People have heard of collecting hats, coats and blankets for the homeless, but socks?

The Kiwanis clubs of Kitsap County, including the Silverdale, Bremerton, Central Kitsap and Poulsbo clubs, collected more than 4,000 pairs of socks Saturday, Jan. 10 for homeless people throughout the county.

“The funny thing is we only did it for four hours at each store,” said Angela Sell, the Silverdale Kiwanian who coordinated the event.

The clubs stood outside the Bremerton Wal-Mart, Fred Meyer and Poulsbo Wal-Mart Jan. 10 asking shoppers to donate new men’s, women’s, children’s and babies’ socks to the cause.

“We were just hoping to get 1,000 socks this year, but we were amazed,” Sell said.

The Kiwanis clubs set up outside the Poulsbo Wal-Mart last year to collect the socks, but, with the slumping economy, they decided to expand to other locations this year, according to Sell.

“You hear so much about the economy and how bad it is and then we collected more than 4,000 socks,” Sell said. “It’s amazing that people could still give.”

Sell said the Kitsap Continuum of Care Coalition told them they needed clean socks more than anything for the homeless, so the Kiwanis clubs set out to gather the goods.