Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Quote from Shakespeare's "Henry V"

Sock Wars IV has commenced its long and bloody path through dedicated sock knitters worldwide. There are 282 confirmed sock warriors and the battle commenced at sometime around 3am Perth time on 16 May at which point the weapons of sock destruction were released – Insidious, Air Raid and Barcelona. Apart from a minor hiccough with Barcelona all seems well. This would be the first time THREE patterns were released onto the unsuspecting warriors. Hard enough to steel yourself for the war without having a selection of weaponry (shades of Monty Python, “Amongst our weaponry we number such diverse elements as fear, surprise……”).

South West Trading Company sponsors this war as they did last year and the official yarn – TOFUtsies Power Stripes is not in evidence around many of the weapons I have seen.

I ended up using some lovely purple Lang sock yarn (from stash please note!) to create my Air Raids for Killing ‘em Sockly. They were posted last Wednesday 20 May with sufficient extras to soften the blow I hope. Unfortunately word from up the ladder is that my socks of death also wing their way Down Under.

I should say here that I appear to be one of only three Aussies in this war and that there are not many international participants this year. I assume some of this is due to the sudden end of the battle in ’08 certainly making some think twice about joining the fray. My location assisted in my two kills in ’08 as my socks of death must have gone around the globe at least once before they got me. As it is, my assassin lives in the US as does my target. I am relying on Australia Post to be speedier than US Postal Service so that I have a kill before being killed as I can’t see that there will be time to receive SIPs (or socks in progress for the uninitiated) from stateside before my death occurs. Who knows? Sometimes you’re the dog and other times, the tree.

Time will tell but for now I watch the Diagram of Death waiting to see which of the people above me meet their demise and of those below me, who I would receive SIPs from should that happen.

I finish with a picture of my (assumed) one and only kill trophy - the third in a range of shrunken socks to add to my handbag (in lieu of a bet you understand!) This is SockItToMe! signing off for what maybe the last time as a live warrior in 2009. We knit to kill!