Tuesday, May 20, 2008

I've Been Elimnated - Sock Wars III

In this mornings mail I received these socks from Eliza Broom and they are just lovely. Thank you Eliza I will enjoy wearing them.


Sock Wars III was not as much fun as I had anticipated. The concept was great but when there is a monetary prize involved, people behave in strange ways. Granted it's cut throat but it is supposed to happen without cheating and following the rules. For a lot of us even the start of the competition went wrong.

The "secret" pattern together with a dossier of your target was to arrive in our email in box at 12:00 Pm GMT which was 8:00 AM here in T-Dot. I along with many others set their alarm clocks, bailed out of bed and waited by our computers, and waited and waited and waited some more. There were message boards and lots of people were complaining and wondering what was going on. On the other hand, lots of people already had their patterns and were merrily knitting away. I personally only discovered the pattern listed on the members page some time in the afternoon. The pattern itself was confusing, poorly written and full of errors but most of us sucked it up and knit away, at least I did.

It wasn't until late Saturday night when the elusive dossier finally made an appearance in my in- box with my targets name and foot size. The pattern was also corrected. Some people didn't get their dossier until Sunday. Does that give unfair advantage to some?

When a target is eliminated, the rules state that the eliminated target most post their unfinished socks to their assassin immediately which gives said assassin the opportunity to hit another target. I only stay alive until I receive a pair of finished socks but having the opportunity to do away with another knitter affects the outcome of the game further down the line.

In my instance even though I eliminated (I hate the word kill) my target on May 14th, thus far she has not even mailed the socks. That is completely against the rules. It is not possible to determine how long it takes them to reach their destination once they are in the mail and some people use regular post, others use courier or even hand deliver them, they must be sent out ASAP.

To stay alive in this war the knitter behind you has to be slow thus allowing you to get further down the line all the while hoping the one behind you gets eliminated. It doesn't help if you don't get anything to knit.

For me personally, it was an experience, I got a beautiful pair of socks, but I also have my original assassins' assassin chasing me all spaced out that I have nothing to send her. She left innuendos on the chat that "somebody" might be cheating by holding on to socks! Actually I found that offensive especially since it's not my fault; that lies squarely on my original targets' shoulders.

There were over 1200 knitters signed up for this thing and they are all competing for about $500 + worth of yarn. Thus far 305 knitters have bitten the dust and I just know that things will get far nastier than they been so far. Happy Knitting...

Would I do this again? Not in this lifetime, thanks...I'll just work on my own projects at my own speed and be a happy camper.

3 Comments:

Blogger Rudee said...

Over at my place, I mentioned I thought you weren't really gone since I still see chat from you. If you'd survived long enough to get your yarn from Rowan, I would not be facing certain death by socks this week.

In a perfect world as well, I'd have preferred death by a friend's hands. As it is, well, it's complicated, but I face death from a gal in Florida who was Rowan's target. Now, with Rowan's weapon MIA, there is nobody to stop her. I'll be dead soon too.

Perhaps I should just ignore the postman for awhile!

May 21, 2008 at 10:15 AM  
Blogger Rositta said...

I sent an email to SC but haven't heard anything. I don't want to be given a grace period but if my target had mailed her socks as per the rules I could have bought you some more time. I'd still be gone but it does change the game if one person doesn't do the right thing...

May 21, 2008 at 10:56 AM  
Blogger Rocky said...

Hi Rositta,

I think I'm the "Assassins' Assassin" you were referring to in your post; I apologize, but I don't think I was hounding you and believe me I didn't mean to if that's how it came across. Some interesting updates you should know, your target emailed me on the 20th of May, and asked for my address to ship directly to me, this is as you know 6 days after she was supposed to send to you, anyways, I didn't get the
SIPs from your target until 31st, and only 6 rounds of 1 cuff of 1 sock was finished! I couldn't believe it, I practically had to knit an entire sock + the pair to match, plus the Canadian post mark was dated the 26th, almost 5 days after the 20th.

I know there's a cash prize, I'm not interested in it, I joined for the fun, but I agree with you that alot of the fun was taken out by others in the game.
And I agree with the you on the pattern, badly written, and very boring.

Glad things are ok now *-)

June 11, 2008 at 1:17 AM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home