascinated that something like that was fixable ….and that someone they knew was able to fix it!

[Penny]

Thank you notes

[Rose Bunnell]

My grandson doesn't understand stocking up... I explained to him that we only shopped on paydays, when I was a kid, which were every other week. We had to make sure to buy enough toilet paper and food, to make it till payday, and hope we didn't have a snowstorm/blizzard and couldn't get out.

[Peggy P]

When you bought a new car it came with a full size tire at no charge - donut tires didn't exist. And it came without a radio unless you ordered one and paid extra like $20!

[Linda]

Expecting you to be available 24/7 via text/cell phone.
We had "party lines". Luckily it wasn't with my Nana. She loved chatting on the phone.

[Rhonda]

A butter churn where we made our own butter, along with making our own cottage cheese, and making all of our pickles in the pickle barrel.

[Gayle]

Telephone books! About 6 years ago, all of our family was home. One of our sons asked where a certain business was located and my response was to look in the phone book. Our 7 year old granddaughter asked what a phone book was. There was dead silence around the table until our then 20 some year old daughter said “I feel so old since I know what one is!”.

[Jeannette]

My kids will never know the agony of living in an area with phone numbers starting with 990 with rotary phones.

[Paula Meisters]

Life without computers and smart phones. They wouldn’t understand being able to function without “devices” in their lives. When you left home there were only phone booths to connect with someone, if you could find one. No computer games or blogs, etc. Their response was horrified shock. How did you live like that!!

[Lynne Marquardt]

Having just three TV stations - and in black and white.

[MarthaO]

Life before TV and phone. Then TV in black and white with no programs overnight. Phones before rotary phones--you had to tell the operator the number you wanted. Party lines. Calling Information for a phone number or calling for the time. A phone book. Cameras that took pictures in black and white. Cooking on a coal stove; heating a house with coal. Now I'm feeling older than dirt.

[Joyce]

Cash registers that didn't tell you how much change to give. And, rotary dial phones with no caller ID or answering machines.

[Kelli]

Sleestaks, I made a reference to them the other day and realized that none of my 30 something co-workers had ever seen Land of the Lost or knew what a sleestak looked like. I refer to things often that even adult kids don't know about........

[Karen Behr]

8 track tapes!

[AllisonLiuzzi]

I had to explain television commercials to my 7-year-old. She streams nearly everything she watches, so she didn't understand the idea of being forced to pause to watch ads.

[Jody Laake]

Teaching them how to tell time on an analog watch was a nightmare lol and then there was tying a bow - they grew up with Velcro fasteners on their shoes.

[Emily]

Startrek communicators!

[Becky Creighton]

Black and white tv that played the Star Bangled Banner at midnight and then went off the air.

[Teresa]

Calling a phone number to find out what time it was!

[Pat Phythian]

A skate key and why it was used for.

[julie]

How I heat up food without a microwave :)

[Dana]

not having email or text. and also no on demand television (and nothing to watch even if it had existed)

[Pat Phythian]

Milk man and paying deposit on soft drink bottles.

[Hilda C]

I'm sure my granddaughter wouldn't know what the jockey box was.

[Deborah G.]

So many things...Manual typewriters, rotary phones, carbon paper, 8-track tapes, hand embroidered hankies, just to name a few.....

Younger folks really have no idea how much more work went into things years ago, LOL.

[Jennifer Walker]

My kiddo is 3, so I am explaining stuff to him all the time! I love to see him learn new things!!

[Anne]

Black and white tv pictures and having to be home to watch your favorite show. And having to get up to change channels and maybe play with the antenna to get a good picture.

[Pat]

Changing the channel on a TV without the use of remote.

[Leann Demeduk]

No remote controls for the TV or radio - you had to get up to change the channel!

[Amber]

A Pager or "Beeper." My 7 year declared "that's just silly", when I explained about getting paged or beeped with a number, then having to track down a pay phone (another anachronistic device I had to explain), to call the number that paged you back.

[Marie P]

My kids are shocked when I tell them that cars, when I was little, didn't use to have seat belts in back.

That may be because we've ALWAYS had it kids buckled up.

[Sandra Sprouse]

My nieces and nephews would not understand having to use encyclopedias to do their homework!

[Jessica]

I borrowed a record player and a record from my friend so the kids could see and hear it in action. They thought it was pretty cool spinning around. All their musical experiences have been digital.

[Barb Logie]

Tea cloth! When the grandkids were visiting I decided to have an old fashioned afternoon tea, and asked one to get a tea cloth from the cabinet drawer. They had no idea what that was….or that people even had afternoon tea!

[Dona B]

Pay phone booth,

Or- remember party lines? Our very first phone was on a party line with all the neighbors!

[Kris LaVenia]

S&H Green Stamps and going to the S&H store to trade the stamps for items/purchases. And some of the playground equipment we used to regularly play with/on would probably not be legal now! And hand-crank handles for putting your car window up/down.