From the real to the absurd, from the geeky to the adorable, if you ask for invoice art, one of us is more than happy to oblige.

That’s why, when we were offered a table as the first non-comic retailer at Stumptown Comics Fest  , taking place at the Oregon Convention Center this weekend April 27th & 28th, we knew that we had to present something pretty darn special.

Stumptown Comics has been celebrating independent comic artists, writers, and publishers for 8 years now and has grown exponentially. It is a gathering for all the geek community of Portland, with parties, performances, pod casts and the Stumptown Independent comics awards. Portland is a city of comics, with folks like Oni Press, Dark Horse, Periscope Studios and countless other comic folks doing it on their own and Stumptown is their time to shine.

When we learned the we were going to table at Stumptown, it only seemed natural to feature not only our amazing socks, but our artistic talents. 

As such, we will be premiering our very first Zine!!! It will be filled with interesting artwork, inspired by our customers, from various invoices over the years and we’re pretty proud of it. You will be able to find the Zine at any of our geeky events this year and can pick one up for the low, low price of 7 bucks! In addition, we will have all the usual deals on our Dreamer Socks and Dreams Stockings, as well as fun socks for  this artistic crowd.

Hope to see you there!

But one of our favorite bike events at Sock Dreams is the film festival/street party happening this coming weekend April 20th-23rd Filmed by Bike. Every year around this time, Filmed by Bike shuts down a couple blocks around the Clinton Street Theatre, the theatre in Portland where one can go see everything from the latest social documentary to Saturday nite Rocky Horror Picture Show. The beer flows, amazing films are viewed and judged for prizes and there is a general excitement in celebrating the fun and funky in the bicycling community.

Sock Dreams has been a huge supporter of this event going on three years, providing raffle prizes, prize socks for enthusiastic cyclists and dressing the Raffilistas (folks handling the raffle) in our fabulous products.
We’ve also been able to flex our creative muscle by making a fantastic short film last year, staring several of our friends from Trek in the Park, Alter Ego’s and Portland’s roller derby team, The Rose City Rollers; shot by 10 Bridges Media.

This year we did a still shot with lead Raffilista and bike maven Meghan Sinnott in and around the Clinton Neighborhood, which is famous for it’s bike friendly routes.

We will be hanging around this year for the street party to represent Sock Dreams and see all the nutty fun. Hope to see you all you Portland folks down there to support cycling and film in our community!

Avast, me hearties! Sock Dreams is about to set sail on a grand adventure with our good friends, the pirates of PDXYar—The Swashbucklers of Stumptown!  Portland’s Premiere Privateers!  The Corsairs of the I-5 Corridor!—for the 3rd annual Swashbuckler’s Ball. Our relationship with PDX Yar started back when we gave a donation to build their stage/ ship the El Tiburon and since then it’s been nothing but glory of a piratical nature… YAR!

Every year Swash Ball, as it is called for short, donates some of its proceeds to a local charitable business. This year, they will be donating to Dove Lewis Animal hospital a non-profit emergency 24 hour veterinary clinic that provides Portlanders with affordable vet care and pet education.

To promote this event, the video team asked the members of PDX Yar to participate in a promotional video which we are pretty darn proud of. Thanks to the crew of PDX Yar and Bushwhcker Cider House for graciously letting us film in their space.

If you want to join us at this event, tickets are still available on the Swashbuckler’s Ball web site. For GLORY!!!

The first holiday event will be the Siren Nation Craft Fair! This is an event that we have sponsored for many years, but this year we were asked to be there in person and we accepted graciously.

The craft fair is a portion of the weekends activities for Siren Nation which, “is a unique arts organization that showcases and creates performance and exhibition opportunities for women throughout the year. We are the only women’s collective that produces an annual festival showcasing the original work of women working in music, film, performance and visual art.”

There will be an entire weekend of visual art, music, film, and crafting workshops through out the next week and a half.

We will be bringing tons of discounted Dream Stockings, along with some fun stuff for stocking stuffers. The event will take place Sunday November 11th at McMenamins Kennedy School from 11am to 5pm and has some really great vendors.

Come down, join us and kick off your holiday shopping right!

What is Kumoricon?

Socks play a very important role in the world of cosplay and many of our Sock Dreams fans send us requests for specific colors or patterns, for their perfect costume. Additionally, slouch socks, tabi socks and other fun, shiny, pretty items will be for sale starting Saturday morning and going until Monday afternoon.

• Party Night Arm Warmers •
• Harajuku Scrunchy Socks •

Passes are still available for Kumoricon 2012, come down and join us!

Arigatoo gozaimasu!

-Jen

Our old warehouse on Powell,
looking a little empty after being filled to the brim with socks, socks and more than socks.

Stock room manager Brenna getting our stock set up,
she had a schematic and knew where everything would fit in advance

From the loft in my new office I can oversee our entire stock room, with Dream Stockings being closest to me

Our new shipping center shortly after it was set up yesterday,
right now it is covered in orders being packaged by our ever-amazing shipping team

I’m wearing one of my favorite pairs of toesocks,
come to think of it, toe socks are about all I’ve been wearing lately…

…uh-oh, it looks like we are all out of this style. Now that we are moved I better get back to restocking!

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! ♥

This summer we had some socks made especially for us by Gumball Poodle, to show off how much we love the Rose City Rollers.  You may have seen them for sale at a couple derby events, but now even folks who live far away and still call Portland home can show off their pride for their derby home team with I ♥ RCR knee highs!

The images for these socks were shot for us by the lovely Taylor B photography, who not only took some snaps of the I ♥ RCR knee highs, but got some fun shots of other derby favourite styles.

from left to right
• Extraordinary Striped Thigh Highs •
• Top Striped OTK Tubes •
• Dreamy Knee High Tube Sock •

from left to right
• Extraordinary Striped Thigh Highs •
• Dreamer Harlequin Diamond OTKs •
• Extraordinarily Longer Striped Thigh Highs •

There are lots more great derby options, no matter what team you’re on.  Drop us a line if you’re having trouble finding your colours or want help finding just the right socks to rock (refs, we have a lot of great black and white vertical stripes, like these!).

Thank you again, Taylor B photography and goooooooo RCR!