Socks for Soldiers in Progress

Information from this website says:

All soldiers yearn for care packages from home, and Socks for Soldiers is one of the organizations currently answering that yearning. Their specialty is providing sturdy, comfortable knitted socks to replace or supplement standard issue for soldiers engaged in our current War on Terror.

Socks for Soldiers is the brainchild of Kim Opperman, whose oldest son, Tom, first brought the problem to her attention. Tom serves overseas with the U.S. Air Force, and at one point he told his mom that he wished that all his fellow soldiers could have a pair of her comfy hand-knitted socks. Kim decided she could probably handle that. In May 2006, she founded Socks for Soldiers, a knitting group dedicated to providing as many pairs of socks to American soldiers as they could. Before long, the organization had received federal recognition as a non profit charity.

Kim Opperman, also referred to as "Sarge," is requesting 10,000 knitters to join her in supplying hand knit, washable wool socks to our troops. Opperman's goal is to "keep knitting (Big Black Socks) until the last American soldier steps off the plane onto American soil". At the moment, the goal is 100,000 pairs. Knitting for Charity says:

While the military does its best, it has to clothe millions of people as inexpensively as it can. Sadly, the acrylic and nylon socks modern soldiers get wear out quickly and can cause blisters. That's not the case with Big Black Socks knitted by Socks for Soldiers.

Operating under the theory that an army travels on its feet rather than its stomach, Kim soon amassed a group of over a thousand knitters from every branch of the military and every walk of civilian life. The VFW, the American Legion, and the Red Cross got involved, too.

Here is the progress so far on knitting my first pair of socks for friend Army Major Marc Reyher in Afghanistan. This camo sock was started on June 20, 2008, and 27 days after its start, the first sock is close to completion. It is not knitting up quickly, but steady wins the race, right?

A Socks for Soldiers knitting forum can be found here: knittinghelp, and the Yahoo supported chat forum can be found here at The Yahoo Group if you want more information about helping in this cause.