More than a swatch...

Remember how not two weeks ago I promised myself I would start and finish my second slipper sock before I started another pair?

I was just looking for patterns. Just... browsing. Harmless, right?



Then it was just a swatch. I mean, look at it, it's so tiny! Hardly took any time at all! It doesn't count.

It is never just a swatch. The swatch was yesterday, and look where I am now:



I'm already half way through the gusset.

Whoops.

First finished stocking

I finished my first Christmas stocking a few days ago, but it's taken me a while to actually sew it together. This time I actually read the instructions for matress stitch rather than just whinging it, which is always a bad move with sewing.

I'm really pleased with how it came out:





This was my first real fair-isle project, and I think it came out really well.

I designed the patterns myself on Excel, although the red swirl pattern did take inspiration from a pattern in the fair-isle sampler in Knitting for Dummies. I think the snowflake pattern is my favourite.

1 down, 3 to go!

(Yes, this is one more than I originally said - but then I thought about it for a bit and realised I couldn't knit my housemates stockings and not have one for myself. So, three to go!)

Christmas stockings



Today I officially started my Christmas knitting.

A while ago I made some minature christmas stockings in the Jean Greenhowe Christmas Special. They are supposed to be tree deocrations, but I thought I could put little chocolates or similar in them and it would be cute as little gifts.

To cut on the waffle, I then volunteered to knit my housemates Christmas stockings. We made quite a big deal of Christmas last year, having a big turkey dinner - which is more effort than normal when you live in pokey student accomodation and don't have a dining table. Doing Christmas with friends was great though, and having stockings should add to the fun.

So I have been asking what people want, colour wise. Pete (in fact, I have two housemates called Pete - so, Tall Pete) said he wanted blue and white checks. I have only ever made fair isle swatches, but the getting so long it's a scarf for a stuffed toy fair-isle swatch was getting a lot better, so I thought I could incoporate fair-isle into the basic stocking design.

So I first had a practice run with a mini stocking, which I think turned out really well.



In fact, I think this is so very cool that I think the plain striped stocking looks very dull in comparison.



So I think I will have to do them all with fair-isle bits or one will look much fancier than the others. The thing is, I am still very much a beginner at this and the mini-stocking took me ages.

So I started on one of the big stockings, because all my housemates are out for the night and I thought I'd take advantage of being able to knit in front of the TV without spoiling the suprise.

Anyway, I have now finished the plain section of one stocking and knitting in plain stockingette something that size was BORING AS HELL. I am actually looking forward to the complicated fair-isle bit, even if something that big is intimidating. Progress so far:



My swatch for the stocking:



I haven't actually settled on a design, but I am going to use the variagted yarn shown on sections of green and red. Hopefully it will look good - I'm really happy with the swatch, but I'm not that good at arranging colours.