Stuffed and Sent

Thought I'd show you pictures of the stocking I made for my swap. I based it on the Mason Dixon Christmas Stocking.

Here it is just before I sent it - all stuffed and ready to go.

Close up of the name (and yes that is how you spell her name) and I chose to do the corrugated rib as I love the effect.

Do you like the snowflake? You can see my tension is much tighter here and the stocking pulls in. Maybe next time I will go up a needle size for the fair-isle.

I put the year on the back - I like that idea. The foot just kept going though - and that toe is super-pointy!!!

Christmas Stocking Swap

I've been having a really bad, stressful time recently - won't bore you with the details here. But in the middle of all the doom and gloom something lovely arrived.

My Christmas Stocking *grin*

My lovely knitter made me this stocking:

It came full of goodies too:

There was a book, two balls of sock yarn, some Christmas pencils (which my son will love) and some fun Chinese-looking straws. The stocking is *huge* - does that mean I'll get more presents at Christmas?

Thank you so much - it really cheered me up!

Christmas Stocking Swap - Part 1

I have been involved in a Christmas Stocking swap through my favourite site of all time Ravelry.

Basically you had to knit a Christmas Stocking for someone and someone else was doing the honours for you.  I was knitting for a lovely lady in the US - and as I know how much the Americans love us Scots I thought I would do a Scottish theme.  So here I give you the fruits of my hard work.

First up the stocking itself - I used Cascade 220 - which I am loving to knit with.  So easy and the colours are fantastic.  I based the pattern on the Cascade Christmas Stocking pattern and just adapted away.

Here it is just near the beginning, from the top, you can see how the fair isle is working with the threads being carried around on the inside.

I kept the colours to just the two -blue and white.  I used simple patterns on the majority of the stocking with saltires going round the top:

The heel was interesting to knit - you put the stitches onto waste yarn and carry on down the foot working in the round - so you end up with a long

 tube with a hole in it held together with waste yarn.  Kind of cool.  You then finish the toe and go back to the heel and finish that off too.  I just did the heel and toe in the plain cream.  I need to work on my sock finishing methods as they weren't very neat.

Finally I went back up to the top and used i-cord to give an edge and a loop at the top.  I didn't realise until I had finished that the loop was in the wrong place - and was on the side, not the back.  It's a feature!!!  Honest.

Then all that was left to do was to stuff the stocking with goodies.  I put in some handmade stitch markers - made by the lovely Vicki at Wild Fire Fibres.  They were so cute - I bought a set for me too - and some Christmas Tree ones too.

I added in some mulled wine sachets, a macaroon, some oatcakes and 2 skeins of Jamieson's yarn.  I hope everything is loved!