Many of you will have Nancy Bush’s wonderful book “Knitting Vintage Socks” I’m sure. When I first began knitting socks this was the first pattern book I bought and it’s been invaluable. As well as the wonderful patterns there is a large section at the start of the book in which she gives instructions for several different heel and toe styles, enabling you to alter the patterns or create your own.

Shortly after getting the book I discovered a knitalong on yahoo groups for the patterns in the book and joined up to motivate myself to try some of the patterns I might not otherwise do. Litle way down the line and the former moderator bowed out and I took over. The group is going strong and the poll for our next sock to knit during October & November had 53 people voting. The majority vote was for the Child’s French Sock so that’s what we’re now knitting for the next two months.

Several people in the group have recently suggested to me that it would be lovely to organise a swap for the group. I cogitated on this idea for a while, sounded out the group, gathered some ideas and today I’ve launched my very first swap as a host !

The Knitting Vintage Socks Swap blog is up and running and waiting for swappers to sign up.

The basic idea is we each knit a pair of socks from the aforementioned book and send them to our swap partner. At the moment I’m proposing a secret swap with each swapper having a partner they are sending to and a different partner sending to them..but we’ll see how it goes and how many people sign up.

It’s quite scary launching these things, it’s a bit like hosting a party. You send out the invites and buy in all the drink and then panic in case nobody turns up and your left with yourself and a pile of chips and dips feeling lonely.

My hubby J just recently launched a blog-idea-challeng-thing (not sure how to describe it), it’s called BlogFriday (go check it out). Each week a word is suggested on the site and everyone has until the following Friday to put a post on their own blog relating to that word and then link to it on BlogFriday. When he launched it he went through the “nobody will come” angst but, as with all these things, the word spreads and it starts feeding itself. It’s been interesting seeing the different interpretations from just one suggested word.

it’s a good challenge to get yourself posting on your own blog and quite a good creative tool - take a random word and create something.

Anyway, if any of you fancy signing up for a swap and giving and receiving a pair of hand-made socks then get yourselves over to the Knitting Vintage Socks Swap. Sign-ups will be open until the end of October, matches sent out by 7th November (I hope) and then swap parcels to be sent by 7th Jan 2008 so there will be plenty of knitting time even with Christmas!

Oh, and if anyone has any comments/suggestions about the swap then please let me know.