It's pretty quiet out there in the knitting new world this week, but Reuters featured a story on Sock Wars III, the international sudden death sock knitting competition that gets underway May 9 (if you want to take part there's still time to sign up until May 3). The idea is that each person starts out with the same sock pattern and a "target." If you mail your finished socks to your target before the person target you mails theirs to you, your target is "killed" and you take on their knitting. The last person standing will win $500 in yarn.

A school shooting prompted a community group to knit scarves for the affected kids, and the warmth of that gesture is still rippling across the state of Colorado. Every student and staff member at Platte County School District received a handmade scarf after the shooting, and when Platte County students heard about a homecoming parade accident that left a student dead in neighboring Custer County, they knit scarves for the students there. And three months ago, when a student died in a car accident in La Veta County, the Custer County kids knit it forward, delivering 120 scarves to the school in March. The La Veta kids are now looking for a way to help to help others in need. Someone should teach them to knit!