Christmas Stockings

So, after a small repose, here are the Christmas Stockings that I made for this Christmas for a friend. It was quite an adventure since I have not officially done stranded knitting before. I took on the assignment hoping to learn and be experienced in stranded knitting and I believe it was a successful opportunity.

Here are the original four Christmas Stockings

Assignment: I was given four old traditional American knitted Christmas stockings and asked to produce three additional stockings in similar fashion. They were to have the names of three additional family members that have been welcomed to the family since the last stocking was made. I had a limited color palette of blue, red, off-white and green. The motifs were to be similar as well.

As you can imagine some research was in order. I managed to find a really old pattern that fit the bill perfectly. In fact it is possible that it was the same pattern that the grandma who made the original stockings used. I also searched for some newer chart patterns to incorporate into the stockings so that they would not be exactly the same, but would look like they belonged with the others. I came up with swirls, snowflakes, reindeer, Santa heads, dancing couples and houses. The original stockings looked like they were made with sport weight yarn but I didn't figure this out until after I purchased all the yarn that I wanted to use. I settled on a worsted weight, strong yarn by Nature Spun. It is 100% moth proofed wool and they carried the perfect colors to use. I used two skeins of each color: 112W Elf Green, N46W Red Fox, 116WBlue Boy and N91W Aran.




After I gathered all of the materials came the hard part; figuring out the math to make all of the charts work in the stockings. I started with about 62-64 stitches for each stocking. This number range worked well with all of the charts and with the stitches needed to spell out the names. Here and there some decreases and increases were needed but nothing too major. I made small schematics to figure out the order of charts for each stocking and to keep me on track. To do this I estimated the average number of stitches in length each of the other stockings was and then decided where to add blank rows as padding between the chart patterns for the new stockings. I also decided ahead of time which colors I would use for each of the charts and how they would look in regards to the rest of the colors.
I think they turned out pretty well and the new owner of these stockings was quite happy to see them. It really made me feel special to be a part of their family tradition in this way and it was much more economical than paying for a class to learn how to do this. Yes I did make some mistakes along the way and the last one turned out much better than the first. All in all it was worth the experience and I even had fun doing it.

The actual knitting for each one took less than a week, and that was knitting done while I watched TV, took care of the baby and helped kids with homework. So, if you have been trying to gear up for that big project but you are nervous to start... I say "go for it!" You will be happy you tried something new, and if you don't like the result remember that you can always rip it out and use the yarn over again.

These are the three that I made!

It really felt so great to accomplish my task and get these three stockings knit! Now I am tempted to make some for my own family. Maybe :)