Winwick Mum Sockalong 8th birthday giveaway results

Hello, hello, I hope you are having a lovely week!

It’s a little bit later than I had intended to be letting you know the giveaway results – what with catching up after another bank holiday weekend for the King’s coronation and various family events, I’ve only just found time to sit down and properly read all of your comments from the Winwick Mum Sockalong 8th birthday giveaway.  Two cups of tea and a shortbread biscuit later, I’m finished!  Wow!

Thank you so much for entering the giveaway and leaving your comments – one of my favourite things about the Sockalong birthday is catching up with you!  I love that you tell me about what’s going on with you (happy birthday to you too, Lin, Sandra and Jen, and happy 50th anniversary to you, Jennifer) and about who you’re knitting your socks for – friends, family, charity … people who need the very special woolly hug of a pair of knitted socks and people who have realised that they don’t want to miss out so are making sure they stay on your list! 🙂

It’s these glimpses into your lives that make the Winwick Mum Sockalong so much more for me than just a series of blog tutorials and they remind me exactly why I wanted to write them; to help people fulfil ambitions to knit socks, to have a project that’s easy to keep at hand for quiet moments and, as an added bonus, something that starts conversations, that keeps that busy (and sometimes critical) voice in our heads distracted, and mean that now, we can create the most special, thoughtful and bespoke of all gifts for the people we love.  I have always said, and I still firmly believe, that there’s magic in those little rounds that doesn’t exist in the same way anywhere else!

Once again this year, there are so many people who are either just about to or have just started knitting their first pair of socks.  I love that!  It doesn’t matter how long you’ve waited or thought about it or talked yourself out of it, the best time to start knitting your first pair is always now and I am so pleased that I can still help people to do that.  And of course, the more people we have starting to knit socks, the closer we sock knitters are to taking over the world … 🙂

If you’ve been having a tough time this year with physical or mental health or other life crises, I am sending you a huge hug and I am so glad that needles in your hands are helping.

If you’re about to cast on, then what are you waiting for?  Don’t let the fear of something new stop you from casting on – the worst that happens is that you’ll unravel and start again, and you’ll always learn something from the experience.  Everyone was a beginner once, remember!  Oh, and most importantly, don’t let needing to be perfect get in the way of being good enough; these are socks, you’re not sending a rocket into space 🙂  I wrote a Monthly Musing on this once – you can find it here if you’d like to read it!

Right, enough of my blethering on for now – you want to know if you’ve won a prize! 🙂

Let me remind you of this year’s prizes:

There’s a signed copy of Super Socks, a ball of Winwick Mum yarn – this year, I’ve chosen Brightside from the first Winwick Mum collection and Autumn Leaves from the Seasons colours, a knitting mug, an Emma Ball tin for keeping stitch markers or other knitting notions safe, a Winwick Mum Sockalong badge and – for the first time ever – a Zoom chat with me about socks!

I’ve put the number of comments into the Random.org generator which has given me two numbers, one for each of the prizes but I’m going to make you wait just a little bit longer whilst I tell you how many pairs of socks I’ve counted up this year ?

This is never going to be an accurate figure because I try to give my pattern away to anyone who will stay still for long enough to take it, so it’s only for fun because it’s the one time of the year that I can ask you – but it’s a bit of fun that I do enjoy very much!

In 2016 there were 3,500 pairs, in 2017 there were 4,500 pairs, in 2018 there were 3,360 pairs, in 2019 there were 1,040 pairs, in 2020 there were 1,385 pairs, in 2021 there were 1,270 pairs, last year there were 2,180 pairs and this year you’ve told me about another

1,053 pairs

giving a new 2023 total of

18,288 pairs of socks!

FLIPPING HECK!! That’s a lot of pairs of socks, isn’t it?  I noticed that quite a few of you wrote that you had “only” knitted a certain number of socks, but look how they’ve added up!  There’s no “only” about it at all!   In fact, if you want to count it as individual socks, that’s over 36,500 individual socks and they’re just the ones I know about through the blog!  Phew, it’s a good job I’m sitting down! 🙂

I am thrilled that there are so many pairs of hand knitted socks on feet, in sock drawers, wrapped up in gift paper or wherever they might be, and don’t forget that these are just pairs of the Basic 4ply Socks pattern – how many more pairs in other patterns are out in the world?!  Oh, and if you’ve knitted all your socks for yourself, don’t worry about that at all!  Sometimes we need to keep the best secrets to ourselves 😉

Actually, I must say that one of the things that has pleased me most about reading your comments is how surprised you’ve been at how many pairs you’ve knitted when you come to count them up … it’s a really good thing to stop every once in a while to appreciate our achievements during the year because we don’t do that as often as we probably should, and if you’ve taken a few minutes to do this for the Sockalong birthday, why not take another few minutes to see what else you’ve achieved, on your needles or off, in the first few months of this year?  I hope you’ll find that the good outweighs any disappointments and that you are super-proud of what you’ve done without even thinking or stopping to congratulate yourself.

Anyway, here I am blethering on again and you need to know the important bits!

First out of the random generator is Maxine , and the Brightside yarn and the rest of the treats will be winging it’s way to you!

Next up is Jan and you’ve won the Autumn Leaves yarn!

Congratulations Maxine and Jan!  Please can you email me so that I can arrange to send your prizes out to you?  You’ll find the contact form in the left hand side bar and I’ll look forward to hearing from you!

I’m sorry that I couldn’t send everyone a prize, but thank you so much for entering the giveaway and leaving me your comments and thank you again to everyone who has knitted socks using the Sockalong pattern and tutorials whether you commented or not – I’m just so pleased that I’ve been able to celebrate this socky birthday with you!

Same again next year?! 🙂