Socks to hats

Here at the home of Pure Wool Mongrel Socks, we are doing our best to reduce waste. It is a sad reality that when we produce our socks, sometimes the machinery chucks a wobbly and we make a few faulty socks. I just hate that because it costs the same to make rubbish as it does to make good ones. It's a crying shame to see our beautiful wool wasted. So over the years I have always packed and saved this excess in the hope that one day it might be useful for something and can be recycled. Well that day has come! I spent the best part of my day developing patterns for a new range of hats I hope to produce. I've posted a few photo's below. I intend developing these designs further, utilising knitted fabric I can't currently use, with a view to ending up with a funky (even a bit silly) range of unique pure wool head wear. The beautiful range of colours we knit our socks with,really lends itself to be shown off, not hidden under boots and shoes. Loud and proud! Wish me luck.

Blown away!

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I just can't help being blown away by the reach the internet has. Anyone who knows us or even has read a few entries on this blog, knows we use some wonderful antique Bentley Komet sock machines to knit our pure wool Mongrel Socks and from time to time experience problems with them. As they are so old and the technical knowledge we need is hard find, even small issues can be a production stopping event. Well.....it is kind of comforting to know there's some one halfway around world dealing with the same thing. Even I have resorted to trawling the internet looking for more information on these mongrel machines, without any success I should add. This morning an email greeted me, a plea from a man in the UK, having problems with his own old Komet. Here's how our our email volley went
(complete with our shocking spelling)..............

I see from your blog your a bit of a hand with a Bentley Komet. I have a Komet BR model and due to well a few issues I had it part stripped due to a break down but got dstracted for a while father was taken ill and the machine got left.I've got back to it now but it keeps locking up when the recip.clutch disengages, I've timed it to the marks but does the cylinder have to be in a certain position also when timing. Ive varied the quadrant mark on the recip pinion a tooth either way but then it either locks going in or coming out of the toe / heel. Any help would be apreciated my UK contact has been taken ill with cancer and I don't want to bother him with my problems.

Richard

My reply...
Hi Richard,
Argh! I sorry we can't be much help to you. We still have to get our guy in when problems with the clutch arise. Thankfully that only happens very occasionally. These BR's are great old machines, but we have found over the years, the less fiddling with them the better. The only thing I can think of tht might be the problem-hard to explain because I don't know what the parts are supposed to be called-it the 2 cogs that lock together @ the top of the machine in the top right under the insection plate as you stand in front can be 180 degree's out which will cause jamming as you've decribed.
Don't know if that'll help but worth a try.
Goodluck.
Helen.

His reply....
Well many thanks for the reply; its late now so just a quick thank you, for your prod in the right direction it was indeed half a turn out due to me misreading what in my defense is a poor quality drawing. It looks like a fine tune and all will be well again now it’s timed correctly. Do you have any set up information on your machines, I have a little and it may be of use to you also, perhaps we could pool what we have, information is hard to come across. The cogs are called the clutch the one on the left which reciprocates is the reciprocating pinion. I know the names but couldn’t get them to work.

Thanks again
Richard

Yay! what a nice result. I'll definitely be getting back to him in the future and organising an exchange in information, I think this may be the beginning of a mutually beneficial e-friendship.
PS I was also delighted to see he hails from a place called North Kelsey Moor in the UK, our daughters name is Kelsey too. She's gorgeous inside and out, and I bet so is North Kelsey Moor.

Proud!

I submitted this note to our local newspaper "The Mercury" for hopeful inclusion, I'm doubtful about geting it printed so I'm posting it here!
I was filled with a great sense of pride, as I read the Sunday Tasmanian (2/11/08). Three separate articles featured a diverse bunch of innovative, creative, hardworking Tasmanians. All kicking goals. These people, Scott Kilmartin-Haul, Robert Pennicott and Michaye Boulter-Bruny Island Charters and Tasman Island Cruises, Nick Haddow-Bruny Island Cheese, Matthew Evans and Ross O’meara-Rare Food’s all have something else in common. They all have stalls at Salamanca Market. As a fellow stallholder at Salamanca Market, I know I’m in very good company. Salamanca Market has been the backbone of my own small business, and many hundred’s of others over the last 30 years. I highly recommend the Market to any Tasmanian producer looking for exposure and to anybody wanting to find some of the best things our little island has to offer.

Good Socks!

We know we make good socks, we use nothing but the best quality wool, knitted in to a tried and true style of sock. We do what we can to have as little impact on the environment as possible, tree planting, recycling waste, natural lighting and drying processes and so on, but......up 'til now we really have been in the dark as to the eco impact the processing of our yarn has and no idea as to the animal and farm practices used in the wool production. Well that's about to change! We are now in the process of sourcing our wool from the farm gate, a farm right here in Tasmania. We're excited!
Like all good things it will take time and probably a lot longer that we think, but the results will be worth it. We are undertaking to make sure we do all we can to make a pure wool socks; good for the earth, good for the conscience, good with a halo.
I'm guessing it will be many months away before we are actually knitting up this yarn. First supply has to be secured, then processor chosen (probably oversea's), then testing and trials, and lots more incidental stuff. One step at a time we'll take this journey. I'll keep it posted here, and you can take it with us.

Socks, socks and more socks!

Another few busy weeks have spun by here in sock heaven. With lots of new wool arriving, the excitement of playing with the new colours, scratching our heads and rolling up our sleeves looking for somewhere to put it all. We found homes for all our new wool, all 1.5 tons of it, but of course to find room we had to do a pretty full on clean out, which is all good, just a big job. No stopping us now. We have needed to replenish a few of our stock colour's in the pure wool mongrel socks, before getting on the experimentation of new colour mixes. We have now got some new colours in the Tuff Mongrel wool/polyproplyene wool Climawool*, and can't wait to get these colours on the go. It will give a better range for our sock customer's to choose from too. Something they have been asking for in the Tuff Mongrel socks for quite a while.

check 123

I'm still busy taking sock photo's-it's driving me loopy! Our pure wool Mongrel Socks come in a lot of different colour's, and getting shots that show clearly the variation is proving difficult-even with my home made light box. I'm so glad I didn't go and buy one retail as I really haven't been happy with the "true" colour I'm getting. On a pure white back ground the colours look so washed out-not at all like the vibrant colour mixes they are. I know I'm probably doing something technically wrong but I've gone back to natural sunlight and taken a few shot's with a garden greenery background, I don't know why, but they just look better to me, so I'm going to post a couple here to have a look how'll they'll appear on screen. I know the back ground is not how other product's are presented online-and all the experts recommend plain white backgrounds for product shots, but I am leaning toward this greenery background for our soon to be renewed web site.

Snap happy! Argh!

Busy week here at the home of Mongrel Socks. Aside from all the usual sock making endeavours, I'm busy getting shots together for our web site update. All is not smooth sailing, who would have thought it could be so hard to take a good photo of socks. I now have a new respect for photographers, where as once upon a time, I ignorantly thought, taking photo's must be one of the worlds easiest job's, in deed it is not! I've done a lot of reading on the net about taking a good product shot, that's been very helpful. Almost all the articles I read mentioned the use of a "soft box", which I had absolutely no idea of what it actually was or where I could get one from. None of the local photo supplier's had one in stock. Lucky for me my persistant trawling of the web paid off when I found an article (site) that not only told me all about how and why's of soft boxes but also showed me how to make one! Yipee! Which I have quite proudly just finished making, I just need to get some big thumping light's and I'll be in business. Speaking of which, business that is, I better get back to something more constructive than now.