Recycled Socks

I can't believe nearly a month has gone by since I last sat and posted. Well, I can because it's been a mad month. Heads down in the Mongrel Sock workshop, seems like we are forever playing catch up. Over the last week things have quietened down and I have found some time to play. We have continued our quest to reduce our factory waste and morph it in to something useful. I have been busy making patch work head warmers, something I have been wearing for years, and love. I love the fact that while they are soft and warm, even nice on the skin but that they come with-out consumer guilt. I have made a heap of different styles and now must put them to the test. What do other people think? Over the next few days I will post some on the web and see if we get some bites. Our wonderful customers at Salamanca Market will also share their thoughts I'm sure. I have just purchased a professional light box to take decent photo's with - hopefully I can master it. Never as easy as it seems, but I'm hoping with practise I will work it out.

Back to the drawing board...

The pure wool socks gauntlet/cuffs liner needs tweaking. Oh well, Rome wasn't built in a day. After doing the 5 washes just to see what it does or would do for a potential customer - BIG FAIL. I'm glad I bothered, as impatient as I am. Not that I am worried, best it fails on me, eh? Now looking for a stretch binding to tidy the edging, that won't shrink. A few more trials ahead but we really want to get this product happening. It would be a great to turn our waste socks in to some thing useful. Not only in the dollar sense, in the ethical sense too. Less landfill, completely recycled, showing corporate responsibility for reducing "end of useful life" waste. I thinking we could even offer this as a service to our customers as a way to further the life of their old socks.

It's been ages since I last blogged. Lots happening. Busy sorting a new supplier and product, I can't talk about it just yet in case it puts the mockers on it like the gauntlet/cuffs. New fabulous natural fibre socks is as much as I can divulge. What I can talk about is( yay!) the Fine Possum/Merino socks are finally replenished. The socks are once again available online.
Here's a few pictures of our wonderful customers out and about wintery Hobart.

The changing colour of socks.

That making socks can be repetitive...is an understatement. When we finish a run of a colour in all the sizes and different products we make. Even if we began liking the colour mix, by the time we're ready to change colour we are well and truly sick of the sight of it.  Always a pleasure to choose the next colour mix. While we do have a standard colour range in our Pure Wool products, dye lots change and so does the way the final blend appears. It can only be a slight change in the shade, of say one of the seven colours we blend together, to make the socks, arm and leg warmers and head warmers, they can appear very different to the last run. Yay! A changing colour day today - we've been doing the Camo green mix, while it's nice, is is quite dull. We are back on my favourite Blue/Green pure wool socks mix. It's day one of the run and I still love it, give me a week or two and I will have developed an aversion, so much so that I won't even be able to wear that colour for a while, I'll be over it. Funny how the mind works, eh?

Cold snap.

Well winter's kicked in and and business couldn't be better. A bit of snow on the mountain always helps. We have been blown away by the amount of orders coming and going. Head's down and backsides up getting it all done. Here it is nearly 3pm Friday arvo, we're packed and ready for Salamanca Market tomorrow. With a frigid 10 degrees C forecast for tomorrow, we're thinking it will be a big day for our warm pure wool socks - so I have packed extra just in case. Tomorrow is the first day we'll have our new pure wool 3 way scarves - I can't wait to see if people like them as much as I think they will or as much as I do. I thought it was a really good sign when our normally fashion conscious teenager made off with the proto-type. I guess we'll see.

Corporate flowers or #2 of "101 things to do with old socks."

Obviously far too much time on my hands! I played for a bit. Using some old Mongrel Socks we make to pretty up some boring old jars, and bottles. I was a flower lady in my pre-sock lady life, old habits die hard. I just love some of the colours we make our pure wool Mongrel Socks in. Always looking for ways to recycle them, once they're done their sock dash,  and their mate's long gone, or it's one of the faulty few, who's destined never to be a fully fledged sock.
My mission is to "re-life" this passed over waste.
I aim to get to 101 things to do with old socks.
Sock lovers and fellow recyclers unite!
Any hint's or photo's (dare I ask) would be gratefully received

New Colours

Finally we have just taken delivery of some new wool supplies. Lucky for us with this delivery we were able to secure (long story) some 18 micron superwash pure wool merino. We usually go with 20.5 micron superwash as any smaller micron counts are hard to find and outrageously expensive. So as a result of the global financial crises, some else's loss is our gain. The colours are great, just what we wanted and as of today we're off and knitting, and it looks like this lot will take us right through to the New Year, so now is an even bettert time to buy our Pure Wool Mongrels, Mongrel Tasmanis Arm/leg Warmers and Head Warmers.

Good folk

Thank goodness June 30 has come and gone, we've spent days counting socks, all the while having to keep business ticking over. Mid winter and we've lot's of orders coming and going out for our Pure wool Mongrels. I'm constantly delighted at the little notes our customers, the good folk that they are, leave with our orders. It is so nice that people still take the time or even bother to personalise their orders in this, the age of "it's all about me". Here's a few of the notes I received last week, all gratefully accepted.

Thanks Helen,
I get everybody to say hello when they are at Salamanca market! (and to buy socks!!)
Cheers,
Gerald

Hi Helen,
my shoe size is 8. Thankyou - your socks are fantastic! I bought a pair last winter and they are so cosy AND cute! Now i want to get them for my friends, too!
kind regards, Tanya


Hi ther helen

Just letting you know that my socks arrived this morning (they made pretty good time!) and they are gorgeous and very cosy. I am already getting lots of positive commnets - you might have to start selling them in NZ (if you don't already)!

many thanks - I'm looking forward to a warm-footed winter.

Alix

The land of no socks.

Yay! Heading off to the Northern Territory this morning for a few sunny days, make a great escape from the really very crappy weather Hobart has had for the last week or so. Not that crappy weather isn't good sock weather, it is, just the sweatshop has turned in to a freezer, making sock production not much fun lately. A prefect time to get away. The far north of Australia isn't really the land of no socks, because we sell quite a few of our Pure Wool Mongrels there. Not for warmth, but strangely for keeping feet cool in the tropical heat. If you'vre got to wear shoes/boots you have to wear socks and the best ones are pure fibre, which takes sweat off the skin in hot conditions. Any enough of sock talk, socks will be along way from my mind for the next few days.

Winter is here!

Waking up to snow on Mt Wellington is a sure sign that winter is here, and along with winter comes our busiest time. We've had a flurry of orders coming through online, very encouraging in these precarious economic times. Our sock machines have been working over time, and we have been madly trying to get a lot more of our Mongrel Tasmanis Arm/leg warmers made. They're one of my personal favourites, at our house they are always at a premium, first thing on and last thing off though winter. They're soft and warm. We are so glad we have not bowed down to the pressures of reducing our business costs and gone for a cheaper quality wool like most other sock manufacturers- the wool we have always used is the best quality that money can buy. The 20 micron superwash merino we go for, Aussie grown, is processed in Germany to cutting edge environmental and sustainable standards. A far better "bang for our buck" than the cheaper alternatives. Sure, it make's our products more expensive than some others but you can always rely on on the quality. "To get what you pay for" is something we have always done and will continue to strive for, and is a key to our business success. From 2010 all our wool will be free from "mulesing", and we thank PETA for putting pressure on the industry and forcing chance.

It's only the begining!

I can't believe its a new year already. It seems all of sudden we're back in to it again. After a couple of go-slow weeks in our sock making-just doing the minimum, this week we've been swamped. So as I write, late on this Friday afternoon, I feel like I'm just catching up with myself. In these uncertain economic/financial times I feel very lucky that our sock business seems to be weathering the storm. We've got a big year coming up, spending a bit of time and money, getting our web site re-done. It is a slow process, but worth it, I hope. I'm guessing it will be another 6 months before it's all done and online line. If we can come up with an easy to use, attractive looking web site I'll be happy. That's the royal "we" as I'm so IT retarded, I am reliant on experts to do the sock web site building and seo.
This year we'll continue to not only make our beautiful pure wool Mongrel Socks, Tuff Mongrels, Possum/merino socks and all the other products we produce, but we will trial some other unusual blended yarns, like bamboo/cotton, camel/wool, organic spacedyed cottons etc. I'm excitedly looking forward to see what these are like.
We're just about to head in to our yearly production of Arm/Leg Warmers. We manufacture them only for a month each year, as the machinery is such a cow to change over, we like to get them all done at once. Our stocks are way down at the moment-lucky it is summer and the demand for those has dropped off a bit. It's always a bit of fun in the work day coming up with new colour mixes, that perhaps we haven't tried before, or haven't done in a while.
Anyway, all looks good for the future for us, especially my very near future as a put my feet up and knock the top off a wee drop of fine Tasmanian Meadowbank FGR Reisling (my personal favorite). Cheers!

8 sleeps 'til Xmas

I can't believe it's been a month since I last wrote. Here at the home of Mongrel Socks it' been a big month. Lots of orders coming in and going out. It's that time of year. I mentioned inthe last pot that I had been having a stab at making beanies, I did try to post some pictures but I couldn't get them up online. Anyway, I sold the lot! Which I'm taking as a very positive sign for the future of Mongrel Tasmanis Headwear. I'm still fiddling with the designs, and have come up with a one that I'm hoping will be a stayer. It's very unusual, loose and comfortable, and suitable for people who have lot's of hair or dreadlocks and even no hair. It can also double as a neck warmer-yes, a very versatile thingy. The beanies will go on the back burner, while we get ready for Xmas and the New Year-but I'm am happy to say they are evolving, and even happier with the fact we are able to make use of what would be waste knit otherwise.
We've got a new lot of Possum/merino socks due to be finished around the end of January, which will replenish our depleted stocks, they have gone off in the last few months. Yay!
Busy working towards our new website, will take a while but will happen.
Our pure wool Mongrel Socks will still be our focus for the next month at least, then we'll start on this years Mongrel Tasmanis Arm/leg warmers. Looking forward to playing with the colour mixes again to see what we come up can come up with. Oh well, best get back to work.

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.

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.

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.

Cool Customers

Plying our wares at Salamanca Market, every Saturday, gives us a great opportunity to talk to our customers, and get first hand feedback on what they really think of our products. It's all very well to make the sale, but what we are really interested in is what they think of their purchase down the track. Are our sock's as good as we said? Are they loving them? Usually the comment's we get back are all good, the only one negative we ever get is dissappointment when they wear out. Sadly the only way to own our socks and not have them eventually wear out....... is not to wear them at all. Most hosiery company's plate their product's with nylon or other synthetic's to give them a longer life and make them cheaper to produce and are nowhere near as soft and warm as Mongrels. Our Pure Wool Mongrel socks are a one of life's little luxury's. We won't compromise on the quality of the wool we use, we want our customer's to get and enjoy what they pay for. Last week-end as happens every week-end, we had customer's rocking up wearing their Mongrels, which gives us a warm feeling, knowing they are their socks of choice. One lovely lady, was telling me she was up and around before dawn that day, heading out she realised it was colder that she thought, so ducked back home to put on her pure wool Mongrel's, knowing she wouldn't feel the cold in them. Yep, that's why they're great!

Mother Nature gifts.

There may be snow on the mountain but the sun is out, doing its best to get our pure wool socks dry the natural way. Yay!

Bring it on!

After the last few weeks of winter weather, this week we have had some beautiful days, which is all good as far as our sock drying goes. It is only in the midst of winter that we struggle to get our socks to dry. Endeavouring to be kind to the planet, we have made a conscious decision to not artifical drying processes, we get lots of sun here in Tasmania, and it is only for a few weeks in winter that it's not possible to get our pure wool socks to dry. So although we have still been busy knitting, we do have a bit of a back log to steam and dry before they can be labeled and ready to go out. It is alway's a good feeling to be ahead in production, we really hate playing catch-up. Just not having to stress about our stock levels, when the order's come in, knowing we can fill them is a good feeling. We have had a few hiccups with the old machines this last couple of weeks, which left us scratching our heads, unable to get them going properly. Lucky for us, a friend, whose a wizz with machinery took a look, and as embarrassing as it is for us, he had the problem worked out in under an hour. We'd been picking over the glitch for many hour's, and we know the old Bentley Komet's well, he's waltzed in and had it sussed in record time. Bless his heart. Never a dull moment around here in the Mongrel Sock business.

Loving and hating winter!

Snow blanketed Hobart last night, Mt Wellington is pretty as a picture. It's a good time to be selling warm woolly socks, and while business is brisk, the working conditions are not too inviting. It was hard to tear ourselves away from the roaring fire this morning to head down to the Antarctic-like workshop. We delayed the inevitable, with bookwork, phone calls and numerous other excuses, as long as we could. We rugged up, putting on almost every product we make....pure wool socks, arm and leg warmers and head warmers. Lucky for us, we don't just say they're warm as a sales pitch, they really are warm! The local news website has some fantastic photo's taken in Hobart today. Check it out www.news.com.au/mercury

The long weekend

There's frost on the ground this morning, winter here in Tasmania has really set in. And with winter our pure wool sock sales step up. We have been busy making, making. Not too busy to take a the long week end off, however, which we did. We went up to a visit friends, who run a 3ooo acre property in the lake district of central Tasmania. The property is called "Currawong Lakes", and what a magic place it is. As a business, it is a very private game and fly fishing park, it has abundant wildlife. We were blown away by the quality of the facilities at the property. It has 5 or 6 cabins, a rustic lodge/restaurant with a state of the art kitchen, lake's stocked with trophy sized trout, clay target shooting range with another lodge there, breeding set up from egg incubation to pre-release pens for quail, pheasants and partridge and much more-all this is miles from anywhere. I am once again amazed at the diversity of endeavors here in Tasmania. This little island is a place where idea's (with a lot of hard work) can become a reality. Currawong Lakes is an idyllic property, not by accident, by design. The staff work hard to ensure it stays that way. Not only in so far as land management, but the guest's needs are always attended to, actively seeking to exceed their expectations. It wasn't all leisure while we were there. We did get around to discussing socks. Fly fisherman in their plastic waders, would really benefit from the comfort and warmth our pure wool socks can provide, so we are packing up a parcel of our pure wool Mongrel Socks for management to have on hand for any cold guests, we're also sending up some of our heavy duty Tuff Mongrels for the gamekeeper, who does a million miles on foot around the property, and needs socks that will stand up to a whole lot of hard work. Yep, the Tuff Mongrels will be just the thing. We will also, time permitting, get ourselves knitting up some over the knee wool socks. At the moment the game shooters have to import them, at great expense, from the UK. We'll be happy to fill that niche. Anyway best get in to my sock making day, but here's a link to Currawong Lakes, if anyone would like to have a look. www.currawonglakes.com.au