Sock Wars III: some speculation

stash1
Originally uploaded by Paula knits

It was just announced that SouthWest Trading Company's Tofutsies is the official sponsor of Sock Wars III. Signups begin on (Bloody) Valentine's Day with the War to begin in the spring.

• The only think I think we can be sure of is that the pattern will be designed using Tofutsies. Tofutsies is fingering weight. Scar (SW II pattern, DK weight) was 6-7 st/inch on US 4 needles. Tofutsies is 8 st/inch on US 2.


• Fingering weight is going to slow the whole thing down. Even speed knitters such as myself will not get a pair out in 36 hours. Could this mean that the War will be structured in a different manner than it has in the past?


• I don't think that the sponsorship will make using Tofutsies a requirement. [later: I was right about this.] There are enough vegan knitters and people with allergies out there who won't find the yarn usable. Tofutsies is a blend of superwash wool, soysilk, cotton, and chitin (shrimp and crab shells). It ain't cheap: the skein I have in my stash is marked $16.95. It isn't available at every place on the planet that might have a knitter in the War. I imagine that there will be enough people using Tofutsies, though, to keep SWTC happy.


• Organization/communication will have to improve. The number of participants is expected to quadruple. In the same sentence, they mention 800 participants "in the last game". There were 800 in the original. There were 162 or 164 in the most recent game. That's either 700+ or 3200 people in SW III. (There are around 450 in the Sock Wars Yahoo group at the moment). No matter how you do the math, the chaos that was the original Sock Wars can't happen again. I don't think it is an accident that the participation level dropped from 800 to 160 between the first two Wars.


• I think we can expect a new location for SW III on the web. I can't imagine that 450 or 700 or 3200 people posting on a single thread on a Yahoo group is going to work. I'd go insane weeding through the whining and complaining to find any useful information. I'll keep my whining and complaining here, in any case. :)

I've got my ball of Tofutsies set aside. Yes, there's pink in it, but blue and green, too. I hope I don't get a pink-loathing or vegan or allergic target.