As to runway direction - was it indicated in the signals square? The signal square is hard to see from the ground however!
I arrived about an hour before and runway 8 was in use with traffic in the pattern, the wind was switching between favouring 8 and dead calm, during my stay, 8 was being used by other traffic. When i went depart it was again switching between a slight wind favouring 8 to dead calm. Prior to taking off I had to wait on a landing aircraft who was also using 8 .Myself and the guy behind me used 8 for take off which the wind favoured. I am making an assumption here but I would guess that between the time of my take off and the tower been manned that the sock may may have moved from total calm/favouring 8 to slight favour 26 which is why the wobbler was thrown.
To be honest even if the wind had slightly favoured 26 and that was the pattern being flown (which is wasn't) I would still have used 8 (waiting for the pattern to clear of course) due to the low sun basically blinding my vision to the west, which was far more an important factor than the wind on the day,