Giving to charity; it’s that thing you do when you’re feeling kind/flush/guilty/upset about particular wrongdoings that have flashed across your TV screen.

You can climb a mountain, cycle across a country (or, for those of us who are too lazy, sponsor people that do!) or even just throw a few coins in a bucket to give charities a bit of a boost. 

But have you ever thought about combining charitable giving with topping up your sock drawer? If you have, there are a number of organisations to choose from.

Comic Relief has successfully included socks as part of its Sport Relief campaigns for years, seamlessly interweaving the sale sporty sock merchandise with its push to get people active – both with the common goal of trying to raise as much cash as possible for all the projects it supports.

And this year a whole month is being dedicated to socks as part of a charity drive. ‘Socktober’ is the brainchild of the Free Kicks Foundation, which aims to auction off famous peoples’ socks during the month of October. 

Here at SockShop we have a whole page dedicated to charity socks, for good causes ranging from the
Mines Advisory Group (MAG) to Dogs Trust. 

But why do some charities fundraise through selling socks? For MAG the reason is simple.

Fundraising officer, Catherine Smith, said: “We use socks to highlight the area of the body most commonly affected by landmines, and they are a cheap and simple way to support MAG.

“For every pair of MAG socks sold, we can clear around 2 square metres of land, making it free from landmines and other dangerous explosives.”

As you may have guessed, we are rather barmy about socks.

And what we love is discovering other people who love them as much as we do, like John Dowswell.

The Sheffield artist’s latest project has seen him create images of socks and plant them around the city.

To see some of his creations, and the quirky spots he left them in, click here.

Now as tempted as we were to head off to Sheffield and find these socks, it is a bit far from our lovely mill in Bolton (we do only have an hour’s lunch break!).

So we decided to raid the warehouse and plant a couple of fetching Elle and SockShop socks around HQ for everyone else to discover.

Check out our efforts below!

Now I know you’re probably sick of the sight of anything Christmassy, but I had to share these!

We challenged a local secondary school to draw a Christmas novelty sock for us, with the winning design being sold as part of our collection next winter.

We had hundreds of entries ranging from simple and traditional to wacky and hilarious.

Six fantastic drawings have been chosen to go through to the next round, with each being mocked up by our design team, and then turned into a real sock.

The winner will be chosen from one of the socks.

Here are the six finalists’ drawings…

And their drawings transformed by the design team…

They all look brilliant so it’s going to be really tough deciding which one will win. If you have a favourite please let us know in the comment box below, on Facebook or Twitter. 

This great, albeit dishevelled, man did not consider it important to dress his feet for any occasion.

If we lived in a world without socks, and our sensitive feet were exposed to the harsh elements of the inside of a shoe, it would be a much smellier, sweatier place.

Feet would be colder. Imagine that on a freezing winter’s day, you couldn’t slip on your Heat Holders. Or, when you’re about to crawl into a cold bed for the night, you wouldn’t have your Slipper Socks to take the chill off.

Exercise would be harder too. Can you picture going on a six mile run without wearing your Cushioned Socks? Your feet would be so blistered and sore that you wouldn’t be able to tackle that last mile, or final uphill climb.

And at work, you would have to stick to your same old dreary suits and not be able to show your personality through flashes of red, green, spots, or novelty designs.

Sarah Tunnicliffe. You may not know her name, you might be able to place her face, but if you are a SockShop shopper, you will definitely be familiar with her legs.

Yes, Sarah is a fantastic legwear model whose bottom half can be seen displaying a number of our socks and tights right across the SockShop website.

She recently came into the studio to model the Elle Autumn/Winter 2012 range for the packaging revamp we have planned.

I snuck into the studio to meet Sarah and find out a bit about the face behind the legs.

I also wanted to see what a legwear photoshoot actually involves.  

As her top half wasn’t going to be photographed, would Sarah turn up in her PJs, no hair or make up, with just glammed up feet? Take a look at the shots to find out...

The outside locations were everything we hoped they would be, rugged, dramatic, beautiful; but they were also some things we hoped they wouldn’t be, namely wet and slippery!

However, the whole team pulled together to make sure we nailed the shots. Our very own photographer Rick even gave Sophie a lift to one particularly pretty spot… on his back!