It's madness!
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Every year around this time, knitters start googling "When is March Madness?" not because we care about basketball (it is about basketball, right?) but because we're trying to gauge how much time we have left for yarn shopping before the biggest, most competitive, most carpal-tunnel-inducing event in the crafting world.
Sock Madness.
Every March through June, thousands of fiber artists around the world take on the challenge of knitting as much as they can, as fast as they can.
Doping is permitted (and actually encouraged in the form of stroopwafels, caffeine, and/or wine) and our sports equipment is cozier than most. But our referees are just as eagle-eyed and the rules just as strict as in any other sport.
Is speed knitting actually a sport? Eh, probably not, but it is a competition that some of us take very, very seriously.
It goes a little something like this.
If you're envisioning a circle of half a dozen gray-haired grannies casually knitting simple socks at their favorite yarn shop, you've got the wrong idea entirely.
Sock Madness is held during March Madness, is hosted on Ravelry — the prime internet hotspot for knitters — and is made up of some of the most adventurous, devil-may-care crafters on the planet. All are welcome to sign up, but only the most advanced knitters survive the bracket-style elimination challenges.
To kick things off, knitters are provided a qualifying pattern that puts their speed and skills to the test. It's always a somewhat off-the-wall pattern — no simple stockinette here! These socks are custom-designed to throw us off our game.
If we're good/lucky enough to stay in, then the real battle begins. New patterns appear in our inboxes and the clock starts ticking. When do they appear? Which yarns and needles should we have prepared? That's part of the madness — staying on our toes is half the fun. (I promise I'll only make that pun once.)
There are usually 26 teams — one for each letter of the alphabet — and we're sorted by baseline knitting speed. Each team advances with fewer and fewer members each round until only one spot remains. For the final round, 26 fighters go in, and only one is crowned the champion.
Those of us who get knocked out are relegated to the ranks of cheerleaders, which really isn't so bad. As a cheerleader, we're rewarded for our valiant efforts with the same patterns as a the competitors, but no obligation to compete. We can cheat, alter, and take our sweet time.
As an aside, I once cheated so much, I turned my cheerleader socks into mittens. Funnily enough, it was this creativity that won me my one and only Sock Madness prize : a small handmade bowl for notions and stitch markers. Creativity is rewarded! Industriousness even more so.
Competition is stiff.
The knitting community is huge — much larger than most people think — but the competitive sock knitting subcommunity is a bit tighter. Most of us know we're not going to make it to the final round, and we usually have an inkling about who we think is going to take the prize.
It's never me.
Not even close.
I usually get assigned to a middle-of-the-pack team that's there to knit fast and have fun, but I don't think any of my teammates really believe we'll come out on top.
There are 7 rounds, and the longest I've ever survived was round 4. I could've reknitted the socks that knocked me out and stayed in for round 5, but I was tired. I knitted lace and cable socks in 6 days, two at a time on one long needle. Going back to fix my error would've cost me at least two days, and frankly, I wasn't sure if I was up to risking a repetitive stress injury.
The rules are rigid. Size, stitch count, yarn choice, and needles all come into play, and the judges have final ruling on what counts as a mistake and what's more of a "mistake" to get through faster. It doesn't matter if the final sock fits the knitter or even looks good — it has to be perfect and it has to be fast. Misreading, miscalculating, or poor planning are enough to get you chopped.
Do you see the error in these socks? The judges sure did!
And I'm not kidding about knitting fast.
For reference, the average knitter can do plain stockinette at a rate of about 20 stitches per minute. The average plain stockinette sock has about 8,500 stitches. That's 425 minutes of knitting at top speed, which works out to be about 7 hours… per sock. That's 14 hours of knitting for a pair. Our winner almost always finishes in under 24 hours, so they definitely knit much faster than 20spm. (Knitters tend to be surprisingly good at mental math.)
And competition socks are never plain stockinette.
They can be crazy looking. Some are beautiful, some are themed, and some are just kind of weird. Competitors never know what they're getting into, looks-wise, but we can all be confident our abilities will be stretched to the limit. That's one of the biggest draws for Sock Madness, if you ask me.
My competition socks
Now, for prizes. Knitters can pick up a prize or two along the way and the big winner doesn't go home empty-handed, but we're mostly competing for bragging rights. Every participant gets socks, over a dozen free patterns, a supportive team, and the rush of having competed alongside some of the best knitters in the world. To me, that's worth way more than a project bag.
Because very few of us have any hopes of actually winning, there's an immense amount of love and support going around. We prop each other up, admire each other's work, and hope we do our best and have fun. Imagine The Great British Baking Show, but with internet knitters.
Last year, life threw a curveball and I had to drop out of the competition early and I sat out the year before last, but my needles are primed and ready for SM17. I have no idea what kind of finished socks I'll walk away with, and frankly, I don't care.
Maybe… maybe I've gone mad!
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