I came across those a few days ago in my Christmas ornaments knitting frenzy and straight away cast on and made a couple. If I hadn’t also suddenly decided that there were a few more presents I needed to knit before the end of the week I’d be making many more of those mini stockings.
Mini stockings
I wanted them to be very small so I made them on 2mm needles with fingering weight yarn. Although I was in so much of a hurry to start on them I grabbed a few balls of yarn and headed down to Crafty Coffee on Friday morning. Once there, I realised that my white yarn was substantially thinner than my teal one. But still too impatient to wait till I got home to choose another yarn, I started knitting the little tree stocking with the two different weights of yarn anyway.
These are my first ever items, albeit very small ones, knitted entirely with my own handspun yarn, and that makes me slightly giddy. Although I’ve now been spinning for about six months, I’ve only ever knitted sample squares, and absolutely loved it, but until now had not taken the plunge any further. I also have to admit that because I wanted to find out as much about spinning as fast as possible, I have tried many things, and have a lot of very small skeins, which do not necessarily lend themselves easily to many projects.
This is merino top spun on a CD spindle. The teal is the result of my first ever dye experiment with acid dyes, and I was pretty happy with my very small skein. I love the knitted result, and the stocking is incredibly cute, but the thinness of the white merino makes the shape of the heel a bit weak, which in my eyes throws out the balance of the whole stocking.
So on the second one (the zigzag design), I decided to double my white merino to obtain a similar weight to the teal, and I have to admit it worked out very nicely. I’ve still got plenty more of the teal, and enough of the white merino to make many more, although I’m not sure if I’ll have time to make many more before Christmas…
And, just to show off all my knitted tree ornaments, here is a pic of my Christmas ficus, no Christmas tree in my house, but like Eddie, who’s written about what to do if you dont’ have one, I’ve found an alternative:
Christmas ficus
(Sorry for the overexposed photos thoughout, most of them were taken in entirely unsuitable light)
The ways of the whorl 