Sean Donnelly/Daily Journal Leann Nassar, of Half Moon Bay, recently won ‘Sock Wars,’ a competitive knitting competition where players ‘assassinate’ each other by finishing their socks before an intended target.

The holiday season was killer for Half Moon Bay knitter Leann Nassar.

Nassar, a 52-year-old executive assistant, was on an assassination rampage, knocking off other knitters across the globe with her weapon — needles. There was no bloodshed. Nassar participated in the second annual Sock Wars, a worldwide game in which people must knit socks and mail them to their target before they are targeted themselves.

In Sock Wars, each participant knits a pair of socks for another player and mails them to their target. Players are eliminated from the contest — or “killed” — when they receive the socks. Once they receive the socks that kill them from the game, participants have to mail the socks on which they were working to their assassins. The assassins then must finish those socks and ship them to their intended targets. All the time, assassins are hoping they don’t first receive their own killer socks from another assassin. The last assassin knitting wins.

It’s a twist on the old assassination game — the one played on school campuses. This is on a largest scale and its organizer in Scotland relies on the Internet to organize the game.

“It’s a crack-up,” said Nassar, who was deemed this year’s top assassin after two months of intense knitting by hundreds of participants.

Nassar was among a handful of players still knitting at the beginning of September, and in the interest of ending the game, the organizer called for those remaining assassins to mail a postcard to her home. The name on the first postcard received was named the winner. Nassar’s was the top of the mail pile and so she was crowned the victor, she said.

While making perfect socks takes some skill, this game is 90 percent luck, Nassar said.

A lot of the game depends on where in the world one must send their packages and the mail system charged with getting it there. For many, the game calls for overnight or next day UPS or FedEx shipping to ensure the quickest possible delivering.

On Oct. 12, each participant received a sock pattern called “Scar.” The pattern has a fault running the length of the sock. Participants also receive the name and sock size of their target. And size does matter in this game. The size of the target’s foot, the gauge of the yarn, the width of the needles.

Nassar immediately started knitting and only stopped to attend the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. She finished that weekend and shipped off the socks. It was her first kill of the season.

And that’s when the fun begins, said Nassar. The online banter, photos of faux death-by-sock and detailed accounts of daily visits to the mailbox provide a new type of knitting circle, Nassar said.

Nassar expects to take part in the war next year. She keep her needles warm knitting on her lunch hour and partaking in an old-fashioned Half Moon Bay knitting run through the Parks and Recreation Department.

For now, she’s not worried about defending her title as top assassin. The prize for the World’s top knitting assassin? A pair of socks, of course.

Dana Yates can be reached by e-mail: dana@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 106.