Socking it to rival ‘assassins’ in worldwide knitting war

HUNDREDS of people around the world have been taking part in the “bloodiest extreme knitting tournament”, it was revealed yesterday.

Sock Wars pits knitters against one another like assassins locked in mortal combat, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Designed by Julie Gardner, a freelance TV and film production manager from Belfast, participants each have to knit a pair of socks and send them to a “target” before receiving a pair from their “assassin”.

If a player receives their socks before knitting and sending a pair to their target, they are “killed” and are out of the contest.

Ms Gardner, 31, told the Wall Street Journal: “The whole ‘knitting is the new yoga’ cliché had been irritating a good few of us.

“I wanted a wicked edge to it.”

Once they receive their socks, participants have to send the pair they were still working on for their own targets to their assassins, who must then finish them and send them along.

Participants in this year’s contest, Sock Wars II, included hundreds of women, and about half a dozen men from Britain, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium and

Finland.

Some players believe the men, whose feet tend to be bigger, have a slight advantage in Sock Wars because larger socks can take longer to knit.

Ms Gardner, who runs her online blog Yarnivation — at http://yarnivation.blogspot.com/ — said she hopes to arrange corporate sponsors for next year’s event and open it up to more knitters.

Following the success of last year’s competition with the “international sock of doom”, this year’s pattern was called “scar” — a sock with a ridge down one side.

This year’s victor, Leann Nassar, an executive assistant from California, said: “I have the silliest grin on my face.”

Her prize?

A pair of socks.