This is a regular event that is meant for LGBT families to come and have fun roller skating in an atmosphere of acceptance. Gay Skate takes place every third Monday at Oaks Park Skate Rink, which is right near our Sock Dreams shop.

One of the best things that’s come out of sponsoring Gay Skate, besides supporting a great event, is it has strengthened our relationship not only with PQ Monthly, but with our Portland roller derby team The Rose City Rollers.

This month instead of doing the usual split ad with RCR, as the Rose City Rollers are called, we are combining our efforts and creating a photo ad in the shared space featuring LGBT skaters in Sock Dreams socks! One of most special pieces of this ad is being able to have one of the young players of the RCR team, The Rosebuds, in the photo shoot, as gay skate is geared toward LGBT youth.

We look forward to working with RCR at our upcoming Portland Pride, where we will have the most epic booth of all times!

Stay tuned!

Our doggie contingent was represented by little Mr. Ferous, who rocked some socks from our shop, held to his harness with Double Grip Clips.  Though skeptical about the socks at first, he quickly forgot all about them because he was having so much fun walking in the parade!

Of course, we didn’t just walk in the parade, our booth was chock-full of socky goodness.

And our logo lady was set up for folks to give face.
You can see how well Niqkita rocked it in her latest News post.

We had a lovely time and we hope your local Prides have gone or go as wonderfully as ours did.  Even the temperamental Portland weather cooperated!  If you’re still in need of rainbows, we’ve got a bunch of new rainbow styles for you to check out, because remember: Sock Fairies want YOU to rock some socks!  For more pictures that we got during the event, check out the gallery!

Maybe you’re familiar with our lovely logo decked out in rainbow socks?  We even have desktop wallpaper of her (along with her more monochromatically coloured variations) and the “Summer” variation of our gift cards sport the same rainbow thigh highs.

Well, this vibrant vision of rainbow-sockness will be at our booth (we’re booth H1)!  No, not in the flesh, but as a peep-through board!  Also known as a face stand-in and “those boards with a hole cut out for you to stick your face through for pictures,” we’ve magicked up an awesome way for you to be our fabulous logo!

Even more fabulous, we’re going to compile images of all the folks who peep through and play as our logo!  Forget plain ol’ rainbows, it’s going to be a spectrum of gorgeousness.

We had a lot of fun making it, Dreamer Rosalind (who you may know from our Pinterest and Facebook) did most of the work, including the wonderful lettering!

We were worried we wouldn’t get it done in time for Pride, but we harnessed our magical sock power and everything went faster as we got further along, from planning it out:

To laying down all those colours!

But we got it done and it’s just waiting for you!

So if you see us at Pride NW, say hello and have a go at seeing the world through our logo’s eyes (or face, I guess!).

If you’re looking for our booth, be aware that it’s in a slightly different place than last year, now at H-1 and H-7. Click the image for big:

Our booth will be well-stocked with rainbows, fluff, glitter, and fur, so stop by and pick up some flair! We’ll be set up to sell on both Saturday and Sunday, 12 – 6 PM.

We’ll have another fun Pride surprise for you on Friday, so stay tuned to the blog! Until then, take a look back at a recap of our booth activity from Pride 2011, grab your rainbow socks, and we’ll see you this weekend! ♥

Two of our Dreamers, Allie and Jen, who locals might know from the store, were all smiles despite the chilly weather and ever present misting rain.

I was too busy talking to our other Dreamer working that day while I took snaps of the sockly spread, so she ended up not in any of my pictures.  Boo!  But our table did look scrumptious, with lots of little goodies tucked into pretty purple bins.

Toe socks, t-shirts and petticoats, oh my!

Sock It To Me, Ozone and some hungry Alligator and Shark Bites.

Here’s a peek into one of those bins, a whole passel of Rock Socks in Gay and Queen and a rainbow of tie dye!

Oh, I wish it had been sunnier, or just less wet, on Saturday.  Though I think all those rainbow socks at our booth did help brighten up the day, and warm up some folks’ feet!

Did you brave the weather and stop by our booth?  Or were you smart enough to wait for Sunday, like Niqkita did?

Booths at the Portland Pride Festival are open from noon to 6pm on Saturday the 18^th and Sunday the 19^th of June, more info on the event, like how to get there, is available at the Pride NW site.

Sock Dreams will be on the south side of the grounds, at booths X5 and X10:

A bigger version of the booth map is available here.

We hope to see you there, rocking some proud socks! Of course, if you haven’t any, we’ll have some on hand. . .

It’s no secret that Sock Dreams loves rainbows, we’ve got rainbow styles from crew to knee high to thigh high in that classic rainbow colourway:

• Rainbow Midcalves •
• Sock It To Me Rainbow Knee Highs (also available in the larger Curvy Stripes) •
• Lycra Rainbow Thigh Highs •

But there are as many rainbows as there are colours in a rainbow (which, if you count where the colours on a real rainbow overlap and mix, that’s a lot!), and sometimes a person just wants to show their colours, but not regular old rainbow shades.

There are a lot of official and unofficial pride flags and symbols out there, Wikipedia lists quite a few, and I’ve been scouring our styles to see what socks a person could match up if they wanted a little something different than regular rainbows.

Lots of socks and pride after the jump!

The Rainbow Dreams in Bright bring to mind the Pansexual pride flag, with the bold pink and yellow.

Now we’ve got to start getting creative, ‘cause three-colour stripes aren’t something you see a lot in the sock world (much to my personal dismay).  The meaningful balance of the Transgender pride flag can’t be perfectly replicated, but the colour symbology could be rocked by wearing one Blue Knees in Pink and one Pink Knees in Natural (or White Knees in Light Blue, if you so desire).

One each of the Charcoal & Black and the White & Purple in either the Three Stripe Over the Knees or Three Stripe Knee Socks is a great match for the Asexual pride flag and colours.

The colours in the Bisexual pride flag are hard to match, because they’re such rich jewel tones that don’t often get striped together.  The closest way to rock these colours that I’ve been able to find is without stripes at all, just one each of the Cotton Slouch Socks in Royal and in Fuchsia, paired with the Harajuku Arm Warmers in Violet.

I had a heck of a time thinking of something to show off the colours in the unofficial Genderqueer pride flag, which I love, the closest thing are probably the Polonova Flower Trouser Socks in Chartreuse Purple with a pair of Simply Adjustable Sock Garters in White, but they’re still not quite the right shade.

What rainbows have you rocked?  Have you come up with any combo of colours that you think works particularly well?

If you’re local and planning on going to the Portland Pride Festival, we look forward to seeing you at our booth!  Booths at the Portland Pride Festival are open from noon to 6pm on Saturday the 18^th and Sunday the 19^th of June, more info on the event here.  And keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter as we get closer to the event and have more info on where on the grounds we’ll be.