Winwick Mum Sockalong 9th birthday giveaway results

Hello, hello, I hope you’ve had a lovely week!  It’s Friday and as promised, here are the results of the Winwick Mum Sockalong 9th birthday giveaway – goodness, what a lot of you entered this year!  It’s been wonderful! 🙂

Thank you so much for all of your comments – not just telling me the number of socks you’ve knitted but also your sock stories.  I so appreciate the time you have taken to write to me and I can’t tell you how lovely it is to know when and why you started knitting socks, who you knit for, what knitting brings to your lives … it’s been a joy to see names new and familiar (happy birthday to you too!), to see socks just starting on needles right the way up to over 100 pairs being knitted (when do you sleep?!), to know that your families and friends see you as “the one” to create socks that will fit them (and fit beautifully – how well we look after them!) and to know that those little rounds in your hands help to you to cope through stress and grief.  For those of you dealing with loss or dealing with any kind of tough time whether physically or mentally, I am sending you all my love and I hope that the stitches bring you comfort.

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!

One thing that I must say, though, is that I saw the word “only” so many times, and there is never any “only” about the pairs of socks you’ve knitted, whatever the number.  Every pair of socks is to be celebrated as an achievement – we’ve all been beginners once, remembering that moment when we had a pair of socks in our hands that actually fitted us 🙂 – but more than that, we do so much more in our days to look after ourselves and others through working or caring that it’s important to see our socks (or any other kind of hobby) as an “as well as”, a way to bring ourselves calm and peace, and there should never be an “only” about that.

Just like last year, I must say that one of the things that I’ve really loved 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.

I also saw lots of “I’m just getting ready to start” and 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!

And now it’s time to find out if you’ve won a prize!

Let me remind you of this year’s prizes:

There’s a signed copy of Super Socks and this year I’ve been able to add a Project Super Socks notebook too (I’m hoping for LOTS of pairs in the winners’ futures!).  There’s a ball of Winwick Mum yarn, a row counter, a packet of wool needles and three super-cute stitch markers from Mary Jane Creations.

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, in 2022 there were 2,180 pairs, in 2023 there were 1,053 pairs, and clearly this year really is the Year of Socks because you’ve told me about

3,048 pairs

giving a new 2023 total of

21,336 pairs of socks!

OH MY LIFE!!  That’s a lot of pairs of socks, isn’t it?!

And now, when you think about at those “only” pairs of socks, look how they’ve added up as part of the Sockalong total – there’s no “only” about it at all!   In fact, if you want to count it as individual socks, that’s 47,672 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 😉

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

First out of the random generator is Gillian!

Next up is Jim!

Congratulations Gillian and Jim!  Please can you email me so that I can arrange to send your prizes out to you?  Gillian has asked for the Spring Green yarn so the Winter Icicle is yours, Jim! 🙂  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?! 🙂