Niqkita's Sock Journal

We got one single sample sock of this style not too long ago. We passed it around, each of us trying that one sock on and cooing over how comfy & lovely it was, we knew it was a yes and naming it was easy. We asked for two sizes and sent off our first order. The larger footed version arrived first and, wow, what large feet you have my little lovelies! so big they were that our largest feet at a size 12 found them baggy! then the smaller version arrived and our size 12 could fit into them with ease, the problem was that the rest of us found them to be too large, especially on smaller feet. Here’s how they look on my size 8.5/9 feet, not bad, but not at all snug…

This is a pebble, before washing, I will be washing them tonight on high heat settings because I’ve been told this shrinks the feet down without changing the tops too much so I’ll be reporting back on this later. For now, we asked for a yet smaller size so that those with size 6ish feet can enjoy them too because we think these are wonderful and will be adding more images soon. They work well both over and under the knees, they look nice cuffed and are really cute scrunched, they have that great ripple effect like those hard to find (and harder to afford) Prada socks we were asked about so much last year. The O Lovelies are a light weave so are perfect for the warm months ahead, you can cover more or less of your legs as you like and not be overheated…
Yet another great addition for us sockaholics and addicts!

The crowd was beautiful and the feedback fantastic, at the end of the day our cheeks hurt from smiling so much and not because we had to but because we were just having so much fun being there and talking to everyone. To me, supporting pride is not so much about supporting this preference or that, but supporting the right to be who you are and dress the way you like; and being surrounded by unique individuals is just about the best place I can think of being, besides being safe at home that is ~;)

Here’s a small sampling of our little booth…


I caught Liz having a good giggle here with Janey.

I wore my extra special socks that I will be sharing with all of you this fall…

paired up with some of Shelleopard’s ever adorable pompom garters
(which we now need to restock)
Late in the afternoon we noticed an invasion of pirates, as if their ship had just come in (we were at Waterfront park so it did seem possible). We were told they were having a Pirate’s Booty outing, I think that’s what they said, it sounded like an awful lot of fun and many of them had stripes on their legs. The best we saw were these two, who, it turned out, are repeat customers of ours, not to mention terrific dancers!

Karissa is wearing vertical stripes and Joshua is wearing rugby stripes.

Sunday will be far busier due to the parade, but we’ll still be happy to see each and every one of you who comes down to support the right to an independent thinker!

Because we’re a quirky bunch of open minded individuals here at Sock Dreams I decided to sponsor Pride this year. I thought, what better way to promote us to the community during the slow months of summer? I was thinking a banner, an ad, a mention and a really good feeling of contribution for me and Sock Dreams, but wait, there’s more! a booth at the NW Pride festival was included in the package, well, usually the mention of a booth makes us shudder, we’re kind of spoiled working out of our comfy little building safely tucked away from the masses here in the Moreland/Sellwood area, but not this time, no, we’re very excited to be out and meeting everyone this weekend. So if you happen to be in the Portland area and are coming down to Waterfront park to celebrate pride this year be sure to swing by and say hi and get yourself a pair of socks while you’re at it. Better yet, buy some socks for everyone your proud of! We’ll also have some stockings, leggings, garters, petticoats and two exclusive sock garters that we’re not selling on the site yet (Shelleopard made us some nifty little slave garters complete with D Rings and I have some lovely little green flowers on black elastic with the prettiest purple thread you ever did see). Of course we’re going to have just about every rainbowed style we carry with us too!

Yes, as may only be apparent to the truly dedicated among you I took a week off to visit NYC. Since I got a bad case of jet lag I haven’t quite gotten back into the swing of things since my return. But soon I will be adding new items again and embarking on many a fun venture for summer and beyond. More about that soon!
til then, here are some highlights from my week away…

When in New York I always visit our beloved sock girl EG,
she is a hostess extraordinaire and always makes my stay like a trip home.
She’s been telling me for years that we should do a street fair in the village to get our name firmly in the dreams of her fellow New Yorkers so this trip was planned around my checking out the street fair for myself…

On my first morning in town we headed to Magnolia Bakery to try some of those cupcakes we’ve heard so much about. While I worked at Powell’s cookbook store I often drooled over the pictures in their cookbook and must say they are indeed fantastic little cakes! not that there is a shortage of fancy cupcakes to be had in NYC or that you couldn’t perhaps do better yourself, but I was not disappointed.

I was joined over the weekend by Sock Dreams Head of Marketing & Planning, B and her cousin K, who has excellent navigation skills and got us everywhere we needed to be & back without so much as a doubt in her voice that we were headed for the correct train, exit ect. You see, our darling little Vel has been under the weather lately so we couldn’t take EG all over town for our meetings this time and my own navigation skills outside Portland suck. Don’t worry, Vel’s on the mend and seemed to enjoy every moment of the attention he was getting with all the girls cooing over him.

Yes, there were other business ventures to be had in the city for us last week…

among them a meeting high up in the Empire State Building to finalize a private label deal I’ve been working on. I’m not going to discuss the details, but it involves one of the brands we’ve sold since the beginning in a limited amount of colors with a few changes to make some of them uniquely our own, and of course, our own label!

Also enjoyed, but not photographed, was a day in SoHo to visit some of my favorite boutiques for inspiration because we are getting very close to signing that elusive lease I’ve been dreaming of…

Some days I just like a simple cotton sock between me and my fav boots and while Sock Dreams has no shortage of comfy cotton socks to choose from, one of my current fav’s is the Organic Nuby. Short & to the point these little socks are made here in the US with US grown organic cotton that is soft, nicely padded around the feet and just enough spandex in the tops to stay up without digging in. The capris are from Via Spiga and just happen to be the comfiest and prettiest lacy capris I’ve ever had. The fit around the tummy was most excellent, didn’t dig in to my squishy parts (yes, we all have them) and stayed down below my knees with their nice flat/wide cuffs that barely leave a mark when removed. I’ve been so impressed by the Via Spigas that I plan to bring in more of their styles this fall/winter. Til then, if you fit into their small/medium or medium/large range I highly recommend these!

(little miss Lola assessing my set up before I started taking pictures)

In the picture they were the prettiest pink & appeared to stay up without the help of a garter belt. When they arrived they were a stronger shade of pink, closer to salmon than baby, baby salmon perhaps? I signed them off to Janey to shoot on one of her models and they reported back that they don’t stay up for anything & start snagging the moment you touch them. So I decided to give them a try myself…

Out of the package they didn’t have the cheap feel I expected from such easily snagged stockings. I pulled them up with ease, so far so good, but the back seam wasn’t quite straight so I eased them back down below the knees and carefully pulled them back up paying special attention to the seam alignment. Perfect, but wait, where’d that snag come from? I didn’t even feel a slight tug on my nails, and that tiny hole, that wasn’t there a minute ago. Next I noticed that the heels were on my ankles, a quick adjustment fixed that, but they really weren’t going to stay up for any amount of walking without something holding them up so I added a pair of the panty garters, minimal support with those and it was plenty, plus, they looked perfect together!

Now that I’ve got them figured out I love them! they have plenty of stretch for the longer legged among us and with minor adjusting you should be able to make the cuban foot-bed work for a women’s size 8 up to a 12 (men’s 10), give or take a bit depending on how picky you are. I highly recommend using a wash bag and some special hosiery wash plus a pair of gloves that cover your fingers to help prevent snags from cuticles and nails. Though my pair didn’t suffer any additional damage after the initial incidents.

We might just run out of these this week, but will be ordering more immediately!

They are officially lime green, but when I went looking for somewhere to take a better picture of them I noticed a resemblance to the lilies in the back yard at work. And I don’t really find them to be the shade of limes anyway. They are a nice green, they were too pretty to take off, so spring-y and happy, they even made my toes smile because they are just so comfy! The toes actually fit (as do the Feelmax toes, but these fit just a bit better) even my smaller footed friends find the toes actually fit them (as do my larger footed friends!). In the past we’ve only carried the Toe Toes sporadically, but we’re going to try and keep them stocked this time around so I’m putting in another order today. Did you see their crazy arm\leg warmers? Super furry and really fun! The green melange would be extra fun with lime/lily toe socks!!!

These Vertical Tights are a really sexy pair of tights. Everytime I open one of their packages, “The LeVante Scent” fills my nose. I can’t decide if I like it or not, or even if it is perfume or the smell of the fabric, so I tend to sniff them alot trying to make up my mind what that smell is all about. I imagine their factory must be thick with this scent and their workers mildly delirious from the smell & making such fabulous stockings all the time. After a washing the perfume is gone, so I’m thinking it’s just a selling point. If you are sensitive to scents you will want to wash these before wearing.

The panty area is “tanga style” instead of the brief/boy short style like most American pantyhose are. Which pleases me greatly as I never found the brief style to have an advantage unless I got the super-duper control top turniquets. So this tanga style ads to the sexiness. I used to like pantyhose, but the square boxy brief has always been so unattractive that I gave up on pantyhose and switched over to tights. But these are really sexy and are winning me back. If you never thought of pantyhose as sexy, I bet it’s because you haven’t worn tanga style before.

I’m sorry I’m too modest to show a pic of the tanga panty. So, here’s a close up of the stripe detail instead. It’s a nice little pattern, and every few lines, the rest are a normal kind of stripe.

Wikipedia says

“The sheerness of the garment, expressed as a numerical ‘denier’/'dtex’, ranges from 3 (extremely rare, very thin, barely visible) to 15 (standard sheer) up to 30 (semi opaque) until 70 (opaque).”

These are 20 denier.
Which is pretty sheer and will clearly show all tattoos & booboos.

The vertical stripes are very flattering. They make your legs look longer and slimmer. I’m 5′3″ & I got size 2 which fit me fine. These are the glace colour which is your standard nude pantyhose colour. Tube style feet like most hosiery. And these will probably run if you’re rough on your hosiery. They are very sexy and one style I want all the colours of. I really love the Verticale Tights.

This is the latest addition to our new organic sock collection and might just be my favorite so far. They are called Nuby Organic socks and are very much like the EG Smith GoGo bootsocks, but a bit softer right out of the box and the feet feel more cushiony, plus, they are $2 less! One of the many cool things about the 2 Brothers Organic socks is that the organic cotton is actually grown right here in the US, down by Texas. The only little flaw I found with this style is that the dye near the toes of the navy pair I tried was not as dark as the rest of the sock. I didn’t see that in any of the other pairs so it is most likely my usual weird luck of getting the wonky pair (this is a phenomenon that has followed me since my days of working at Trader Joe’s and sampling new foods, I always seemed to get the bug ~:P ) The feet on many of the other 2 Bothers Organic socks run small, but these seemed pretty normal fitting a women’s US shoe size 9 fine, beyond that the heels may fall short, but at least they are not freakishly small. For a nice simple summer sock I think these are really great!

The ToeToe toe socks have always been my favorites though we don’t keep them in stock all the time. The colors are really pretty and the fit is exceptional in the toes. But the top band is a little scratchy straight out of the package this time so I’m going to wash them and continue with my weekend of testing them. I’ll report back later on how they come out, I really hope they haven’t changed the quality, it would be very sad. Last summer we had a few different stripey combinations of them, the purple was a most excellent purple. No purple stripes this year, just a solid purple that I’ll add an image for this coming week. I love spring! it is ever so much more fun to go out and take pictures of socks now!